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“Sit,” I said as I pointed to the kitchen table. He immediately stiffened at the order, but he did what I told him. Part of me hated that he did because I knew what it meant.
He was scared of me.
Not that I could blame him considering what had just happened, but I’d tried not to hurt him despite what he’d done.
I sat down across the kitchen table from him. He refused to make eye contact with me so I took a moment just to study him. He was still a mess since most of the bruises were an angry purple-blue color, but where his skin wasn’t bruised, he looked less pale than he had that first day. And while his movements were slow, he didn’t seem to be struggling with any nausea or dizziness like he had the first couple of days.
“So your big plan is to run again?” I asked. “Because that’s been working so well for you up until now,” I added.
No response. No stiffening of his body, no uptick in his breathing, no flash of anger in his eyes. It was like all his effort was centered on not reacting in any kind of way. I couldn’t help but wonder if that was how he’d learned to cope. Maybe staying silent and being invisible had saved him in the past.
But I doubted it. It hadn’t ever worked for my mother.
Even the brief thought had a renewed level of rage going through me. But this time it wasn’t directed at the man across from me.
When he remained stubbornly silent I sighed and said, “Go back to bed, Ethan. Starting tomorrow, you’re Ronan Grisham’s problem. See if you can convince him you don’t need help.”
I started to get up so I could go back to the couch.
“You don’t know a thing about me,” Ethan suddenly spit out. I glanced over my shoulder at him and was pleased to finally see some fire in his eyes. I slowly lowered myself back into the chair.
“What I know is that you’re scared shitless and I suspect you have every reason to be. I think you’re too afraid to ask for help because getting it means you’re also getting something I think scares you almost as badly as the motherfucker who stole it from you in the first place.” I didn’t expect him to respond so I answered his unspoken question. “Hope,” I said softly.
Ethan let out a harsh little laugh. “Hope,” he murmured. “Hope is the last thing I want,” he said as his gaze reconnected with mine. “Eric is going to kill me. Not maybe. Not probably. Not if. He is going to kill me. Having hope means making mistakes…it means trusting people who will either end up hastening your death or who will pay the price themselves. Do you and Dr. Grisham really want to be either one of those people?” he asked angrily.
Eric.
Finally, a name to go with the faceless fucker.
“And what about Lucy?” I asked. “Which of those people is she?”
Just like that day in the front yard when he’d put his finger over the trigger of the gun I’d held to his head, Lucy proved to be the chink in his armor because he dropped his eyes. “You said he didn’t know Lucy knows. Is he Eric?”
There was nothing at first. No comment, no shift in expression. But just before I was about to move on to my next question, Ethan gave me the briefest of nods.
“Who is he?” I asked.
Ethan shook his head. “No, it’s my turn,” he said. “I get to ask a question.”
I wasn’t really interested in playing a tit for tat game, but if it got him to give me a little more information, I could work with that. I expected his first question to relate to what mine and Ronan’s plans for him were, so I wasn’t at all prepared for him to say, “What made you think Lucy and I are any kind of threat to you?”
Chapter Six
Ethan
I couldn’t help but think that if Cain held his jaw any tighter, it would end up snapping clear in two, but I kept that thought to myself as I watched the traffic fly by us on the Interstate. He’d had the same expression after I’d asked him my question the night before. He’d reminded me that Lucy had held a gun on him that first day, but when I’d pointed out that even armed, she’d been no match for him and I hadn’t been able to even land one decent blow on his body as he’d subdued me, he’d fallen silent. Several long minutes had passed before he’d softly ordered me to go back to bed. As eager as I’d been to escape him only moments before, I’d actually hesitated and I’d forced myself to go to Lucy’s room to check on her before going back to my own to try and sleep.
