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“No.” I shook my head. “I’m not letting you play the what if game.”
“How do I turn that off?”
“You have to figure out a way not to go down that road,” I answered. “It will drive you crazy. Trust me.” He didn’t want to know all the different ways I thought things could have been different if he hadn’t moved to Paris.
His fingers grazed my waist as he rotated me in his arms. When my eyes blinked open, I was staring into his dark gaze. But the storm clouds were gone. They had been replaced by a different kind of intensity.
“It doesn’t matter to me if Kimble is out there or a hundred miles away. I’m here now. Nothing is going to happen to you again.”
“You can’t make that kind of promise.”
“I just did.”
“I’ve lived with what happened to me. I have measures in place. I’ve been handling it, Knight. I’m quite safe now.”
“But everyone knows your weakness.”
“What’s that?” I studied his eyes.
“It’s Kimble. He’s what holds up your security. Without him, the safeguards disappear and you’re vulnerable.”
I tried to wiggle away, but Knight’s hands clasped against my lower back. “It sounds like you’ve thought a lot about my security.”
“Only because I want to keep you safe. You can’t rely on him for that forever.”
“Can we talk about something else? Anything else?” I asked. Everything between us was shifting. I didn’t like it. I didn’t like the idea that Knight would think I was anything but fiercely independent and strong. It was hard to be this vulnerable with him.
“Do you want to tell me how you got out of the basement?” he prodded. I immediately moaned. He tipped my chin upward. “I need to know what happened.”
“And then you’ll let it go?” I made him promise.
He nodded. “And then I’ll let it go.”
“Fine. But I need a refill first.” Knight finally broke his hold on me. I took a full inhale of air now that my lungs had a way to expand and waited for him to top off the glass. He sat next to me on the edge of the bed.
He needed the full story to understand who I was now.
Four Years Ago
My neck hurt. I rubbed the pinched nerve behind my ear. The searing pain traveled past my shoulder to a point in my elbow. I winced and rose from the couch. I’d spent five nights on that thing, and it wasn’t getting any easier. Each day I woke up in more pain than the day before. My body didn’t want to acclimate to this room—it rejected it at every turn. There was no comfort. No sense of shelter. It was my prison. A bleak musty coffin.
I shuffled to the sink and turned on the hot water to splash my face. I waited for the door to open. It had been over a day since I had been given a new set of clothes. I brushed my teeth next.
Sometimes when my eyes opened, I wondered if it was 7 am or 2 pm. I still hadn’t figured out a way to measure time. I only counted it by the meals that were delivered and what types of foods were on the trays. I knew those might be in reverse order just to mess with my head. I couldn’t count on my kidnappers to dole out helpful clues. I couldn’t trust anything in my surroundings.
I started to doubt myself. I retraced the days leading up to my abduction.
I questioned if the memories were real. Was anything I remembered accurate? Was it a migraine that knocked me out, or did someone cause the migraine? What order do it all take place? Did my father know I was gone? He was too incapacitated to know who was near him. His days were as blended together as mine were. Had anyone else from the house noticed?
I opened my mouth and screamed at the top of my lungs toward the ceiling. It was usually followed by a quick stomp to shut me up. This time the scream was uninterrupted. I snapped my lips together and stared at the ceiling. Nothing. Not even a shuffle of feet.
I screamed again. I beat on the door and pressed my ear against the metal. It was silent on the other side. Was I alone?
My pulse began to race. Had I been abandoned down here? Left to die? My palms prickled. They were quickly coated in sweat. It hadn’t been this quiet since I’d been here. I’d spent hours trying to count how many men were upstairs. I’d try to match footsteps by the heaviness or the length of their gait. It mostly became a way to pass the time, an illusion I created that I’d be able to solve the mystery.
Without the stomping of boots and shoes, I felt more uneasy. As if it was foreboding instead of promising.
I washed my hands again and patted a towel on my face. My ears perked. Was that a set of footsteps? But they were slow. So deliberate. Nothing like what I usually heard. The cadence across the floor wasn’t messy and sloppy.
