Page 125 of Brassy Bigwig

I take a step in the direction of the bedroom, and as quickly as I can, I try to lunge at the gap to get past him and back downstairs.

“Oh, no you don’t,” he grunts as he grabs onto the back of my t-shirt. My feet slip, and I begin to fall down the steps. Reed’s hold on my shirt keeps me from sliding down the stairs, but the force of gravity pulls on my body. The neckline of my shirt stretches over my throat, cutting off my supply of oxygen. I have a hard time breathing as he drags me by the shirt into the bedroom he just ordered me into.

“No!” I’m barely able to get my words out.

I manage to get my feet underneath me, and I rise to a standing position again. Reaching out for Reed, I scratch at his arms and face, doing whatever I can to loosen his grip. That’s when he swings me around and lets go of my shirt, causing me to fly across the room and land on the bed.

My head makes contact with the wooden bedpost, and pain radiates through my skull. The last thing I see before my vision goes black is Reed advancing on me quickly with his arms outstretched and a look of pure rage on his face.

* * *

When I come to, the first thing I see is my lap. My head bobs slightly as I try to get my bearings and figure out where the fuck I am. The last thing I remember is Reed attacking me on the bed. My vision clears as my head snaps up, and I’m staring Reed in the face.

“There you are.” He’s crouched down on the floor in front of me. When he places his hand on my chin, I quickly snatch it from his grasp in disgust. “I thought I may have lost you for a second. You hit your head pretty hard.”

I can’t move my arms or legs. They’re taped to the chair I’m sitting on. The same chair Reed told me to sit on before our struggle began. I also have duct tape stretched tightly over my mouth. I try to say something, but nothing more than a few small noises come out.

“If you remember before you went crazy, I offered you the opportunity to ask questions. All you had to do was come in here and sit down. Unfortunately, you didn’t follow directions, so you lost that privilege.”

He cups my cheek and runs his fingers through my hair in the same way D has done in the past when he wants to be affectionate. It makes me want to hurl.

“Let me fill you in, Chloe. It’s kind of a long story, but I’ll do my best to explain everything to you. The night we met, I couldn’t take my eyes off of you. As soon as you walked through the door, I knew you were special. I had to know you. You surprised me when you approached me first. The combination of your sapphire eyes and delicious perfume was like an aphrodisiac. I couldn’t get enough. You gave me hope that night, Chloe. That’s something I haven’t felt in a very long time. But then you left. You told me you needed to use the restroom, when in actuality you snuck out and snatched away all traces of the hope you had just given me.”

Why do I attract the crazy ones?

“I knew I wasn’t finished with you, however. I thought if I got close to your friend, I would still have the chance of seeing you. Of getting to know you. When I found out Shelby was your roommate, the plan practically fell at my feet. I knew then what I had to do.”

He stands and backs up before taking a seat on the bed. The blankets are all disheveled, and a tear rolls down my face, not knowing what he did to me while I was unconscious.

“I’ve never been good at flirting, but luckily Shelby is an attention-hungry slut. She ate it right up.”

“Don’t talk about her like that!” I scream, but my words are only decipherable in my mind.

“It doesn’t take much to get her into bed, am I right? So I followed her around that night, made sure to get her number and text the appropriate number of times a guy should when he’s interested in a girl. By the following Monday, she invited me over for dinner. I made sure to bring an overnight bag with me. I knew I was staying the night even before she did.”

With each word that comes out of his mouth, I get more and more nauseated.

“I waited forever for you to get home that night. I couldn’t wait to see you again. I needed to smell you. When you came in, you barely gave me any notice before talking about him. That’s all you wanted to talk about, ever. It made me angry. I knew then I would have to do whatever it would take to keep him out of your life. We went on with dinner, but the best part of my night, Chloe, was yet to come. That was the first time I watched you sleep. You looked like an angel.”

My stomach lurches, and for a second, I think I’m going to be sick. Then his smile disappears as he begins speaking again.

“Every night I stayed over since then, I would sneak into your room and watch you. A couple times, I would lie down next to you as carefully as I could so I didn’t wake you up. That would have been bad. You would have sent me away.”

My body trembles again as his words sink in. He’s been in my bed with me, unknowingly, while I’ve slept. More tears stream down my face the longer I think about it.

“Don’t cry, Chloe.”

Reed gets up from the bed and places his thumbs on my cheeks beneath my eyes. I try to shake him off, but his grip tightens. Slowly, he wipes away my tears before returning to his seat.

“Anyway, so this went on for almost two weeks. The whole time, the only thing you talked about was him. Dimitrios this and Dimitrios that. That was enough to piss me off, but then…” he scoffs, “then there was the night you never came home.”

He’s angry again.

“I waited around with Shelby, pretending to be the perfect guy who cared about her and was supportive of your friendship. She’s exhausting. I don’t know how you’ve remained friends with her for so long. But it was a small price to pay to be near you. She was so worried about you, and the longer you took to get home, the angrier I got. I knew exactly where you were.”

His breathing increases before he continues.

“You were with him. That’s when I knew I needed to step up my game. I wasn’t sure exactly how I was going to play it until the next night at the club when that Blake kid came up to you. You were terrified. After reading the text messages Shelby send to D, explaining who he was and what he did, everything became clear.”

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