Page 79 of Hidden

I should have crossed to the window, flicked the light twice, and let that be the end of it. That was what we did. What we had always done. A silent acknowledgement. A breath across a canyon. Proof of life and nothing more.

It should have been enough.

Tonight, it wasn’t.

I didn’t know if it was the anger or the pain or the humiliation still crawling beneath my skin, but when I saw the faint outline beyond the glass—broad shoulders, stillness, the suggestion of a beard and a body I knew almost as well as my own—something in me did not recoil.

Vienna.

Waiting, like always.

Watching, like always.

Only tonight, as I looked at him, I didn’t feel the usual rush of panic and dread and aching tenderness that came with seeing him there. I felt something darker. Something uglier.

A reckless, vicious sort of curiosity.

You want to watch? Fine. Watch.

He must have sensed the shift in me immediately, because even from across the room I saw the slight change in his posture. The way he straightened just a little, as though every part of him had gone on alert. Usually, when I saw him at the window, I turned away first. I kept my distance. I flicked the light. I drew the line.

I tried to shield him from the reality of my world. My hair was always brushed, my clothes strategically hiding bruises, my makeup hiding a number of different sins. But tonight, I didn’t bother.

Tonight, I didn’t move to protect either of us.

I held his gaze.

Slowly, deliberately, I lifted my hand and reached for the lamp beside the bed, switching it off, then back on again.

Once.

Twice.

The signal. Our signal.

His shoulders loosened the tiniest fraction, only to tense immediately afterwards.

The signal meant I was safe. But I wasn’t, and I hadn’t been for a long time. He knew it now. I knew he knew. Something had shifted between us the last time he had stood outside my balcony. He had seen too much. I had let him see too much. As selfish as it was, I wanted him to see. I wanted him to rescue me. I was just so fucking tired.

I should have stepped away after that.

Instead, I gave him a smile.

It wasn’t a nice smile. It wasn’t soft, or loving, or anything that belonged to the girl I had once been. It was small and crooked and mean around the edges, born of bitterness.

Even though I was acting recklessly, for the first time all day, I felt something dangerously close to control.

I turned away from the window and crossed to the vanity, feeling his gaze follow me the whole way like a physical touch.

I lowered myself onto the stool in front of the mirror and met his eyes in the reflection.

And then, I began putting the mask in place. Began letting him see the process I went through to be the Gabriella he was used to seeing.

Without ever once breaking eye contact, I brushed out my hair, letting him see how knotted and matted it was.

I allowed him to see the amount that came from my scalp, pulled from the roots by cruel hands.

Then I let him see me apply my makeup, covering up the bruises on my shoulders, the fingerprints on my neck. With a cotton pad dipped in water, I let him watch as I removed the blood from my fingers, erasing all evidence of tonight.