When I was positive there was nothing still attached, I slipped from underneath the covers and grabbed the bag full of the clothes I came in. I tossed everything on as quickly as I possibly could and crept from the room as quietly as possible.

Before I left, I noticed the pen and paper and tossed it in my back pocket. I was grateful to the last person who had come and left the room because the door was cracked open an inch or so and I escaped without so much as a sound. I knew I had precious little time to get away because my heart monitor stopped beeping and I could already hear the nurses’ speedy steps heading the direction of my room.

I had no idea how I was going to get to my truck but I didn’t care. I was working down my list and wasn’t going to worry about everything at once. One step at a time, I kept telling myself. I turned the corner and was almost found out. I peered back around that same corner and saw someone, people, I never expected. My entire team, including Matthew Tanen, sleeping along several chairs. I took a closer look at everyone sleeping in the waiting room and figured Matt was my only chance because he was closest.

I quietly snuck up to him and pulled at his sleeve. He startled awake and I had to restrain his booming voice with my hand. Several of my family members stirred but thankfully never woke and when I thought Matt had a grip on himself I pulled him toward a hidden hallway.

“What the hell are you doing out here Gray?” He asked.

Matt, I scribbled as legibly but as fast as I could, Remember that time you said you owed me because I wouldn’t let you cheat off my paper in Chemistry and instead stayed with you all night and helped you study?

“Yeeeesss,” he said reluctantly.

I’m calling in that favor, I wrote. I need your help and I don’t want you to ask questions.

Matt was the kind of loyal friend that knew when to let things go when you wanted it dropped and he agreed without hesitation. We ran toward the double doors and I had a fleeting thought towards the pain in my chest. That’s when it hit me, hard.

Oh my God! Julia!

Chapter Nine

From The Other Side

“Jules, can you breathe alright?” He asked, knuckles tight on the steering wheel.

I nodded my head, barely acknowledging him, not that I could talk anyway, with all the duct tape he had plastered to my mouth. I learned my lesson early on in this little abduction that if I didn’t answer promptly I paid dearly with a slap to the face.

“What was that?” He asked, cupping his ear, feigning he missed what I never said and laughing maniacally. Jeez, who is this guy?

“Psycho,” I mumbled through tape.

My saliva and the heat from my breath softened the glue on the tape and was beginning to chafe the skin around my mouth.

We were heading northeast toward Blackwater Falls from the little I was able to see. I was hogtied and on my back and every few minutes, when I could gather the strength, I would strain to peek over the dash in attempt to get my bearings.

He never tried to stop me. I don’t think he thought it would be an issue because I don’t think he planned on letting me live long enough to do anything about it and although that may have frightened me I refused to give up and refused to let him know how terrified I really was. Peeking over the dash didn’t get me much but I knew the little information I could get might help Elliott find me if I could eventually get to a phone.

I prayed like hell that we were going to his parents’ cabin because at least I could get warm there. My feet were ice cold and I could barely feel my hands. My clothes were soaked from the melted snow that soaked into my jeans and coat when he had dragged me by my hair from my car to his.

I was coming home, more like being forced home, from the hospital where Elliott laid unconscious from his recent surgery for some, I’ll admit it, much needed shut eye. I promised Mark and pinky swore Maddy to go straight home, never stopping anywhere, never opening my door for any reason and to call once I reached home since Danny couldn’t escort me as he was on duty and called in to handle a domestic dispute somewhere in Bluefield. Also, Mark couldn’t leave Maddy by herself because we were the only ones left after everyone else went to eat, sick of the disgusting hospital food.

So Mark walked me out to Carmen and made me promise to ring him when I physically stepped foot inside The Perry House and locked the door behind me, ‘not in the driveway, not on the porch, actually inside the house’.

For foolish reasons, I thought it best not to wake my dad and make him come escort me home because I thought if trouble arose that I would be able to drive away from the problem.

I mean, there was no way Jesse would come back to Bramwell, right? Not when everyone and their dog was looking for him. It turned out to be the dopiest thing I could have ever thought to do. People didn’t just ‘drive’ away from Jesse Thomas, especially when I was one of the ‘people’ whom he wanted.

I was so close to home, I could smell it and had calmed down enough turn up The Dear Hunter’s ‘Mustard Gas’. “Look to the sky...” I sang as I crossed the intersection at Main where it turns into Brick and in that moment, out of the corner of my eye, I spotted Jesse’s Mustang come from out of nowhere. I inhaled sharply just as he stopped short in front of me, barely missing my front bumper.

At the sight of his Mustang, instant panic ran icy through my veins. An awful sense of dread took over my body confirming I should have trusted my own instincts and stayed at the hospital.

My thoughts were consumed with the thoughts that the love of my life was unconscious, on a hospital bed, totally unable to come to my rescue. I knew that Elliott would never be able to forgive himself if something happened to me and he hadn’t been there to stop it.

