Page 16 of A Captive Situation

I’d been drowning for the last two weeks, and the second he walked inside that police station, I felt the first bubble of oxygen being handed to me. Like a hand that reached down into depths where I was slowly dying and offered me a breathing tube.

I took my first breath, and I was hooked. I wanted to keep breathing.

Suddenly my bucket list wasn’t just for something to do, to keep me busy so I wouldn’t lose my mind.

I felt the first stirrings of something sizzling in me. The first spark of life again.

He was about to find out that once I latched on, it was going to be difficult to shake me.

Ask my ex. I gave him eighteen years of my life.

Chapter Six

Sawyer

The drive to the facility didn’t take long. For me, anyway. Jake was the one driving, and his cousin was in the front seat next to him. She talked the whole time. I kinda wondered if she’d taken another dose of something in his bathroom when we were in his place, because she wasn’t making sense with the things she was talking about. He didn’t seem to care. He didn’t engage at all.

He drove, ignored her, and every now and then, he’d look at me in his rearview mirror.

Me, though. I was enjoying this.

I liked his cousin’s chatter. I liked the drive. I liked seeing more of the city and even outside of the city. A part of me wondered if I should be worried. I didn’t know these two. They were strangers, but my body overrode any rational hesitation my mind might’ve thought up. I knew him. That’s what my body was telling me, and well, I was going with it.

This was all helping to quiet my own demons. For the first time in weeks, some of the hold my ex had on me lessened. I was able to think about it, and I didn’t feel like I was being paralyzed by the thoughts.

Just for that, I’d sign up for a couple rides with Jake and his cousin.

I’d never been the type of girl who longed to get married. Maybe that was why I stayed so long with Beck? I always thought we’d getmarried, we’d have kids, but I wasn’t one of those types that put it on the calendar and crossed out each day until the wedding day or the impregnating day. For me, it’d been about the connection. I liked helping. Getting a degree, then a job had been a dream. That dream switched to helping Beck.

He was the one who kept putting off the engagement. That’s how he talked about it. “The Engagement.” Like it was an event. Though, I guess it kinda was.

I’d been complacent. I was okay with taking a back seat to Beck. I was okay with—and fill in the blank here—but no. No! I hadn’t been okay with it. I made the sacrifices for him because I thought that’s what a person did for someone they loved. They did what they could to help the other person.

Beck hadn’t done that for me.

When we got to the facility, I held back. I was getting steamed up thinking about Beck. I was with an ex-cop. I was pretty sure he might still have a pair of handcuffs, and I’d just left a police station. I did not need to go back, certainly not to see his ex–lovey dovey whoever she was.

Was she like Manda? Hanging around, being the “best friend”—no!

Stop, Sawyer. Keep a lid on your shit.

I focused back on the reality show happening right in front of me.

Vivianna was dramatic. She huffed all over the place. Was weepy. Emotional. Threatening Jake in one breath, then clinging to him in the next because they’d both lost his brother. I was getting dizzy trying to keep up with her, but after a bit, I accepted it was like a roller-coaster ride. Up and down, and whee, let’s go in a circle.

She hugged me seven times before Jake hauled her inside, and once they got in there, I heaved a breath. It took them a bit. Apparently Jake had messaged ahead of time. I was guessing that was part of what he’d been doing on his phone when we were in the cab. They were ready for Vivianna.

Jake came back twenty minutes later, looking all tense.

Jesus.

I raked him up and down. He was tall, and there wasn’t one ounce of softness on his body. He was all ripped and built. He wasn’t big, but he wasn’t lean either. He was right in the middle, all perfectly in the middle and again, I was seeing how tight his shirt stuck to him. I was noting the way his biceps moved and shifted under that shirt, and the dip from under his chest to his very flat stomach.

My mouth watered, tracing down his body, wondering what other muscles he might have under the rest of his clothes.

God.

What was I doing?

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