Seth pressed his hand to his head like it hurt and calmly said, “Fine. We’ll do this the hard way.”
Reaching for the next thing I could grab, I screamed, “You mean we’ve been doing it the easy way?”
One corner of Seth’s mouth twitched into a smile and then in a flash he had me pinned face-first to the floor. “I do love your spunk,” he told me, pulling my arms behind my back, “however inconvenient it is at the moment.”
I wasn’t in the mood for his compliments. I started screaming as loud as I could and tried to wrench myself free, but my arms screamed in protest.
“If you hold still it won’t hurt,” Seth said calmly after I gasped. “And you may as well stop screaming. There’s no one home to hear you. Not here, or in either house next to us, or in your house across the street.”
“So I should just lay here and take it?” I yelled. I thrashed even harder and cried out, surprised by the pain that shot through my shoulders.
“Careful Ellie, you could dislocate your arm like that. You need to hold still.”
I didn’t have any choice but to stop struggling.
“There,” Seth said proudly. Though, if he was proud of me for calming down, or proud of himself for forcing me into submission I couldn’t tell. “Now, are you going to be reasonable?”
“Get off me!”
“If I do, you’ll just try to run away and I want to talk to you.”
“I don’t want to talk to you! You can’t treat people like this!”
“You’re not leaving me any options. I’m going crazy waiting for you Ellie.”
“Clearly!”
“I like you. A lot.”
“Well you’re doing a bang up job at winning my heart you psycho!”
“So I’ve noticed. Tell me how to do it right, and I’ll let you up.”
“
You
can’t. It’s impossible. So why don’t you go abduct someone who would appreciate it? Angela’s as stupid as you are crazy. I’m sure she wouldn’t mind.”
“I don’t want Angela. I want you.”
Even despite how angry I was that statement made me blush. It’s just that no one—and I mean
no one
—had ever picked me over Angela before.
“But
why
?” I asked before I could stop myself. “Angela’s prettier and popular. Plus, she probably doesn’t wonder if you’re the spawn of Satan.”
Seth ignored the Satan crack. “Aside from my weakness for redheads?” He chuckled and then sighed. “Ellie, I’d really rather have this conversation face to face. If I let you up will you talk to me, or are you going to start throwing things again?”
At this point I was pretty sure Seth wasn’t going to carve me up—at least not today—so I decided to give in and let him say whatever it was he wanted to say. I figured the sooner I did, the sooner I’d get out of here.
“Fine. You want to talk, then talk. I’ll behave as long as you stay away from me. And none of your soft caress/smoldering gaze/sexy voice crap either!”
Seth laughed as he lifted himself off me, but he didn’t seem to trust that I wasn’t going to bolt. He took a seat propped against his bedroom door.
After swinging the stiffness out of my arms, I climbed up on his bed, which was pushed into the far corner of his room, and placed myself securely against the two walls.
Seth sat there with this look on his face as though he were trying to figure out exactly how to proceed.
Well I sure wasn’t going to help him out with conversation so I took the opportunity to check out his room. He had plaid sheets, a couple posters up on the walls of bands—it bothered me that he had the same taste in music that I do—a bookshelf full of CD’s, DVD’s, video games, and paperback novels.
At first glance it looked perfectly normal, just like his garage had, but like the garage there were a few subtle differences. For one, it was clean. I don’t mean it was more picked up than my room—which I’ll admit is a little sloppy, though definitely not the “pig sty” my mom says it is—I mean his room was
clean
. There was not a single dirty sock, his bed was neatly made, and the things on his bookshelf were alphabetized. Seriously, alphabetized.
Which brings me to my next problem. Seth’s DVD collection consisted of movies like
Silence Of The Lambs, American Psycho, Seven,
and the entire collection of the TV show
Bones
. I didn’t recognize any of the books, but judging from the titles they were all crime novels. And, of course, there was his lovely video game collection starting with good ol’
Assassin’s Creed
.
I heaved a shudder and moved on with my inspection, stopping short when I saw the CB radio on his dresser.
Random
.
“It’s a police scanner,” Seth said, startling me so bad I knocked my head against the corner behind me.
I’d almost forgotten Seth was in the room, he’d been so quiet. When I looked up his eyes were fixed on me. He’d clearly been watching me analyze his room. I wondered if he could tell what I was thinking about it. I hoped not. “A police scanner?” I repeated just to break the tension in the room. “Are those even legal?”
“Depends on what you use them for.”
“And what do you use it for?”
Evading the police after you carve up girls with one of the bazillion knives in your garage?
Seth’s eyes narrowed as he considered answering me, but when he spoke he said, “You don’t like me.”
It wasn’t a question, but he waited for an answer. When I didn’t give him one he asked, “Do you
hate
me?”
He seemed sincerely curious, so I felt bad for not responding this time. The problem was, I wasn’t sure how to answer. Hate didn’t seem like the right word.
The seconds of silence ticked on.
When Seth finally spoke again he said “I don’t understand you,” and he didn’t look like he was happy to be admitting that. “You aren’t like other girls. You don’t…”
Seth was really struggling for words now but he didn’t seem upset exactly, just frustrated. “No one’s ever responded to me the way you do.”
I tried not to scoff at that too badly, since I knew somewhere deep inside Seth there were, in fact, feelings. Still, I made enough of a reaction that Seth’s eyes flashed a hint of self-consciousness. “Did you know I’m from Beverly Hills?” he asked me suddenly.
I thought about not answering again, but that felt mean and something about the way Seth looked just then made me unable to be a jerk. Grudgingly I said, “Not surprising.”
Seth was trying to hide his emotions, but I could tell he was relieved when I spoke. “Things are different there.
