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Drip. Drip. Drip.
I shook my head, trying to rid myself of the sound. But it was still there, and its presence paired with the endless darkness and inability to escape drop-kicked me back into the past.
Back into a place I promised myself I would never have to go again.
6
Arsen
The sudden darkness taught me something.
My sight of the man in front of me went beyond my eyes. The second those lights went out, Matthew began spiraling.
I didn’t understand. I had no idea why. But the why wasn’t important. His anxiety made me antsy, filled me with an overpowering and urgent need to calm him down.
The sound of his jeans brushing together alerted me of movement, and I tracked it, willing my eyes to adjust faster to the inky dark. His white T-shirt made it easier to follow him, but even if it didn’t, I would have known his position because of the way he tested the wall of metal enclosing us. It rattled and clanked almost like an old chain-link fence but was new enough that it didn’t give way.
Prism let out a helpless sound and fought against the metal one last time before smacking his hand into it so hard the entire frame vibrated.
“Hey,” I said, moving toward the bright spot his T-shirt made. I realized then that I liked him in white. Because of it, I’d been able to find him more than once tonight. “You’re going to hurt yourself,” I scolded.
He spun, back pressed against the cage, and slid down toward the floor. Drawing his knees up, he pressed his forehead against them. And it was here in the dark that I saw him—a side no one else got to see.
Instead of helping conceal all the things he kept hidden away, the dark seemed to expose his secrets—parts of Prism I never would have guessed existed.
His shuddering breath was slightly muffled against his legs as I crouched beside him on the floor. “What’s the worst thing right now?” I asked, wanting to touch him but afraid to make things worse.
He settled a moment as though the question caught him off guard. Or maybe he’d forgotten he wasn’t alone. His face lifted from hiding. “What?”
“Tell me the thing upsetting you the most right now,” I repeated.
He started to rock. Something about that vulnerable, self-soothing motion broke my heart.
“I don’t want to be in this closet,” he answered. “I hate closets.”
It didn’t matter that we weren’t actually in a closet. The small, dark box did feel much like the place I’d forced him into back at the party. It set him off then, and it was setting him off now. My mind scrambled to come up with a way to eliminate his biggest stressor. There was no getting out of here, not until morning. But it was clear this was a place he couldn’t stay.
Low on options, I rose to my feet, reaching down to pull him up. He stiffened, trying to curl in on himself, but I muscled him up, using the fact he was weak and shaking to my advantage.
“What are you doing?”
I replied by wrapping my arms around him and pushing his face into my neck. His nose was frigid, and I gritted my teeth against the startling cold. “You’re fucking freezing,” I complained.
He started to pull away, and I tsked in disproval, instead wrapping more of myself around him. “No more closet, princess. Now you’re in my arms.”
His breath puffed out against my neck, lifting the hair at the base of my skull. Everything about this man affected me, burrowed deep beneath my skin.
He surrendered, and I considered it a win when he didn’t start rocking to self-soothe.
You don’t need to soothe yourself anymore. You have me now.
I laid my forearm between his shoulder blades and anchored my hand around the back of his neck, gripping tight enough to satisfy the sudden urge in me to guard and defend.
The territorial action seemed to mollify him, and he hummed, surrendering more of his weight.
“Come on,” I said quietly, shuffling us toward the rudimentary cot on the side of the room.
Tense all over again, Matthew perched on the side of the mattress, locking his body and refusing to lie down.
