to his family today. But nothing was going to calm his mother down until she’d heard his voice herself. And surely Ari would feel better then too, right?
There was a sharp inhale on the other end of the phone. “You have him there with you?”
“Yeah, he’s just—give me one second. I have to wake him up.”
I slipped back into the room and crouched down at the end of the bed. I put a hand on Ari’s shoulder and tapped it gently. His eyes fluttered open.
“Holden? What time is it?”
“Four in the morning.”
“Four in the—why are you awake? Why am I awake? There can’t possibly be a good enough reason for that.” He frowned. “Unless this is the beginning of some weird sex game. Because if it is, then maybe I could be convinced to—”
“Ari, Ari,” I said, stopping him before he could go further down that road. I wasn’t sure how much of our conversation his mother could overhear. “It’s your mom.”
“My mom?”
I nodded. “Your mom’s on the phone. She wants to talk to you.”
19
Ari
I stared at the phone in confusion.
Mostly because it was four o’clock in the morning and my brain wasn’t working, but also because how the hell was my mom on the phone with Holden? How did she even have his number?
I stared blankly.
“I think she meant like, now,” Holden said, jiggling his phone.
My mom was on the phone. My mom.
How could I talk to someone who I had only remembered existed yesterday? Would it be weird? What if I didn’t recognize her voice? What if she asked me things I couldn’t remember? What if I got all my hopes up and then she decided I wasn’t really me?
I stretched my hand out, then brought the phone to my ear, feeling like I was in some kind of a dream.
“Um. Hello?”
“Ariel? Is that you? Oh, thank God, we’ve been so worried. You have no idea. When we couldn’t find you after you left the ice hotel, we thought—Oh, sweetheart, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t be talking about us, I should be asking about you. How are you? Are you safe? Has he been treating you well? Are you—do you need to escape? You can just answer yes or no to that last question.”
“I—what?”
I blinked, sitting up and lowering my feet to the floor, trying to think. Nothing my mom was saying made sense. What ice hotel? Had who been treating me well?
But overlaid on top of all of that was overwhelming relief. I recognized my mom’s voice. It flooded through me like honeyed tea, warm and sweet and familiar. Something unlocked in my chest.
My mom. I’m talking to my mom.
Her voice triggered a cascade of memories, pictures of her from every stage of my life, always laughing, smiling, brushing my hair out of my eyes. Kissing my cheeks. Telling me she was proud of me. My mom.
“Oh no, I knew something had to be wrong,” she continued. “Are you physically all right? Are you being fed? Your father’s already on the way, but if we need to call the police to come sooner, we can—”
“My father’s on his way?”
A surge of adrenaline pumped through my body at those words, but there were more important things to deal with first. “Mom, I’m fine. Holden’s not—we’re just—I’m not being held captive here or anything. I’m free to leave at any time. Holden’s been helping me out.”
“Who on earth is Holden?” my mom asked.
“He’s my—” I broke off, wondering how to describe just what Holden was to me.
He’s my boyfriend? He’s my fuck buddy? He’s the man I’m head over heels in love with, and I’ve never had feelings like this before for anybody else, I’m sure of it.
Then I realized that probably wasn’t what my mom meant.
“Sorry. I meant Eric,” I said. “Eric Amundsen. That’s the name you would know him by. He goes by Holden now, and he’s been letting me stay here.”
“He’s been letting you stay?” My mom’s voice went up an octave. “Sweetheart, you don’t have to pretend anymore. We got the ransom calls. We know you were abducted.”
“Ransom calls?” I stood up in surprise. Across the room, Holden’s eyebrows shot up, and he looked a silent question at me. All I could do was shrug back. “What are you talking about?”
“The day after you were taken,” my mom said. “You’d been gone for eighteen hours when we got the first call. It was routed through the internet somehow—oh, your father would be able to explain it