Page 19 of Call It What You Want
“Hello,” I half-whisper. “My name is Ava, and I was?—”
A deafening crash cuts me off as the door explodes inward, ricocheting off the bathroom wall. Jackson storms in, rage etched on his face. He tears the phone out of my hand, ends the call with one swipe, and drops it straight into the toilet.
“What the fuck?!” I yell, lunging for it, but he intercepts me and holds me back, his arm like an iron band across my chest.
“You’re lucky that call was too short to track.”
Yeah, I don’t feel lucky.
I try to twist out of his grip, but, of course, it’s useless. He’s so much stronger than I am. But I keep struggling, because giving up feels too much like surrender, and I can’t give him that.
“Fuck. You,” I scream at the top of my lungs, the words ripped from my throat with a desperation that leaves me feeling empty,hollow. I hate feeling so fucking helpless.
He eases back, and I push past him to rush to the toilet. My phone lies at the bottom of the white porcelain bowl like a stone. Fishing it out would be pointless, so I don’t even try. It’s been submerged for far too long, and all the rice in Southern California couldn’t resurrect it.
Tears sting my eyes. “You’re such afucking asshole.”
“One day you’ll understand why this had to happen,” he says darkly, then shrugs. “Or maybe you’ll just curse me for it until the end.”
That doesn’t even make sense.
With a sigh, I try to move past him again. He grabs my upper arm again and pulls me against his chest, holding me there. He stares down at me with those cool green eyes, and I swear to God, my heart stops for a full second. All the anger is momentarily gone, replaced with a raw hunger that claws at me from the inside.
God, I hate myself.
“Ava, everything that day had to happen,” he says firmly. “My stepdad was a piece of shit, and he deserved what he got.”
The senator was hardly a saint. But seeing him bleed out...that image will haunt me forever.
“Three weeks,” he says abruptly. “Give me three weeks, and if you aren’t begging me to love you by then–” He shrugs. “I’ll put a hundred thousand dollars in your account, and send you on your way…”
I snort.Beghim to love me? Not a chance in hell. And I’d tell him to shove his offer up his own ass, except…that one hundred thousand dollars could change my life, or more importantly, my family’s lives. My dad could finally retire. My sister could quit two of her three jobs…
“Two hundred thousand,” I counter. “Andtwoweeks.”
“Done.”
Oh.He agreed so quickly.Too quickly.Now I regret not asking for more money and less time.
“But, I have a few stipulations—” he adds. “First, no matter how bad it gets, if you leave, you forfeit everything, including your freedom.”
“My freedom?” I ask, not quite understanding.
“The only chance you have of getting out of here is through the agreement. Two weeks. Try to escape, and I swear to God, Ava, I will hunt you down, drag you back to my bed, and chain you there if I have to.”
I swallow at the visual. “So you’re not actually giving me a choice. You’re giving me an ultimatum.”
“Semantics.”
Ugh,the cunty, cunt, CUNT!
“Fine,” I snap. “But I have a few stipulations of my own.”
“Shoot.”
“You owe me a phone,” I bite out.
“There’s a reason you don’t have a phone,” he says, like he’s talking to a child. “You just tried to call the police.”
