Separately Together

Chapter Twenty-Six: Promises 1/2

Trigger Warning (SA)

"Promise me something?" He says as he loosens his grip on me, we had been hugging for a good thirty minutes neither one of us wanting to let the other go, scared that we would go back to the people that were too scared to take what was right in front of them.

"What is it?" I say a little weary of where this was going.

"Promise me that if something ever happens to me, you'll thrive." He says as he tucks my unruly hair, which was a knotted mess from his grip on it only moments ago, behind my ear.

He was so close I could feel his breath running across my face. "What do you mean exactly?" It was off-putting that he was talking about something happening to him, just even the idea of him not being here scared the daylights out of me, and no it wasn't because without him I was fair game for The Forefathers, it was because I didn't even feel like a separate person from Harley anymore.

We were together so often that I could never return to the girl I was before he was around.

"Promise me that you'll publish that book you keep all to yourself, that you'll sing for a crowd and that you'll be in the front of this bakery watching people try the goods you bake." He grows more passionate with each thing he mentions. I tear up again because he shows me once again that he had been just as obsessed with me as I have been with him these past couple of months.

"I promise." I don't know if my social anxiety would even let me do these things but hopefully, nothing would ever happen to Harley.

He leans down and kisses me briefly, right before his phone rings. He answers it and the look of devastation takes his features and I'm suddenly panicking, what happened?

He storms out of the bakery leaving me behind, I chase after him.

"What's going on, Harley?" I yell as he runs to his truck.

"They have Dixon. Ride home with Jared and don't leave his side, understood?" He shoots me a look of determination, the man that he tries so hard to push down coming to the surface and I know all he is seeing right now, is red. The Forefathers were going to die tonight, even if Harley had to kill every single one of them by himself.

My whole body is shaking thinking about them having their filthy hands-on Dixon. If anyone knew what they were capable of it was me and I just had to have hope that Harley would get to her in time.

I made it to Jared's blacked-out car and open the passenger door, about to slide in when I see someone that's not Jared. I try to hop out before the strange man can get his hands on me but I'm not strong or fast enough to get away. He places a cloth over my mouth and nose, laced with something that makes me start to fade away.

Just when everything was lining up right in my life, it all tumbles apart once again.

~.~.~.~.~

"Remember me?" Vickers's voice echoes throughout my brain.

"Try so hard to forget me, but ..." His laugh echoes are twice as loud as the rest of his words. "Remember me?"

I jump awake, feeling the chains digging into my wrist holding me up in a standing position, the weight of my body pulling on them, causing them to ache. My boot has been taken off and my ankle throbs, I try to look down at it, but I can't see more than I few inches in front of my face.

"M-Maddie?" I voice meek and weak mutters from the opposite end of the room. It's Dixon. I yank at my chains hard, trying with all of my willpower to break them. I had to get her out of here, had to save her from their cruelty. They had already marked me for the rest of my life, I wouldn't let them do the same to her. "What's going on? Who took us?"