That meant I was going to fight tooth and nail to make sure it didn’t happen, so I could tell him myself, give my eyeteeth to stop it if I had to. Hurting me would hurt Elliott and there was no way in hell I was going to let that come to pass. I was a Jacobs after all and everyone knows that the Jacobs possess warrior hearts. I just prayed to God mine would beat furiously enough to weather the foulness that more than likely laid in my immediate future.

I suffered a building, wretched hysteria while Jesse sauntered from his vehicle at a confident, lazy pace, his face hardly visible through the blizzard swarming around us. I threw Carmen into reverse, resting my right hand on the back of the passenger seat to brace myself as I looked out my foggy rear window, crystallized ice preventing me from seeing anything. I slammed the gas and blindly attempted to steer the car a decent enough distance to throw it back into drive and get out of there, but there was a sheet of ice beneath me at least two inches thick and my tires lost any traction from the all too eager spinning. I’d driven in ice my entire life and knew the last thing I was supposed to do was press the gas like I did but I panicked, desperation oozing from every pore and effectively ending any chance of thinking soundly.

Growing up, I remembered watching television shows or reading articles about people involved in some form of tragedy or another. I would shake my head back and forth as I read their stories, chiding them for their stupid mistakes with a click of my tongue for their seemingly nonexistent desire for self-preservation.

‘I just froze’, they’d always say and I would chock up their lack of action or mere escape from death as someone who barely fit into the ‘survivors of the fittest’ category.

Premature judgment, I humbly admit. Obviously, I no longer judge those people so unfairly. I swallowed that misconception that day followed by the bitter pill of regret mixed with a bit of my own blood.

I repeatedly tried to gain control of Carmen but she failed me, for the first time ever, and before I knew it, I heard and felt shattered glass spill down the side of the car and onto my lap. Glass scraped the side of my face and I brought my hands up to protect my eyes. I struggled to scream but I’m just not a screamer. The few occasions I’ve needed to, I open my mouth but nothing ever comes out. I think it’s because my voice is too deep. I just can’t get to the high octaves without it coming out in scratches.

Elliott forced me to keep a crowbar underneath my passenger seat. I remember throwing a fit, I can’t stand being coddled which Elliott had understandably done a lot of lately, but I’d never been so grateful for his overprotective meddling than in that moment.

I leaned over, thrusting my arm underneath the passenger seat sweeping my hand back and forth for the steel bar. I felt around the floor board for it and caught the cold steel by the tip just as Jesse stretched through the newly shattered window, grabbed my hair to yank me back and I lost any grip I had.

I winced in pain before pulling myself forward and frantically felt around for the bar once more. I could see Jesse reach for me again as my fingers wrapped around the base. I brought it out and swung as hard as I could toward Jesse. He raised his left arm and the bar met the bone of his forearm with a sickening thud.

It wasn’t hard enough to break it but it was hard enough to stun him. He stumbled back from the car, bringing his hurt arm protectively toward his chest. He bent over in pain and I used the time as a distraction to unbuckle myself and throw open the door, ‘Mustard Gas’ spilled into the air and I sprinted in the direction of my home.

My face instantly numbed from the shocking chill, the air whipped across my hair and jarred me awake from what I had hoped was just a nightmare. I begged my body not to react to the cold, begged it to power through the cutting blast, not to shut down as it wanted so badly to do. I was a mere two blocks from my front door. I yelled for someone to help me but the blizzard drowned out all sound. I was all alone.

“Get back here you bitch!”

I still held the bar in my hand and turned around to face him.

“Stay away from me Jesse!”

“Oh, no, no, no,” he chuckled, his shoulders shaking from the effort. “This is not how things work. I tell you what to do Julia, not the other way around.”

He walked slowly toward me like he had all the time in the world. I turned to run toward my home again but he picked up his pace and overpowered me. He’s a conditioned athlete and I basically had no chance. He snatched the bar from my hand and threw it in Sawyer Tuttle’s yard.

“Sawyer!” I yelled, out of realization that his house was so close. “Sawyer, help me! Saw....” I yelled again, before Jesse covered my mouth with his hand.

I bit his fingers and swung my elbow back toward his face but missed. He pulled me tighter into his chest and squeezed the air from my lungs, repositioning his hand tight across my mouth. He whispered in my ear as I desperately tried to pull oxygen into my lungs.

His arm acted as a boa constrictor, every time I let out a little air to gain a breath he would choke his arm further into my chest, cutting off the possibility of breath.

He leaned his mouth into my ear, “Yell again and I shove that crowbar down your throat.” He squeezed me tighter, “Understood?”

I nodded and he slightly released some pressure around my torso. I gulped freezing air into my lungs and coughed from the pain of it.

“Come on Julia,” he said, kissing my neck, “You’re coming with me.”