Page 84 of These Tears

Eight parts of me scream no. Two parts have already leaned in, but those belong in a straitjacket. Because I do need a hard reset of my life. A clean slate even if it meant finding it in a place like this.

‘Once your body understands nature is deciding whether or not you get those things, it won’t matter what you think,’ he says. ‘Won’t matter what you feel. Or what you think you want.’

Minutes pass. Or maybe seconds. Time is warping beneath the gravity of his gaze.

At some point, whatever has slept inside me turns. Writhes. Screams and moans. I don’t know what it is yet. But it feels alive.

‘So what now?’ I sneer humourlessly. ‘You keep me hostage until the snow melts?’

‘No,’ he says quietly as he keeps staring at me the way he did that first day I saw him.

A private story unfurls behind his eyes as they strip me of all thought and leave nothing but dread. ‘I keep you. Full stop.’

My fingers have gone numb. I unclench my fists in the hope of feeling them again. ‘Do you truly think I deserve this for my interference?’

He throws a glance over me and through the glass, searching the landscape for the answer. ‘Always thinking people need saving.’

The words get lost somewhere along the way, as though he’s not giving them to me, but confirming a truth for himself.

‘It’s unusual for October to have this much snow. It’s been falling all day,’ he says a little louder.

My fingers tighten until my nails click against the glass and remind me I’m still holding it.

I’ve been asleep all day?

He beckons with two fingers without waiting for me to say anything back. Then steps aside to gesture at something through the window. My eyes follow his large hand as I twist at the waist and notice a shadow in the snow beyond the frost-bitten glass.

‘The smokehouse is over there. If the path isn’t cleared at least three times a day, it’ll drift shut. We’ll be carrying meat wading thigh-deep until noon.’

Leaving the glass of water on the thick windowsill, I tilt forward, squinting through the white-out.

‘The smell of smoke and fat travels, so it’s a little further down,’ Elias says, almost lazily, as he polishes off the last bite of the apple. ‘And when something hungry comes sniffing, I don’t want it near my window.’

My head jerks towards him.

His shoulders have loosened; the crease between his brows is long gone. As if this snow-choked isolation is the closest thing to peace he’s ever known.

My heart kicks up again. The nausea that’s been prowling through me since I woke surges hard enough to fold me in half. The pain in my temples has reached a point where I feel as though my left eye might melt away.

‘The generator is scheduled to start at half past seven in the morning to preserve power.’

‘You make it sound so simple. So normal.’ I don’t even know if I’m speaking to him or to the version of myself that’s slipping. ‘I’m not staying here. With a psychopath!’

I lift my chin to meet his eyes, and the caustic composure on his face dies in the next beat.

The oxygen drains out of the room.

‘You can’t keep me like a pet,’ I whisper. ‘I’m leaving.’

The words come out too quiet to be a threat.

His face empties. Then, as if I’ve tapped on thin ice, it gives.

In a blink, his fingers clamp around my wrist like he’s picked up an object he’s no longer interested in preserving.

He drags me out of the room and down the hallway without a word. I fight his grip, pain searing up my forearm with every tug.

When we reach the front door, he unlocks it with a twist of the key that sounds more like the chamber of a gun locking a bullet into place.