“You giving up?” Sam asked.
Was he?
It would be so easy to walk away. They’d never even officially dated, just liked each other, so it shouldn’t be hard to do. Yet so far he hadn’t. Fifteen months and he still got butterflies in his stomach when he knew they’d be spending time together. He still thought about her several times a day. He dreamed about her on the nights when she wasn't consuming his thoughts to the point where he couldn’t fall asleep. He still found her beautiful and intriguing. She had turned down his apologies several times and yet the idea of asking out another woman had yet to cross his mind.
There was only one answer to his partner’s question. “No, I'm not giving up.”
“Then let’s figure out a way for you to win her over at the wedding.” Sam grinned.
Before he and Naomi got together Sam rarely smiled. He was always serious, always all business, and usually a little scary. Now he smiled all the time, he was relaxed, and he looked at Naomi like she was the most precious thing on the planet. Nate liked seeing his lifelong friend so happy. But was it too much to ask to get a little happiness of his own?
He had lost the most important thing in his life and all he wanted was a chance to have something else important. He could have walked away when it became clear Rylla wasn't going to make it easy for him to win her over. But he hadn’t. There was something about her that drew him to her like a moth to the flame. He enjoyed her company and he wanted to get to know her better. He wanted to see where things might go between them. That he still wanted that even though the fear that had him turning down her invitation to dinner hadn’t receded told him that she was something special. Really special.
Feeling like he was back in junior high plotting how to get the hot girls to notice him, Nate nodded, he was desperate enough to resort to planning something with Sam. “What did you have in mind?”
* * * * *
1:09 P.M.
Georgia felt foggy.
Like she was hungover, only she never drank and had only had a hangover once when someone spiked drinks at a party when she was a teenager. That one experience had been enough to turn her off the whole drinking thing.
But now she felt like she had downed a couple of bottles of wine.
It was the sleeping pills.
She might feel like she had been thrown in a blender, but her memory was intact. She remembered her date that turned out to be a planned abduction, being forced to take the sleeping pills, the sounds of the man who took her killing someone, and running for her life. Hiding instead of making a run for it had been the wrong choice.
Georgia couldn’t believe this was happening.
Had she really been kidnapped?
Didn't that happen to other people?
Not to her.
Why would it happen to her?
She didn't know any crazy violent people. She was just a normal person. Her parents had divorced when she was eleven. She had a little brother who thought he was her big brother, and an older sister. She had gone to school, then college, then gotten a job. She worked in an office. She hung out with her friends. She went to the gym when she could garner enough enthusiasm. She dated. She lived a completely normal and non-eventful life. So how could she have been kidnapped?
She didn't want to open her eyes. Didn't want to see where she was.
In her mind she was conjuring up so many scenarios. He could have her in a dingy basement, or a creepy attic, a slaughterhouse, or a cabin in the woods, or maybe a warehouse.
How would anyone ever find her?
Someone wasgoingto find her, right?
Georgia couldn’t let herself believe anything else. Someone had to find her. Theyhadto. She couldn’t die here. She wouldn’t. She would do whatever it took to keep herself alive and in one piece until someone came to rescue her.
Okay.
Focus.
Stay alive.
That was her first priority.