Find Me (WITSEC, #1)

by Ashley N. Rostek

“Even you talking shit is adorable.”

“You’re getting the girlfriend discount.” “I’m not your girlfriend.” “Want to be?” he asked with a charming smile. All I could do was blink. He laughed, shaking his head. “So adorable.” He’s just teasing me, I mused as I slowly recovered from my stunned state.

“Fine, do your thing.” “Yay!” I beamed. “You guys like octopus, right?”

“Oh, you run around your neighborhood. It’s getting too hot out to be doing that. You must go early in the morning or at night.”

I know I probably sound crazy, but my instincts are screaming at me that he’s no good.”

“What I want would involve your hands.” I brought my voice down to a whisper. “They’d have to do some rubbing and massaging and they might even get a little dirty.” The more I talked, the higher his brows rose. For a moment all he did was study me and it was taking all the willpower I had to keep a straight face. I got to bear witness to his lightbulb moment just before his shoulders slumped a little. “You’re talking about kneading pizza dough, aren’t you?” I grinned up at him innocently. “Of course. What’d you think I was talking about?”

Colt and Creed weren’t happy. They’d become two glaring statues who appeared to be moments away from maiming Keelan. Keelan smirked. “You get her all the time. Learn to share.”

“I don’t know how I feel about this,” Colt grumbled and looked to Creed. “He’s not going to bite her. Let it go and watch the TV,” Knox said.

Every window I had tried had been nailed shut.

I stepped toward Knox and grabbed his wrist. I tugged a little, trying to get him to move, but he wouldn’t budge. “He’s somewhere in the house. If we stay here, we will die. We have to get help,” I said and tugged some more. The result was the same. He didn’t budge. “Who’s in the house?” he asked. “Who the hell cares?! We need to wake her up,” a voice argued, and it was clear this time. Not that it mattered. “Please,” I begged. “Shayla is still upstairs. She’s dying. If we don’t get help right now, she won’t make it.” Knox’s expression changed from confusion to what looked like sadness.

He then tried to pull me toward him. “Shiloh.” I resisted. “Please!” I pleaded loudly as tears pooled in my eyes. “If I don’t get help in time, she will die. Please help me, Knox. Please! If she dies, I’ll be all alone! I don’t want to be alone! Please, don’t make me be alone!”

Knox knelt in front of me and pulled me into his arms. I climbed into his lap, wrapped my arms around his neck, and buried my face into his shoulder. My whole body shook as I cried and that just made him tighten his arms around me. “Fuck,” someone cursed.

My upper thigh was touching a part of the male anatomy I had yet to be introduced to and it was currently hard enough to attach a flag to. His hipbone was also becoming well acquainted with the area between my legs.

“Um…good morning,” I said awkwardly. Staring up at me, he threw an arm behind his head and sighed through his nose. “You need to work on your slipping-away skills.” “I was trying not to wake you to avoid this very awkward encounter.” “You woke me the moment you lifted your head off my chest,” he said and yawned.

“Why were we sleeping together?” I asked. “Because we couldn’t get you to let go of him,” a voice said,

“You were asleep for about a half hour when you started breathing heavily and talking in your sleep,” Knox said. “You said that you needed to stop the bleeding and that there was no way out,” Keelan added.

“Colt told us that you were having a nightmare and that we should wake you before it got bad,” Knox continued. “Keelan was about to wake you when you screamed the most bloodcurdling scream I’ve ever heard and then you threw yourself off the couch. You were barely on the ground a second before you were on your feet and running across the room. I thought you were going to run straight into the TV, but you stopped and began looking around. You were frantic and looked terrified. You were acting like someone was chasing you.”

“We caught on pretty quickly that you weren’t fully awake because we were all standing right in front of you, but it was like you couldn’t see us,” Keelan explained. “Colt and Creed wanted to shake you awake. I didn’t think that was wise. Your guard was up, and I had a feeling that if any of us touched you, you’d attack. So we tried talking to you and calling out your name.”

“It seemed like you heard Colt say your name and then you looked right at me,” Knox said, watching me carefully. “You could see me. Do you remember any of that?” I nodded a single nod. “I remember seeing you. I didn’t think it was real.” “Do you remember what you said to me?” he asked. “Not really,” I lied. “You said that there was someone in the house and that we needed to leave before he found us.”

“That’s really strange,” I said, shifting my weight from one foot to the other. “But that’s dreams for you.” Knox’s eyes narrowed as he studied me. “...

“Who’s Mr. X?” Knox asked. I stumbled to a stop and slowly turned around. I didn’t want to believe it. I begged the powers above that I was hearing things. “What did you just say?” Knox’s gaze was intense and unrelenting. “Who is Mr. X?”

