She’d been humming again.
Glancing around the room, embarrassed to be making a sound even though there was zero reason for her to be, Maya remembered she was alone.
For the last thirteen years, alone had been safe. Alone meant no one would hurt her. But for the last few days, since she’d been working on believing Thunder and his team meant her no harm, a shift had started to occur.
Now safe was being with Thunder.
His steady presence, whether he was talking away at her, or they were sitting in comfortable silence, was reassuring. It felt like he’d become her rock, and she wasn't quite sure how she felt about that.
It was a bad idea to get too attached. Maybe Maya believed that Thunder wouldn't hurt her and neither would anyone else in this place, but that didn't mean they were in this with her for the long haul. If she allowed herself to get too comfortable there, and then they pulled the rug out from underneath her, what was she supposed to do? One thing she did know for certain was that she wasn't ready to go home.
Maybe she never would be.
That part of her life felt way too detached from who she was now to ever face again. Or at least to face for a long time yet.
This attachment couldn’t be healthy, though, even if it made her feel safe. She hadn't known him for long enough to build a genuine connection, what she felt had to be based on some sort of hero worship. Thunder had saved her, so it made sense that she would get attached, but she still knew it wasn't healthy.
Although she supposed nothing about what she’d been doing there was healthy. Not speaking wasn't healthy, refusing to talk to her family wasn't healthy, and throwing herself into painting wasn't healthy. Well, maybe that was a form of therapy, but regardless, Maya knew she couldn’t go on like this forever.
Especially with her growing attachment to Thunder.
Either she had to make a more active decision to work on dealing with what had happened to her, or she had to accept that maybe there was an element of genuineness to her feelings for Thunder that had nothing to do with the fact that he saved her and was just because he seemed to be a genuinely good person.
Who would have thought she could ever consider someone inherently good again?
For years, she had been convinced there were no good people. That even the people she’d known as a teen, who she’d thought were normal people, must have really been hiding their evil side.
When her stomach grumbled, Maya smiled. She pushed away from the easel and stood, stretching her back as she did so. It was so nice to be hungry and know that she could just go down to the kitchen and find something to eat. There was no need to put up with the clawing ache of hunger because she couldn’t do anything about it.
Maybe she’d see if Thunder wanted to eat with her.
She wasn't sure where he was. He’d left kind of abruptly not that long ago, and she’d been too deep in the zone as she worked on her latest painting—a picture of the cliffs on the island where she’d tried to end her life—so she hadn't paid much attention to anything he’d said. He probably wouldn't mind if she went looking for him, he had to be around somewhere.
Wandering down the corridors, once she reached the ground floor, Maya caught the sounds of voices and headed in that direction. Not only did it feel good to be hungry and able to do something about it, but she was pretty sure she was just starting to put on a little bit of weight. Maybe it was her imagination, but she was sure her face looked a little less bony, and her ribs were sticking out a little less.
“Maya can't know.”
The words made her freeze.
Her name.
They’d said her name.
That meant they knew who she was.
It wasn't like it was a secret or anything, she wasn't some criminal who needed to keep her identity from them, but it meant they’d gone behind her back to ID her.
Had they taken samples of her DNA while they had her drugged?
Used her fingerprints?
There was every chance that after she was taken, her parents had submitted samples to the cops to use in case her bodywas discovered. She knew her family loved her and would have reported her missing, so she was sure she existed in several databases, although it had never done her any good, since she’d been found only by chance.
It probably wasn't a huge thing. In hindsight, Maya knew she should have assumed that they weren't just going to wait for her to give up her name, but it still felt like a major betrayal. They had her name. What else did they know about her? Did they know details of what had happened to her when she was abducted? Did they know the names of the people who had bought her, then sold her on? Had they already contacted her family? Were her family coming here, already on their way?
Panic drained the oxygen from the room, and her body began to tremble.
She wasn't ready to see her family.