People
are different.” He hesitated again and then said, “I’m rich, I’m good-looking, and my aunt is a very famous novelist, so I know a lot of the right people.”
I was startled by how matter-of-factly Seth blurted all that. He wasn’t bragging, though, he was just explaining something. Whatever it was, I wasn’t catching on. I think Seth could tell, too, because he smiled a little and explained himself further. “In the world I was raised in, that’s all that matters. People don’t care about your personality. Most of them don’t even bother to get to know you. It’s all about what they think you can give them.”
“Charming.”
Seth shrugged off my sarcasm. “That’s just life. At first I didn’t think it would be any different here. All the girls I’ve ever known were all the same. Even Angela—at least a little. When I first met her all she saw was the BMW and the smile.”
“Actually, what she saw were the extremely hot workouts in your garage every morning.”
With a gasp, I slapped my hand over my mouth. That was not supposed to come out of it.
Seth laughed once, but spared me the humiliation of teasing me. “But not you,” he said, tactfully moving the conversation along. “The first time we met you saw…”
“A taser-wielding dog killer who mysteriously knew my name?” I offered, surprising us both when I cracked a smile.
Seth broke into a wide grin. “You’re not like other girls, Ellie,” he repeated. “Not like anyone I’ve ever met.”
I folded my arms tightly across my chest and clamped my jaw shut. I refused to let Seth sweet-talk me into forgetting I was being held here under duress.
Seth ran a hand through his hair, frustrated that I’d clammed up again. “I don’t know how to act with you,” he confessed. “Most girls are easy, but I can’t figure out what you want.”
“That’s because I don’t want anything from you.”
I’d warned him not to, but he looked up at me from beneath his long eyelashes and turned his voice to a smooth whisper. “I wish you did.”
“Sorry.” I forced myself not to tug at my clothes. It was rapidly becoming way too hot in his room. “I don’t know what to tell you. Except that invading my personal space, breaking into my room and, uh, attacking and holding me hostage? All excellent ways to make sure that never happens.”
But suddenly I wasn’t nearly as angry about all those things.
“At least you didn’t break my nose.”
Ironically, realizing I wasn’t angry anymore made me very, very angry. “Only because you had my arms pinned behind my back,” I growled.
“I
am
sorry about that, Ellie. I would never have done it if you weren’t throwing things at me head.”
I shrugged at his dry tone. What did he expect, sympathy for the new bump on his forehead? “Sorry. It’s my natural reaction to being
kidnapped
.”
Seth sighed heavily. “I didn’t want to do this.” He dropped his gaze to his lap and began picking at the strands of hideous brown shag carpet that blanketed his bedroom. “It’s degrading having to force you to talk to me like this.”
“So why do it?”
Seth lifted his shoulders and dropped them, his mask of confidence finally dissolved. He looked beaten. “Because it’s worth it if I can get you to listen long enough to not hate me anymore.”
Surprisingly, I’d almost prefer creepy-full-of-himself Seth. At least I knew how to feel about
him
. This new vulnerable Seth was much more confusing. Maybe Angela was right. Maybe I was insane thinking Seth was capable of killing people. But then, he did just kidnap me. Maybe he was manipulating me again.
I sighed. “It’s not that I
hate
you.”
Seth looked up at me again from beneath those thick long lashes, almost daring to hope. Geez, he knew how to tug at a girl’s heartstrings. Seriously, why did he have to be so hot?
“I don’t trust you,” I said quickly. “You’re not normal. I wasn’t kidding about that. You seriously creep me out.”
“So you don’t like me,” Seth clarified, “but you don’t hate me.”
I cringed at the harshness of the truth, but Seth bounced back to his normal self. “I can live with that,” he said.
“Good. So then I can leave now?”
I started to get up and Seth rose to his feet. “Not quite.”
“Why not? You plan on keeping me locked up in here forever?”
Seth cracked a smile. “Just until you develop Stockholm syndrome.”
“But you just said you could live with me not liking you.”
“Okay, I meant I could
work
with it, because here’s the thing, I think you’re lying to me.”
“Excuse me?” I was so surprised by his statement that I didn’t realize he’d made his way across the room to me until it was too late. I stepped back and fell onto the bed again. Glaring at him, I scrambled back to the corner and pulled my knees tightly up to my chest.
When Seth climbed on to the bed after me, I realized that the corner was not the best idea—Seth had me completely trapped. “You
think
that you don’t like me,” he said, “because you’re nervous. But when I touch you, you don’t exactly run screaming.”
To prove his point Seth slowly grabbed my hand. I didn’t like him being so close to me, and I trembled when he took my fingers in his. He was right, though. I didn’t pull away. I totally could have because he was barely clinging to me as he brushed his thumb over the back of my hand. But I didn’t.
“You see?” He brought my hand to his lips and kissed my fingertips.
I pinched my eyes shut and sucked in a sharp breath. My heart pounded in my chest as I felt Seth place my hand against the side of his face.
“You do like me,” Seth whispered, breaking the no-using-his-sexy-voice rule again. He turned his head and kissed the inside of my wrist. “You’re just scared.”
Seth gently tugged my hand, his lips trailing up my arm as he pulled me closer to him.
“Ellie, look at me.”
I couldn’t open my eyes. I felt strangely dizzy. My entire body was shivering even though I felt impossibly hot. “Stop,” I breathed.
Seth obediently pulled his lips away from my skin but he still clung to my hand. “You’re going to give in sooner or later,” he said, his voice sending even more chills through me. “The sooner you stop fighting it, the sooner you’ll see you have nothing to be scared of.”