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“Breathe, kitten. You’re fluffing yourself all up again. Take a deep breath and listen to my voice.”
I force air into my starving lungs and let it out as Josiah’s thumb presses harder, massaging deeper circles into my flesh.
“I’m not going to open the door right now, but I need you to keep breathing. Can you do that?”
My head bobs as I take a gasping breath at his reminder, but I doubt he can see that I’m nodding.
“You’re doing great, Phoebe. Deep breaths. There arenoants inside this room. There isnosnake. But it is dark. Is that the scary part?”
“Why are you doing this to me?” I beg, my voice shaking as I battle with my irrational fears.
“We’ve done a lot of work on getting your body ready to fight back, but none of that matters if you panic when it’s time to use the lessons you’ve been learning. This seems like the perfect opportunity to start working on your fear. Are you afraid of the dark, Phoebe?”
I shift on my feet and feel a cold chill run down my spine. I don’t want to answer him. It’s embarrassing to be afraid of the dark as an adult. I’m ashamed that I’ve never been able to sleep in complete darkness without a night light. “Yes,” I admit, forcing myself to own up to it.
“What else are you afraid of? Who’s after you?”
The silence I let grow heavy between us weighs on me, but I can’t answer that question. Not even if he’s going to try to torture it out of me. The pattern he’s drawing on my hand softens, merely brushing over my skin, and I have to focus on the touch to feel it.
“Do you want to know what I would do if you told me who it is? Do you want me to describe what I would do to him?”
My eyes open and I search in the darkness for his face, but I can’t see him. I can imagine the serious look on his face- the one he gives me every time he tells me to run and I say I won’t do it. “You’ve thought about it?”
Josiah chuckles and he drops his hand from my wrist to my fingers, changing the direction of the circle he’s drawing. “Every day since I met you.”
Shocked, my fingers curl against his palm. I want to ask why, but I’m not sure I’m ready for him to tell me something else I won’t understand. Any time I ask a question like that he says things that don’t make sense, like ‘you’re my guest’. I don’t get it. “What would you do?”
“When you finally quit hiding and tell me who it is, I’ll hunt him down. All those computer screens are great for tracking people, and I’m really good at finding what I want. I’ll find out who he is, and where he is, and I'll go get him. I’ll bring him back here and tie him up in the garage, where I’ll torture him in every way I can think of until he takes his last breath.”
My stomach clenches painfully, but not because of what he’s describing. The idea of Tony being that close to me is terrifying. He could break free and come after me, and he’d be close enough to get me. “You can’t do that.”
“I can, and I will. As soon as you believe you can trust me enough that you tell me. So now it’s your turn to answer a question for me, kitten. It’s not a tough one. Did you forget about your fear of the dark?”
Awareness creeps back in around the edges as I realize what he’s done. I did forget. I forgot that it was dark and that it was supposed to be scary. I lost track of all the little ants and snakes and terrifying things that I was worried about.
“I thought so.” He releases my hand and fear floods back in, but then his hand cups my cheek and his lips press against my forehead. Breaking away, he unlocks the door and motions for me to move through it. “Get ready for bed. You’ve conquered a fear.”
With burning cheeks and warmth blooming in my chest, I rush through the door and up the stairs to shower.
I conquered a fear.
Josiah is proud of me.
I can do this.
Chapter Seventeen
Skids
Things are changing. Phoebe feels safe with me. I have proof of that now. My pride swells at the memory of her stunned silence when she realized that her fear had completely disappeared while we spoke. She’s getting closer to being ready to tell me about her past, and then I can solve the problems.
At the same time, killing her enemy doesn’t feel much like a solution. If I remove the thing outside that scares her, she’ll go. It makes my skin ache whenever I think of her being out there and away from me. She’ll be in danger. There are a million risks on the outside. She could get hit by a car or shot. Just last year there was an attempted robbery at BIBO!
Nonono. She can’t go. I’ll find a way to make her stay. I’ll convince her. I don’t want her to be afraid, so I’ll still kill the prick once she tells mewhoneeds to die. But she can’t leave.
Right on time, her whimpers start up. I started to notice the pattern after her first week staying here. Every night just after one thirty in the morning, the nightmares start. I try to stay as quiet as possible when I sneak down the stairs and crouch beside her. She’s still sleeping on the couch. I offered to buy her a bed, but she begged me not to do that.
Phoebe worries she’s bothering me every time I do something for her. She was upset when I had Mac and Prospect bring us groceries because she thinks she’s overburdening everyone in the club too, not just me. But she wouldn’t have handled being out in public well, and there was no way in hell I was going to leave her behind, all alone here while I went to the store.
