They first caught my attention after my initial tour of the finished basement. I was looking for a way out of here; obviously, I would focus on the window. It opens, but only about enough for me to shove my hand through it. Beyond that, it gets stuck, and unless I want to risk smashing the glass and hoping I can climb through it without getting shredded to ribbons, banking on Connor forgetting to lock the basement door is my best bet.
But the flower… something about the flowers kept drawing me to them. I thought it was because they’re beautiful, and they are. Then, only now, it clicks. While the coloring of the two flowers is similar, it’s the shape that tells me I was wrong.
The plant outside has tall, delicate, purple bells drooping from the stems, growing stubbornly in the dirt trapped outside my window. They shouldn’t be there. Nothing soft should be able to take root in a place like that.
And yet there they are. Not lavender, but foxglove: a beauty of a flower that’s also pure poison.
I know why it finally hit me. One of the first books that I found in Connor’s basement was an old copy of Agatha Christie’sDeath on the Nile. I read the murder mystery, using it to getout of my own head—and my own predicament—for the hours it took to absorb the story.
Connor noticed because of course he did. Two days later, he came down to the basement, whistling jovially to himself while carrying a fuckingmassivebox. Turns out, he went online and ordered every single Agatha Christie book ever written. There were about eighty of them, and he stacked them in the corner of the basement while discussing what he planned on cooking for dinner for us that evening.
Whenever I think that Connor, deep down, is a normal guy, he does shit like that. I seemed to enjoy an old murder mystery? He buys every single one the woman every wrote—including one I finished last night calledThe Postern of Fate.
I picked it because it was her final book, and I was feeling contrary enough to read out of order. The entire plot revolved around digitalis—the compound in foxglove that is incredibly poisonous—and the cover on the secondhand book showed an illustration of the flower.
The same sort of flower that’s growing right outside the window…
I’m still staring when Connor comes to stand behind me. Not too close. He’s been doing that a lot lately. Learning how near he can get before my shoulders tense, then hovering just outside that invisible line as if being considerate makes him less of a fucking lunatic.
His gaze follows mine. Together, we both look at the flower. For a long moment, he still says nothing before he finally breaks the quiet by humming under his breath, then telling me we would be having steak for dinner.
You think that would’ve been the end of it.
Itisn’t.
The next morning, when I wake up and pull myself out of the sanctuary room, I walk into the other half of the basement tofind that there’s a single stem of foxglove sitting in a small glass vase in the center of the breakfast table.
Of course there is.
The purple bells stand out against the basic white plates on the table, each piled high with scrambled eggs, buttered toast, and orange segments. Peering at the flower, it seems like something a normal man might give a woman he’s courting. Connor, however, is not a normal man, and I am definitely not being courted.
Oh, no. I’m beingkept.
Connor watches my face as I come to a stop a few feet away from the table. The curious look in his eyes tells me that he’s trying to decipher what sort of reaction I’m having to his ‘gift’, and that only makes me want to grab the vase and fling it at him.
“Good morning, peanut,” he says, but not even another one of his ridiculous nicknames is enough to distract me from the poisonous flower at the table.
Why is it there? Is it a threat? A warning?
What game isConnorplaying now?
While I continue to stare at the vase, his gaze goes to the flower, then back to me. “I saw you admiring it and thought you’d like to see one up close. What do you think, dumpling? You like it?”
I point at the foxglove, then drag my finger across my throat just so we both know that it’s fucking poison.
He nods happily. “Yep.”
Yep?
I blink at him. Meanwhile, Connor takes a bite of toast, completely unbothered by the fact that he purposely brought a stem ofpoisondown here.
I point again, shaking my head.
He sets down his half-eaten piece of toast. Then, leaning forward and removing the flower from the vase, he twirls thestem between his fingers, his deep blue eyes flashing beneath the fluorescent lights installed down in the finished basement. “Yes. I know what foxglove is, Haven.”
Then why the hell would you bring it down here?
I don’t have to write the question. My expression says it all for me because his smile changes, softening at the edges in a way that makes me nervous.
