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“Maybe.”
Carter stands up.
“Now what?” I ask.
“I’ll start with the parking garage video. And if you get any information that might help me, you’ll give it to me immediately.” Distrust still simmers in his voice. “And I probably won’t do the same for you unless I need to ask you questions. It’s not a two-way street. I don’t know enough about you, and I don’t like you. I’m doing this for her, not you. Give me a number to reach you at.”
I jot down a number and hand it to him, and dismiss him from my mind as he leaves. My only thought, my only focus, is Tamara.
CHAPTERFOUR
TAMARA
I lie awake all night. Strapped down hand and foot to the bed, I yearn for sleep that never comes. My piercings throb and chafe. Heather is asleep. I can tell by the sound of her heavy, even breaths, and I don’t try to wake her up or talk to her. After what Micah did to her yesterday, she just curled up and pulled her blanket over her head. She’s withdrawn into her own little world of misery.
I’m guilt-racked that she’s here too, another victim of Micah’s madness, but I remind myself that if I’m going to have any chance of helping her, I’ve got to look after myself first.
What is the morning going to bring?
Getting pierced was painful, and getting kissed and fondled by him was revolting, but I know that the worst is yet to come. I’m sure he’s starting slowly and building his way up. Every day will be worse and worse until…
No. I can’t think about it.
Instead, I think about Joshua.
I tried to escape him—violently—the second I had the opportunity to. And I don’t regret that.
But when I saw his twin brother and thought he’d killed Joshua, for that split second, I was sick with grief. It makes no sense, but it was undeniable. I’ve developed strong feelings for Joshua. I don’t know if I’d call it love or obsession or Stockholm syndrome, but the thought of a world without Joshua fills me with panic and sorrow.
It took that moment of devastation to make me wonder if it would actually be possible to forge some kind of relationship with Joshua…if I survive Micah.
If I were free…would I stay with Joshua?
I know it’s insane for me even to think about wanting to be with him.
Joshua imprisoned me. He tortured me. He had every intention of keeping me locked up in his house for the rest of my life or, at the absolute most, letting me take walks with him outside in the woods. My heart ached every day with the knowledge that I’d never have friends, never have a career, never get to make another person smile, never see anything outside his house again. He would have trapped me in amber, suspending me in time.
He snuffed out my dream of going to college and becoming a lawyer. That was all I wanted from the day I started high school. I wanted to save little girls like me from the hell of child abuse and neglect. I was a poor girl from a grubby little city in Nebraska, with no connections and no prospects, but I’d hauled myself up out of the gutter. I’d worked two jobs while I was in high school and worn clothes from the Goodwill fifty-cent bin so I could afford to move to New York. I’d been so proud of myself when I got that college acceptance letter. And that meant nothing to him.Nothing.
I begged and begged him to let me go free. I begged him to kill me rather than force me to live as his prisoner, and he coldly and heartlessly refused.
But I have to admit, he changed over the months I was staying with him. He changed because ofme.He didn’t even want to, but something about me really did touch him inside, and he became a better person. He actually made compromises. He was more than proud, he was arrogant, but when I needed to rage at him and curse at him after I woke up from my brainwashed stupor, he permitted it. He let me get it all out of my system.
And he promised things would be different between us. He tried to make things work. He coaxed me with bribes, giving that enormous donation to the battered women’s shelter just for the privilege of a conversation with me. He bent as far as a man like him was capable of bending.
Forme.
And I can’t lie to myself and say I hated every minute of being with him. I didn’t.
I loved the sex. It was out-of-your-mind, explosive, weep-with-ecstasy sex, every time. He was utterly devoted to my pleasure. He wasn’t satisfied until I was panting and gasping from orgasm after orgasm.
Before I met him, I always yearned for a man who’d dominate me. Not to that level, of course, but Joshua forced me past my limits and taught me new things about myself and what Ireallywanted.
And it wasn’t just the amazing sex. It was being special to a man like him. It was our conversations, where he opened his whole world up to me—the heartbreak of his childhood, the Godlike power he wields today.
It was the way he made me forgive myself for what I did to my stepfather. It was the way he helped me see that what my mother did to herself wasn’t my fault.
What would it be like if I were with Joshua again, but free?
