Chapter 52
JEREMIAH
“The longer you keep me, the worse this is going to get for you,” I warned Jannie. I was fed up with telling her to let me go or to convince her to take me to the doctor.
She was totally ignoring me, blabbering on about how no one else could have me because I was hers. Fucking crazy woman.
“It won’t. Because when you realize how wrong you’ve been, you won’t press charges against me. You’ll forgive me. We’ll be happy together.” Reigning fucking queen of off the deep end, she was looking at me with wide, doe eyes. “Once you see how happy we’ll be together, you’ll regret all the time we’ve wasted.”
“That’s never going to happen,” I said, same as I’d been doing for hours. Psychopathy seemed to have damaged her hearing though. She kept ignoring me, talking over me and telling me how in love I was going to be with her by the time we left the hotel.
If only she knew how many other women I’d been with here after her. She launched into another fantasy description of how happy we’d been together before my father fired her when I interrupted.
“None of that is true, Jannie. None of it ever happened. We weren’t happy together. We fucked. You worked for me. All of this other stuff is in your mind. We never were happy together because we were never together, and we’re never going to be.”
Exasperation and being pissed off elevated the level of my voice. This time, she couldn’t ignore me. Her mask of calm and certainty slipped for a minute and let me see the rage rolling around inside her at my statement.
I was over this, over trying to play her game or build a rapport. If I was going to be able to remind her I was human, I was going to have to remind her of what a truly awful human being I could be.
“You didn’t mean anything to me, Jannie. Don’t you get it? You keep saying we could be so happy together, but we never will be, because I don’t feel that way about you. I never have. Not even for a single second. Not while I was fucking you and not while you begged me to stay the next morning. If I wanted to be with you, don’t you think I would’ve made a move in three fucking years?”
She reacted like I’d slapped her, her body jerking back and her jaw going slack. Her eyes widened, then narrowed into slits of pure hatred. Which was interesting, given that she was trying to convince me she loved me.
“You’re going to regret saying that,” she said in what was practically a hiss. Uncoiling her body from her position seated in front of me, she dragged a fingernail from my one collarbone to the other.
When she did it before, it only had enough of a bite to make it feel like she wanted me. Now it felt like she wanted to hurt me, as she confirmed in her very next breath.
“You’re here with me. No one else knows where we are, and no one’s going to come looking here. You keep talking like that, and I might have to stop being so nice to you. I could hurt you, Jeremiah. I will if I have to.”
“Fuck off,” I spat at her. This whole situation was pissing me the hell off. She wrecked my car, kidnapped me, tied me up, and was forcing me to listen nonstop to her delusions. I was done with this shit.
If she wanted to hurt me, let her try. At least maybe I would pass out again, or for the first time since she said I hadn’t been unconscious earlier. Being in pain and out cold would be preferable to listening to her whining.
Jannie’s eyes stretched wide open, her upper lip curling in disgust. “What did you just say to me?”
“I said Fuck. Off.” I enunciated each word carefully and looked her in the eyes as I said it. “You want to hurt me, bring it. I’m not afraid of you Jannie. I’ve tried humoring you, but now I’m sore, stiff, and over it. You keep talking about when I forgive you. I can promise you, sweetheart, we passed the forgiveness station an hour ago at least.”
Her eyes narrowed again, and she brought one hand to my face, holding both sides of my chin as she brought her face down to eye level. She was so close to me, I would’ve been able to spit in her face if I had the inclination to do it.
“Listen to me, you son of a bi—” She was cut off by a knock on the door. Her head snapped to the side, but her hand stayed where it was on my face as she yelled out. “Go away!”
She started turning back to me, but another knock rang out. She straightened up, glaring daggers at the door. “Can’t you read? It says ‘Do Not Disturb.’ And I said go away!”
I nearly started laughing at her indignant rage. For someone who kidnapped a person and was holding them behind the door that said “Do Not Disturb,” she was acting awfully slighted by the disruption.
Opening my mouth, I was about to yell for whoever was out there to bash the door in when Jannie leveled me with a gaze and her eyes cut to a duffel bag lying on the floor. I took it to mean she had a weapon in there.
I didn’t have a single fuck left to give. If she tried injuring me now, the person outside would hear a commotion and undoubtedly call management. The jig was up.
Quick as a flash, Jannie slapped her hand over my mouth and reached for something on the bed behind me. A part of the bed I hadn’t seen because it was out of my line of vision. I bit down on her hand, but my teeth slipped on her fingers and the next thing I knew, she was roughly shoving fabric into my mouth.
When the ball of fabric was deep enough in that all I could make were muffled sounds, she wrapped another strip of fabric around my head to hold it in place.
The whole thing couldn’t have taken more than thirty seconds. I’d underestimated how well prepared she was for a good old-fashioned kidnapping.
Whoever was at the door knocked again. A timid voice followed the knock. “I’m sorry ma’am. I can’t go away. There’s been a problem with your payment for this week.”
“What?” Jannie snapped. The person at the door had her full attention now. “That’s not possible.”