Page 133 of Locked in Wonderland

I’d told myself it was simply easier, that things had become so muddled between Warren and Victor that I couldn’t always tell where one persona ended and the other began. It was a pathetic excuse when most of the differences between them came down to hairstyle, clothes, and mannerisms. None of that changed the color of his eyes or his build.

I stuck to Warren’s name, though, preferring that over having to say Nico, even if doing so left a faint burn of mortification.

The cut on my face and the black eye had proved harder to explain away. Understandably, people put two and two together and came up with domestic abuse.

Instead, I claimed I’d gotten into a fight. What was one more wildly out-of-character lie on top of everything else? No one challenged me on it or outright called me a liar.

I’d moved in with my friend Hannah only a few days after my return, putting my furniture into storage. Sleeping alone in a house where Kellan Hart might somehow find me had proved impossible. Even the tiniest creak had turned into evidence of him coming for me.

Being unemployed provided the perfect excuse. Hannah didn’t mind. Having recently split up with her boyfriend, she welcomed both the company and the extra money toward groceries.

The hardest lie of all was explaining why my all-consuming relationship, the one that I’d apparently poured my entire being into, to the exclusion of my friends and family, had come to such an abrupt end.

“He left,” I kept saying. “He decided it was best for both of us.” The problem was that it sat too close to the truth. Every time I said it, it cut like a razor blade.

The nights weren’t much easier. I’d expected nightmares about Wonderland, and the first few nights certainly obliged on that score. But then they gave way to dreams about Nico. It was bad enough that he consumed most of my waking thoughts, without taking center stage when I closed my eyes. Some were intensely sexual, leaving me hard and aching when I woke. Others explored the rare moments of tenderness he’d shown me aboard the boat. The worst ones simply left me sad or angry.

I assumed they were about him walking away. I couldn’t always remember.

The sound of Hannah letting herself in after her shift at the hospital broke me from my thoughts. She kicked off her shoes on the way in and flopped onto the sofa, forcing me to snatch my feet out of the way before she landed on them. I could hardly complain. It was her sofa.

“Did you get any job hunting done?” she asked.

“Yes,” I lied. “I circled a few things in the newspaper.”

Thankfully, she didn’t ask what. Instead, she leaned forward to inspect the cover of the book resting on my lap. “Wow. Since when have you been into psychology?”

“It’s not really psychology. It’s―”

“Stockholm Syndrome,” she read aloud. “It’s in the title. I can read, you know.”

“I know.”

She looked at me expectantly.

“It’s just... an interesting subject.”

The way I’d said it didn’t even convince me.

She leaned back against the cushions and closed her eyes. “And what made you read it?”

I looked down at the cover. “Something someone said.”

Six weeks after Wonderland

A few things had changed over the past month. I’d stopped constantly looking over my shoulder, deciding that if anyone intended to make a move on me, they’d have done it by now.

I’d found a job as a warehouse picker. It wasn’t exactly my dream career, but it paid the bills while I figured out what I actually wanted to do with my life. Whether that meant going back to environmental health or trying something completely different, I still hadn’t decided.

The physical work had its benefits. By the end of each shift, I was exhausted enough to sleep, and canceling my gym membership had saved some money.

Hannah had asked if I wanted to move in permanently, and I’d said yes.

We got on well enough, and with me mostly working nights, we rarely got under each other’s feet. I’d also reached a conclusion. I’d read books, watched documentaries, and spent hours researching Stockholm syndrome, and none of it fit what had happened between Nico and me.

Stockholm syndrome was a psychological response in which a victim developed an emotional attachment to the person abusing or holding them captive. That had never been us. Our relationship might have begun in a morally gray place, but Nico had never been my captor.

He’d asked me to stay in his apartment instead of locking me inside it. When he could have left the shock collar around my neck and controlled every movement I made, he hadn’t. He’d taken it off instead.