“After I got you to settle down and it was just the two of us out here, I asked you again, ‘Who is in the house?’ You said, ‘Mr. X.’”

“Stop doing that,” Knox snapped. “Nothing about you is a burden. That’s not what this is about.” Creed inched closer. “We’ve tried to not pry and wait for you to be ready to talk to us, but—” “Please don’t,” I pleaded. This was it. This was the moment I’d known was coming. “You don’t trust us,” Knox said. The backs of my eyes began to burn. “I do trust you.”

Knox shook his head. “Then what’s the issue, Shiloh? We spend practically every day together. We share things with you, but you barely share anything with us and when things happen with you, like last night, you expect us to ignore it.”

“You scared the shit out of all of us last night, babe. But we’re still here. I don’t know what else we have to do to prove to you that you can talk to us and that you won’t scare us away.”

“You owe me five answers to five questions,” Colt said, bringing up the bet I’d lost our first day of school. “You don’t go back on your promises, right?”

“Because I’m in witness protection!” I screamed at him as if the truth was a way to punish him. “My family was murdered! Is that sharing enough for you, Knox! Huh? I couldn’t tell you because the monster who killed them is still out there,” I wailed as I pointed at the door. “If anyone finds out who I really am, my life is at risk. Telling you puts my life at risk.” My voice broke at the end.

None of them tried to stop me and that was enough to tell me that everything was ruined between us.

“You’re drunk.” “Nope. I’m numb,”

“You’re an asshole and your sexy muscles can go to hell.”

I pushed up onto my tiptoes. “Kiss me, Knox,” I whispered against his lips. I was pretty sure he stopped breathing. I thought I heard something clank behind me and I went to look. Knox’s mouth captured mine before I could see.

The betrayal was sobering enough that I felt humiliated and everything I was trying not to feel came rushing to the surface. The heartache. The fear. The anger. And he was dumping my way to escape it all down the drain.

“Because you’re hellbent on self-destructing,” he snapped.

“I feel so stupid for letting you kiss me!” “What?” Keelan, Colt, and Creed said at the same time and looked at Knox. Knox refused to look away from me. “You’re drunk, Shiloh.” “So what?!” I yelled.

“You don’t get to dictate how I deal with shit, especially when you were the one who hurt me. You pushed and pushed me to tell you something I wasn’t ready to share, nor was allowed to tell you. You made me choose between the four of you and my safety. What did it get me? Nothing. Instead, it cost me everything, just as I knew it would.”

I had no choice but to feel and it was awful.

“You’re important to us and to Keelan. I know it’s hard to believe right now, but you’re important to Knox, too.”

“I’ve been wanting to do this all day.” A corner of my mouth twitched. “Smell me?” Colt snorted. “No.” Creed’s hand flattened on my stomach. “Hold you.”

“I want to do more than kiss you, Shi,” he said in a deep, purely male voice.

“Then more than kiss me.”

“If I told him the truth, he’d have me relocated with a new identity by morning. I don’t want to uproot my life again.”

“She screamed at him to let me go. He refused. Instead, he went on and on about how we loved each other and what he was doing was consensual. The more he talked, it was obvious that he was crazy, and I was so grateful that she thought so, too.

Police searched for him at his home and found a shrine of me in his bedroom, but no sign of Mr. X. He had disappeared and no one could find him.

He stole all of my panties and a few other things, like my hairbrush and a teddy bear my dad had won for me at the fair when I was eight. He left rose petals all over my bed, along with some rope, a vibrator, and a letter with explicit instructions on what to do with the vibrator. The letter also explained that the rope was a sneak peek of what he was going to do to me when it was time for us to be together.

“He sent them back to me one at a time after he…pleasured himself with them.”

Creed went to grab the tongs to pick up some chicken and Keelan smacked his hand away. “Since you’ve already eaten, you can go last.”

“I was going to serve Shiloh,” Creed deadpanned. “Well, you’ve serviced her enough tonight,” Keelan said in a put-off tone.

Creed straightened in his chair. “Sounds like you’re jealous.” The glare Keelan fixed on Creed surprised me. It wasn’t a look I’d ever seen on his happy and carefree face. “What if I am?” he asked Creed. “I didn’t think pretty boys got jealous,” Creed snapped. Keelan smirked. “Sounds like I’m not the only one who’s jealous.”

Leaning against my door frame with his hands in his pockets, he let his gaze roam all over me. “You look beautiful.”

“What’s wrong?” “I wanted to talk about what happened with you and Creed.” My brows rose and I blushed. “Oh.” “Do you want to be with him?” I looked down. “I have feelings for him.” I shifted my weight from one foot to the other. “But I have feelings for you, too.”