Had To Be You (Romance/Drama) [COMPLETED]

Chapter 6 - Steady

Naomi expected to find him there in her bed when she awoke. It was almost pitiful, she thought, that she had actually expected to wake up and find Lucas Forrester where she had last seen him.

But he wasn't there, and the feeling of sunken despair had been disconcerting when her hands reached out for his warmth, coming up cold and empty handed. What had she expected? And most importantly of all, why the hell did she care about his absence?

It had been two years since she last saw him before this night, yet he still seemed to possess that innate and effortless ability to set her completely afire.

She remembered her first look at him in two years, so surreal and overwhelming that she hadn't been able to believe it until she felt the searing touch of his skin. Even then, as she sat in bed with her sheets clutched to her chest, she was not sure that she could believe. But all evidence pointed to his presence. The slight undulation of the pillow where his head had laid, and the unmistakable scent of him on her mattress.

Unmistakable.

He had been here, and he had left just as easily as he came.

He had saved her. Out of thin air he had appeared and spared her of the same fate that had so crippled her all those years ago. It was almost as before, when he had saved her unconsciously from the depths of her fears as she had obsessively immersed herself in her studies in attempts to escape mentally from her memories.

Yet this time he had literally saved her, because she was not unaware of what would have happened if Armand Akbar hadn't been stopped. He would have used her, then discarded of her in whatever manner he deemed fit. Or in whatever manner he had been ordered to act.

Naomi didn't doubt for a second that her stepfather had been involved in her attack of the past night. It was so defined to her that she felt she knew the basis of her attack without doubt. Her stepfather and three other men were jailed for their attack on Naomi, but one man, Akbar, had left the scene and evaded the police the night of their arrest. Like the three other men who were currently jailed, Akbar was loyal to her stepfather, and Naomi knew that he had left the scene not only for himself, but for her stepfather's ring.

Her stepfather was the mind behind a small, pitiful, sex-trafficking ring based in his birth country of Russia. He had married Naomi's mother for her money when he had come to the United States, most likely perusing the country for vulnerable young women, or communicating personally with other sex-trafficking rings of interest in the area.

Then they had married under her mother's blinded and impulsive love, and his unabashed taste for her mother's money and that of her inheritance by her late husband, Naomi's father. It had been a shock for Naomi, one that had not settled well inside of her.

She remembered her mother's biased understanding every time there was a large hole in her bank account. He would take whatever amount of money without so much as a notice, and Naomi's mother would ignore the severity of the matter, as well as her daughter's failed efforts at talking some sense into her.

Naomi remembered the marriage, on her eighteenth year, and the horrible feeling of alarm that gripped at her throat whenever she saw the man looking at her legs, or ogling her chest indiscreetly. She would feel the leer of his eyes on her when she walked, and she would ignore it. She had hoped to God she was just being paranoid, having never had a fixed male figure in her life since the day her father died. Naomi had been young, only seven, and her mother's passing boyfriends had always been fleeting.

Her mother used to be a shining beacon before she met him. She would glow in her careless happiness, and the erratic flightiness of her nature would always keep Naomi happily on her toes.