Punk Rock Ruined Me

(4) He Saved Me

Chapter Four (Please vote guys! :D)

I woke to the feeling of someone softly rubbing my face. At first, the feeling startled me, and I squirmed wildly. Then I realized it would be better to cooperate with my kidnappers, and I stopped and lay very still. The rubbing of my cheek continued. I realized that I hadn’t yet opened my eyes. I prepared myself to come face to face with one of the burly men, or a blindfold – not that I could feel one.

Sure, I expected someone with tattoos. Messed up teeth. Maybe some scars on his face from the years and years of fighting on the streets. Surely, if you were a professional kidnapper for a living, you were guaranteed to get some people that were feistier than others. Or maybe the family of said kidnappers coming to look for him or her. I was expecting someone with a huge beard, maybe a biker jacket.

But what I was not expecting was a handsome guy with a wide jaw. And hazel eyes… Hazel eyes. “Dexter?” I asked softly, scrunching my face up from the pain of light meeting my eyes.

He looked surprised that I was up, and he immediately pulled his hand away from my face, scooting himself away from me. I tried to find some sort of reaction to see him here. He was part of my kidnapping? What was I feeling? Surprise, no. When a stranger gets into a cab with you, something fishy is going on. Anger? For betraying me. No, not that either. Maybe, maybe…

Relief.

If he was touching me so tenderly, then maybe I could talk him into letting me go. He’d get in trouble, but would he do it? For me? I had to hope so. For my sanity.

“Liz, you’re up,” Dexter said nervously. He was looking away, at the fireplace in the corner of the room.

Wait.

What?

I decided to prop myself up on my elbows – a difficult feat when it feels like my body weighs a few hundred tons – and slowly move my head to take in my surroundings. We were in an apartment. It was very tastefully decorated, I had to admit. There was a fireplace on the wall in front of me. The window to my left was wide and revealed the bursting lights of the Broadway theaters. What the… I didn’t know any type of criminals that would keep their kidnapee in an apartment in a busy part of the city. All I had to do was scream and they’d be busted.

Maybe that was the best idea.

I sucked in a bunch of air, and Dexter turned to me. I looked at him for a moment, then clenched my throat to let out a piercing scream. I think Dexter noticed that too, as he lunged towards me and put his hand over my mouth, gently. That stopped me. We stared into each other’s eyes for a while, and I let myself melt into the deep honey of his hazel irises. The green danced in them in a way that told he me he was completely harmless. I closed my mouth and looked at the window again, willing myself to stop melting into his eyes. I had to stay strong now. He took his hand away, and once again moved to the area by my feet. I noticed I was on those weird looking couches. The type that had no arms, but they had a really long cushion, so it was kind of like a bed, but not really. It was only one person to sit in here comfortably. Maybe two, taking into consideration that I was very small. I looked back at Dexter and saw that he was looking down, his elbows at his knees, his back curved.

“Where are we?” I asked, looking at him. He shifted uncomfortably and clenched his bandaged hands. Bandaged? God, I was being so slow. I looked over him again and saw that there were scrapes and bruises all over him, especially his face. I noticed that there was a very nasty looking gash above his eyebrow. There was blood and smudged around it, like he cleaned it in haste to try to make it look better. But I could see the way his eye was sagging. Below that very same eye, there was also a green bruise with a purple center, which looked extremely painful. It was the kind of bruise you got when you fell on something. Very hard. There was a sheen of sweat in the center of his eyebrows, and he constantly used the back of his shirt sleeve to dry it up. But it just kept coming back. “Why are you hurt?”