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Caring she was hurt and comforting her wasn’t allowed, and I worried about what would happen if William found out. If anyone found out . . .
“You are home.” Gripping the girl’s hands, I pushed her a step away from me and nodded toward the kitchen when she looked up at me with her tear-streaked face. “Eat lunch, then choose a room. Do whatever you want, just don’t leave this floor. The shopper will be back tonight with your clothes.”
“Wait, where are you going?” Briar asked anxiously when I turned to leave.
I paused mid-step and looked over my shoulder. Narrowing my eyes at her, I cocked my head to the side and asked in a deceptively soft tone, “What makes you think you can question what I do? Eat.”
Chapter 17
Fight me
Briar
“Everything has been laundered, you can wear it immediately.”
I nodded slowly, unable to close my mouth as I stared at the newly filled walk-in closet, which was about the size of my starter room. “Why do I need so many clothes?”
The shopper laughed mockingly. “What a stupid thing to ask from a stupid girl. More clothes have been ordered for you. I will deliver them when they’re ready later this week. Are you the first?”
I tore my eyes from one side of the closet to look at her questioningly. She had a stern voice and words, but every now and then I caught her sending me kind looks. I didn’t understand her, but I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to since she refused to give me her name. Still . . . those looks had the crumpled paper in my hand burning hotter and hotter. “The first?”
“In this house.”
“Oh.” Heat filled my cheeks and I looked away. “Yes,” I whispered, as if admitting to a sin.
“Then this won’t be all that you get. Consider yourself lucky. In all the houses I shop for, the firsts are always treated the best. They don’t have to share rooms with the other women, and they receive the most gifts, clothes, everything . . .” she trailed off, then pointed at me and gave me a stern look. “You are lucky, little girl, don’t you forget it.”
My mouth opened, but no sound left for a few seconds. The other day the devil had said I was free in this life, and now this odd woman was telling me I was lucky? “How can you say that? I was two weeks away from my wedding when I was taken.”
She tsked. “Stupid girl. No, you were not.” She lifted her hands as if to gesture to more than just this closet as she spoke. “There is no before anymore. There is only this. Only him for you.”
“No, that’s not—that’s not true.” The paper in my hand felt like it could burn this house down and take the devil with it, and I knew I had to try.
I’d found a blank journal in my new room earlier, and knowing the shopper would be coming back tonight, had taken what I’d worried would be my only chance.
I stepped toward her and held my hand out between the edges of the sheet clutched tightly in front of my body. “Please, this is my fiancé’s name and number. Just, if nothing else, call him and tell him that I’m alive. Please,” I said through the tightening of my throat.
The shopper stared at me as if I’d just attempted to take her life, and for a moment I wondered if maybe I had. I wondered what would happen to someone like her, or the women who had dyed my hair that weekend, if they were caught helping any of the stolen women.
“Please,” I echoed, my voice nothing more than a breath. “Please tell him.”
She dipped her head in the slightest of nods. “I’ll tell him, girl.” After a moment’s hesitation, she snatched the paper from my hand then began walking out of the closet.
“Thank you for my clothes,” I murmured to her back.
Her response was a scoff followed by a quick, warm smile thrown over her shoulder.
Such a strange woman. But even as she walked away, something inside me ached at losing the only person who had spoken to me since I’d been taken that didn’t radiate evil.
My head dropped, and I rubbed at my chest as I began turning to look in the closet, but her voice stopped me.
“Girl,” she said in a hushed tone, and I looked up in surprise at seeing her in the doorway of the closet again. “It gets easier. You will get through this sad time, and you will be happy. I have never met a girl in all my years of doing this who wasn’t happy.”
I didn’t believe her, but she didn’t give me a chance to say anything else.
r /> Once she was gone, I looked back at the closet and blew out a deep breath. A whispered plea left my lips that my message would make it to Kyle, and that plea effortlessly turned into a song in a subconscious attempt at relaxing my mind and my heart and my body.
I wanted to go through every piece of clothing for the sake of being able to touch fabric that I could cover myself with, but I refused to do it. I didn’t want Lucas to think he could make me happy with an absurd amount of clothes when all I had wanted was something other than the robes.
