She was strong enough to catch herself, and if she needed him, he’d be there.
But she didn't need him. She steadied herself, then padded across the floor toward him, stopping when she was at his side.
“Proud of you, babydoll,” he murmured, allowing himself a tiny bit of contact as he brushed his knuckles across her cheek and smoothed a lock of hair behind her ear.
When she didn't flinch away from the contact, but held steady, he felt like he’d just won a major point in his favor.
As he led her through the house, they didn't speak, but it was a comfortable silence, and he felt as if the woman was cataloging everything she saw. No doubt she was storing the information away in case she needed it, and while he hated that she was struggling to accept that she was safe, he was proud of her all over again for her attempts to protect herself in whatever ways she could.
Before he’d gone to her room, Thunder had asked everyone else to be quiet and make themselves scarce. He wanted to give her this time to become familiar with the house and accept that she had free rein of it.
“Cassandra made fresh bread this morning,” he said as they entered the kitchen. “How about I cut some slices while you grab cheese and butter from the fridge?”
His goal here was to give her as much independence as he could. Bit by bit, she’d start to become used to making decisions again, taking control of her own needs and tending to them. It was going to be a slow process, but he hoped the more she did things for herself, the more she’d start to override her brain’s patterns formed in the years of her captivity.
Leaving her be, he began to cut slices of bread, heated a frying pan on the stove, and got ready to cook the toasted cheesesandwiches. He then turned the heat back on for the soup so it was ready. It took her a couple of minutes before she crept across the room toward the fridge, moving as though she were expecting to be punished at any second.
But scared or not, she did it.
She retrieved the cheese and butter and brought them over to him.
“Thanks,” he said simply. “Choose yourself something to drink. I’ll have an apple juice. The glasses are in the cupboard by the fridge.”
Again, there was hesitation, but then she did what he asked, retrieving two glasses, pouring one with apple juice, then eyeing the other options in the fridge before filling the second glass with milk.
Milk as a choice suggested she might have been young when she was taken, and his heart broke for her. How many years had it been since she was free?
“We can make cookies if you want after lunch,” he suggested as he put the sandwiches together and started frying them. “And you're welcome to cook anything you want, any time you want. Cookies at midnight are totally fine. Hell, roast beef at midnight is totally fine. If we don’t have something that you want, just put it on the shopping list on the fridge door.”
They’d never had a shopping list before, they just took turns doing the grocery run. However, he wanted a way to include the woman without forcing her to speak to make her needs known, and this had seemed like a good idea. To make her feel like this was normal for them, they’d all popped stuff on the list, and he saw her scan it, reading the items on there, although she didn't add anything of her own.
“Chocolate chip cookies are my favorite, and I hear you have a sweet tooth, but we can make something else if you’d prefer,” he offered as he flipped their sandwiches. “Bowls and platesare in the cupboard below the glasses. Can you grab us some, please?”
With something concrete to do, she seemed a little more sure of herself, and collected two bowls and two plates, bringing them over to him.
Was it his imagination, or did she brush against his side on purpose?
Probably his imagination.
She was learning to trust, and it seemed he was proving to her that he was someone worthy of that gift, but he was going to have to work at not getting his hopes too high. There was every chance that the damage done to her ran too deep and she would never be able to utter another word, or be able to live a normal life.
But he wasn't giving up hope.
If she was still standing, trying so hard to believe that nothing bad was going to happen to her, the very least he could give her was unwavering support.
Which was exactly what he intended to do. Even if he wound up getting hurt when he allowed his feelings for her to develop into something that would make it hard to let her go.
February 26th
2:55 P.M.
The panic came out of nowhere.
Things had actually been going okay. Not well, Maya couldn’t say she was comfortable there or that she trusted any one of these people. But bit by bit, they were showing her that they weren't going to hurt her. So far, no one had done anything atall to put her on edge. In fact, it was more like the opposite. It seemed like they were all going out of their way to be as non-threatening as possible.
Which had almost been amusing, given the size of the six men who lived there.
They were all so tall, well over six feet, and pure muscle. They could crush her like a bug if they wanted to, and yet they spoke in soft voices, moved slowly, and broadcast their intentions before doing anything. They tried to make themselves smaller, kept conversation light, kept their partners between them and her most of the time, and tried to include her without making her feel obligated to participate.
