It’s just the two of them now, for better or worse.
She takes a deep breath, slowly entering the room again to find Wade still on the bed but with the blanket tossed to the ground. On the bed. That’s progress, she thinks, boostedby something so tiny that it shouldn’t be counted as forward movement.
“Everyone’s gone.” She leans against the far wall, keeping her tone even. “No one else is ever going to touch you again. I swear it.”
He’s still dazed by the ordeal of getting here, but his pupils finally seem normal.
“We’re going to live here together, you and me. I know it’s not much to look at, but it’s safe and relatively clean.” She bites her lip, hesitating a moment. “So here’s the thing, I don’t know what I’m doing. Not even a little bit. So I’m just gonna pretend everything’s fine until it is again, okay?”
Silence.
“Okay. First things first, lunch.”
He doesn’t move. She doesn’t expect he will while she heads into the dining room to rifle through the box, pulling out a few things that’ll last if he refuses.
An unexpected sight outside the window catches her attention and brings a slow smile as she devises an impromptu plan.
Five minutes later she’s back with their food, placing his on the side table along with the little flower plucked from its bush and nestled in a cup.
“They grow here out back,” she says, gently. “Thought it might spruce the place up a bit. Do you remember that time you gave me a flower when we were young?”
She remembers that moment like it was yesterday, though all she’s done is replay every second they shared together, so of course it’s fresh. The foster system sent him to a different house for months when they were fifteen, citing overcrowding, and leaving her to fend for herself among the wolves. They had always been passed around like cattle. Soon enough, hewas walking through the door again with a smug grin on his handsome face.
“Missed you too much to stay away,” he grinned, tucking a little flower behind her ear that he pilfered from the garden out front.
The man who tried so hard to make her smile, even when everything seemed so bleak, is still in there somewhere. She’ll try until her last breath to find him again.
There’s a small shelf with a stack of books on the wall she’s already read cover to cover, but she plucks one loose anyway and settles into an overstuffed chair. Takes her food with her and tries to pretend that everything’s fine. Normal. That they’re here on a regular stormy day, enjoying a peaceful afternoon together.
“It’s a romance novel,” she says with a smirk. “Maybe tomorrow I’ll read it out loud. Or one of the others.”
There are mysteries and adventures, and even random biographies he might enjoy. If she has to read every single one to him, then she will. Not today, though. Today, they only need to exist here together and adjust to this new place.
Later, after she’s made it through three chapters and leaves for another slice of bread, Wade’s water glass sits half empty when she returns. This small step in the right direction offers proof she made the right choice in coming here. One foot in front of the other, one moment at a time, they can do this. She’s not going anywhere.
Chapter 4
Hope is dangerous.
He spent the first year of captivity with unyielding hope that he’d escape or be rescued. Kara wouldn’t leave him here. He’d see her again and spend the rest of his life making up for all those missed chances where he could have told her how he felt. He’d shove this whole miserable nightmare into that same box that holds the rest of his traumas and be done with it.
Wade hoped every day and every night. Each noise outside his cell door could have been her. Every hallucination that came to him offering comfort could have been, too. But hope is dangerous because there’s only so much of it he can muster before the crushing reality of defeat sends him even lower than he thought he could go.
It wasn’t until the third year that he started hallucinating. Of course, he didn’t know that’s what he was doing at first. Thought his manifestations were really her until they never left. She simply took up residence with him in whatever dank pit they shoved him into, and that’s how he knew he was losing it. It was then that he truly began to crumble, after thinking himself on the verge of salvation so often, only to have it snatched away.
If he doesn’t hope, then he can keep going. Keep waking up every day, inhaling and exhaling. Keep enjoying his visits from the Kara in his head. He’s not crazy if he knows it’s a delusion.
Except this new Kara is ruining all he thought he knew and giving him a fresh slice of hope on a silver platter.
She keeps presenting him with a new plate of food, like he’s a picky cat that won’t touch his dish without an extra treat. Looks at him like her whole day depends on him eating it and sighs in defeat when he doesn’t.
The same sparse amount of delicate freckles as the real Kara dot her skin in all the right places and form those glorious constellations he spent his time counting late at night. But then again, his ghosts are accurate replications, too. He’s observant to a fault. Has been cataloging all the features of his favorite subject in painful detail since he met her all those years ago.
She sits in a chair in the corner, reading from a little book like they’re relaxing here on any normal day. That isn’t something that’s happened before. His captors don’t spend casual time with him, and especially not if he’s uncuffed. Sometimes, her mouth moves and the rumble of her voice hits his damaged eardrums from across the room, giving himhopethat his hearing is coming back.
It’s been…two days, maybe three, since he felt the overwhelming vibration of heavy bass that they stream into his cell. Where do they find the batteries for that, he’s often wondered. Do they send out supply runs just for torture necessities? Maybe. Probably. He wished for the upbeat chorus of those cheery songs they started out with once the unrelenting pounding started shaking his skull instead.
Bass with no music is a terrible thing. Even with music he never liked it, but without it scrambles his brain and thunks deep in his chest.
