Amani ate. He made himself a plate of the remaining eggs, worse than the ones he'd given Grainger, somehow, and choked them down standing at the counter because sitting across fromGrainger at the breakfast bar, sharing a meal like two people who'd chosen each other, was more than he could perform at that moment. His training had limits. That was one of them.
After lunch, Grainger wanted to be read to.
He led Amani to a sitting room that might have been beautiful under other circumstances: high bookshelves lining every wall, a stone fireplace, two leather armchairs positioned for conversation. The books were old, well-loved, their spines cracked in the way that meant they'd been opened hundreds of times. Amani could see the system. The shelves were organized not by author or title but by something personal, when they'd been read, maybe, or who had read them aloud. Some had small pieces of paper tucked between pages. Bookmarks left by Edward, Amani guessed. A dead man's fingerprints in a library that hadn't been reorganized in eleven years.
Grainger selected a book and pressed it into Amani's hands. A novel, something old, about countryside estates and long conversations in drawing rooms. "Edward was reading this to me when he passed. We never finished it. Start from the bookmark, please."
Amani looked at the bookmark. A dried flower, pressed flat between the pages, its color long gone. Edward had placed it there. Years ago, Edward's fingers had slid this flower between these pages, and now Amani's fingers were there instead, and Grainger was settling into the armchair across from him with a blanket over his knees and the expression of a man about to be read a bedtime story by someone he loved.
Amani read.
He read for three hours. His voice, which had always been one of his best tools, warm and carrying and capable of filling a room or dropping to a whisper that made people lean in, went hoarse after the first hour. The collar didn't help. Every time he swallowed, the silver pressed against the raw skin of his throat,and after two hours his voice had a rasp to it that had nothing to do with the reading and everything to do with the band of metal slowly eating into him. Grainger brought him water and patted his knee. "Just a few more pages, little cub. You have such a lovely voice. Edward would have liked you."
Edward would have liked you. The words lodged under Amani's ribs like splinters. He was being measured against a dead man. Every time he cooked or read or sat in a room, Grainger was comparing him to someone who wasn't there anymore, and the comparison was the entire architecture of his prison. Amani wasn't a person to Grainger. He was a replacement. A second copy of a life that had ended, purchased and installed and expected to perform the same functions as the original.
By the time Grainger finally closed his eyes and said "that's enough for today," Amani's throat was raw and his voice was a rasp. He set the book down with the dried flower carefully back in place. He couldn't bring himself to damage a book. Sitting in the armchair, he stared at the cold fireplace. The silence settled around him like dust.
The house was so quiet. That was the thing about the desert that Amani hadn't understood until he was trapped in the middle of it. There was no ambient noise. No traffic. No distant music. No hum of a city being alive. Just wind and the occasional sound of the horses and the ticking of an old clock somewhere in the house, counting seconds that Amani felt in his teeth.
He used the reading time to study the room. Three windows, all with latches that looked functional. The front of the house faced east, based on where the sun had been when they arrived. The road the van had come in on approached from the south. He'd noted that when the sharks drove away. If he could get to that road and follow it, eventually he'd reach a highway. Eventually he'd reach something.
The problem was distance. The desert around the house was flat and open. Anyone running would be visible for miles. And his feet were bare, his shoes were still at KK, in his locker, and Grainger hadn't offered him any. Whether that was an oversight or a strategy, Amani couldn't tell. But running barefoot across the Mojave desert was a different proposition than running barefoot across four blocks of warm concrete.
He needed shoes. Or he needed to be fast enough that it didn't matter.
Dinner was worse than lunch.
Grainger wanted Amani to make something real, not eggs, not cereal, but a meal. He'd laid out chicken and vegetables and rice and a cookbook opened to a page with a recipe that involved steps Amani didn't understand and terminology he'd never learned. Dice. Julienne. Deglaze. He might as well have been reading a foreign language.
He started with the chicken because it seemed like the most important part. The pan was hot. The oil was in the pan. He was fairly certain those two things were supposed to go together, though the order might have been wrong. He laid the chicken in the oil and it spat at him and he jerked back, and that was when Grainger came up behind him.
Amani didn't hear him move. One moment he was alone at the stove, fighting the chicken and the oil and his own incompetence, and the next Grainger's hands were on his waist. Lightly. The way a lover stands behind you in a kitchen, chin near your shoulder, body close enough that you can feel their warmth through your clothes.
Every muscle in Amani's body locked.
Grainger's hands slid from his waist to his stomach. Not groping. Not sexual. Possessive. The hands lay flat against the linen shirt, fingers spread, as if Grainger were feeling for aheartbeat through the fabric. Amani's heart was hammering so hard he was certain the old man could feel it.
"You're so beautiful," Grainger murmured. His breath was warm on the back of Amani's neck, just above the collar.
It took everything Amani had, every second of submission training, every hour spent staying calm when a scene pushed past comfort, every technique his mother had drilled into him about controlling his body when his mind was screaming, to stand still and not bolt.
"I'm so glad you decided to be mine."
Decided. As if there had been a decision. As if Amani had chosen this.
Grainger's thumbs moved in slow circles against his stomach. "You'll love our life together. I know it doesn't feel that way now, but you will. Once you settle in, once you see how peaceful it is out here, you'll understand. The city isn't good for someone like you. All that noise, all those people. That club." The word came out soft and pitying, as if KK were something to be ashamed of. "All that exposure. Men looking at you, touching you, using you. That's not a life, little cub. That's a performance. I saved you from that."
I saved you from that.
The words landed like a blow and Amani's vision went white at the edges. His hands were shaking on the spatula.
The chicken was smoking.
Grainger was pressed against his back, rewriting his entire life as something Amani needed to be rescued from.
Amani couldn't breathe because the hands on his stomach were gentle. The voice in his ear was kind. The lie was so enormous and so sincere, for one terrible second he almost couldn't find the truth underneath it.
"You'll be such a wonderful mate," Grainger whispered. "Now that I have you away from all of that. We'll read togetherand cook together and watch the sunsets and the horses, and you won't have to perform for anyone ever again. Isn't that better? Isn't that what you've always wanted?"
