Page 75 of Vicious Butterfly
Ryan picks up after the first ring. I put him on speakerphone. “What are you doing calling me?” he whisper yells.
“Are you okay?” There’s a pause—way too fucking long of a pause if you ask me. “Don’t even think about lying to me, dollface. I’ll come get you. They’ll never fucking find us.”
He breathes, heavy. “Okay.Okay.Would you just … fuck.” Whatever he’s about to tell me, he really doesn’t want to tell me. “I don’t fully understand what’s going on myself, but Father took me for dinner at the location I sent you. Home of Gregory Kline—someone my father went to North Point with.”
I glance into the rearview, checking on my cargo. It lolls to the right and then left on the verge of unconsciousness.
“Father set up a whole marriage situation. A family merger. Me to Kline.”
“Not fucking happening.”
“Not if I can help it,” he says.
“I promise you, baby. It’s not happening.”
“Ugh, don’t call me …” He huffs a sigh. “Anyway, look, I didn’t want to. I told him no. Wait, is that … Taylor Swift?”
“This song is a bop, tell me it’s not.”
“Anyway, he thinks I’m helping him father a hockey team roster and taking on the role of stepdad to his current Kline spawn.”
My hand slips on the wheel. The car swerves. A muffled cry screams from the backseat.
“What did he do to you?”
“He kissed me. Look, he made me, Tate. His guards had guns.”
Not anymore, they don’t. I smile.
“I was afraid he wasn’t gonna let me leave.” I can hear the lip wobble. Ryan was scared. That’s unforgivable.
“So, you messaged me to get you. That’s good, dollface. It was the right thing to do.”
“A lot of fucking good that did. You left me on read for hours, asshole.”
“This was my first opportunity to call you.” I wasn’t sure what I was walking into. I didn’t want to chance calling him on the way in case that got him into trouble. For a few miles, there’s silence as my stomach churns. Huh, stomach churning, not a feeling I’m used to. I work with cold precision. Any gut feelings I have are akin to those of a wild animal on a hunt.
Not worry.
What else might Kline have done to my pretty doll if he’d had the chance?
“A-Are you mad at me? For letting him kiss me?” There’s an odd kind of terror in his voice, making it come out as a husky tremor.
I’m mad enough to rip Kline’s lips off. “Not at you,” I settle on. There’s a creak as my hands clench around the steering wheel. Blood drips into my eyes from the seeping gash on my skull. I wipe it away.
“Where are you now?”
“At North Point. Tate, you don’t sound … is everything alright?”
“Everything’s fine. No one’s gonna touch you like that ever again.”
“I told him I had a boyfriend—that really pissed him off.”
Wow. I think my heart just skipped a beat. So that’s what that feels like. I thought people were making that shit up. “I told the dean I had a boyfriend when I decided you were mine, dollface.”
My tongue darts out, licking my lips, and a copper tang washes over my taste buds.
Ryan laughs, and it’s like warm light. “Of course you did, you fucking psychopath.”
