Chapter Twenty-One

**OLIVER'S POV**

I gasped and my eyes flew open as I felt cold water touch my feet. I looked around the strange room that I was in. Sea shells of different sizes and shapes hung from the ceiling, the paint on the wall was dirty and chipped and the wood of the one-room cabin was deteriorating. Water flowed underneath my feet, only coming up to my ankle, flowing through the cabin and out. In the distance, I could hear the sounds of a running river. At the end of the cabin stood an altar set with ceramic figurines painted brown and flowing white hair. The depiction of the river goddess, kneeling at this altar, and mumbling words of prayers were four women dressed in white.
“What the hell…”
“It seems you didn’t miss me, Oliver…”
My heart fell into my stomach, and I must have jumped a foot into the air when her voice sounded behind me.
“My goodness!!!” I screamed and turned around.
She threw back her head and laughed. “You seem nervous…”
I turned around to see her standing behind me. She looked different, different from the goddess that had shown herself to me the past few months. She had on a flowing white skirt that came down to mid-thigh and a beaded crop top that barely held the girls together. Her hair was let down as usual and flowed around her ankles as she walked closer to me.
“You like what you see?” She asked, and I realized that I had been staring.
I swallowed and looked up, locking eyes with hers. Her full red lips lifted in a smile as she took another step closer to me. I stood enthralled as she raised her hand to my face and ran her thumb across my cheek. I leaned my head into her hand subconsciously and immediately jerked away when I realized myself.
“Where is this place?” I asked.
“This is my shrine…and these are my people. You’ll meet them soon.”
“What?”
“For now, you don’t have much time. We don’t have much time. The walls are closing in Oliver,” she said, and took several steps closer to me as I kept moving back. “You have to let me in.”
My back hit the wall and she smiled wider as she placed both hands on the wall behind me, trapping me between her body and the wall.
“I…I don’t think I want to do that…” I replied, my eyes fixated on her lips.
She moved even closer, her body brushing lightly against mine and sending shockwaves down my spine.
“I do not think I fully understand what it is you want from me…and the fact that you killed my brother…”
She threw back her head and laughed, exposing her slender neck that begged me to kiss it. Her voice filled the cabin and sounded like music to my ears.
“That’s a lie. I didn’t kill your brother,” she said and moved in even closer, her lips almost brushing against mine. “You’ll see that a lot of the things you know about me are lies.”
“Really? Like what?”
She smiled. “You’ll find out soon enough. For now, take this.”
“What…”
I felt something strap to my ankle and looked down to see a beaded bracelet around my left ankle.
“What’s that?” I asked.
She took a few steps backward and at red at my ankle, and even though I hated to admit it, I wanted her back where she was…close to me.
“It’s going to protect you in the meantime. It won’t do much as it can be broken, but it would do enough for you to come to a decision. I’m not your enemy, Oliver.”
She moved closer to me, and I sighed as her lips met mine. My lips moved against hers like she was sir and I was suffocating, and I groaned when she pulled away.
“Go,” she said. “You have visitors.”
Before I could ask her what she meant, my eyes opened wide, and I was back in my room. My breath came in cold, hard puffs as I looked around my room and swore. The heavy pounding on my door added to the headache I felt, and I wondered why and how dreams with her always felt so real. I thought about what she said. Did Jamie kill himself? And then I thought about our kiss…what was happening?
The pounding on the door became more insistent. I recognized the pattern and knew exactly who was at the door. I stayed still, nursing a dying hope that he would turn away, but I gave up when the knocking only got louder. I sighed and got out of bed, trudging through my condo slowly to the front door. I opened it to my very angry father and my mother with a worried look on her face. She spared me a smile, and I simply ignored her.
“Yes?”
“Have you seen the news?” My father asked and forced his way past me and into my living room, my mother following sheepishly behind him.
“No. I’m just getting out of bed. Why?”
My father laughed sardonically as he picked up the remote control, and turned on the television. “So, you broke an age-old pact, dumped your betrothed, disrespected your father to be with a murderer?!”
“Honey, I think you should calm…”
“Shut up,” he said to her, not bothering to even look at her.
“What are you talking about? Gabriel isn’t a murderer.”
“Then explain this…”
My father flipped to the news channel and I gasped in shock at Gabriel’s mugshot on the screen. The world around me seemed to melt away, and even though my eyes were fixated on the large screen, my ears were only picking up buzzwords.
Murder…lover…Samantha…dead…airport…
“I don’t understand.”
“What don’t you fucking understand, you dimwit?!! Your lover murdered Samantha!!!”
“Honey, you should calm down…” my mother said, her voice so mellow, it almost didn’t make it through the loud, deep baritone of my father.
“Oh, that sweet, poor child. Murdered in cold blood. This is your fault, Oliver!”
My ears began to ring, my mind running abuzz with scenarios. One thing I knew for sure was that Gabriel wasn’t a murderer. I gasped as my mind went back to that day at the airport, where Gabriel had been convinced that Samantha was in danger. Had he gone back to check the place out? Had he been right?
“He didn’t do it,” I said firmly.
I didn’t need to see my father’s face to know what he thought of me in that instant, and honestly, I didn’t care. Someone had done what I did to Samantha. Guilt overcame me. I should have listened to Gabriel and perhaps let him check out the airport.
“Fuck…”
“Fix this!!” My father said and exited my apartment with such loving words lingering behind.
I stood and continued staring at the screen, wondering how this could have happened, and when Samantha’s father came up on the screen, I had my answer.