“Yes.”
“I love you, my boy.”
I close my eyes. The last time he said it, it was his idea of a hedge against all the things my mother couldn’t control. He told me he loved me like it was a fact that didn’t require an answer, and I treated it like a fact that didn’t deserve one.
I hesitate now for a different reason. Not because I don’t feel it. Because once I put the words in this room, the room will change, and I can’t afford any change that isn’t directly aligned with getting her back.
“I’ll call you when we have her,” I say.
9
Phoenix
Danner throwsme back into the box, laughing when I crash to the floor, and then he leaves. I don’t know where he goes. I don’t care. I’m just grateful for the reprieve, however long it lasts.
I hit on my side, shoulder first, the seam of the metal scraping my cheek. The door slams, and the locks fall into place one after the other, fast and practiced. I lie still long enough to hear them all.
One. Two. Three.The final one has a different tone, deeper than before.
Every breath I take tastes like rust and old sweat and the lemon-bleach cleaner they splash around to pretend this is sanitary. My chest rises and falls too fast, like I’ve just finished a marathon. My legs are shaking from the run, from the stairs, from the moment I put my hand on that door and thought that I could escape.
I push up so that I’m sitting, back to the wall so nothing can come from behind me—which I know doesn’t make sense but itmakes me feel better. The chain is coiled on the floor—he didn’t bother to put it back on.
I’m not going anywhere.
I pull my knees into my stomach, hugging them to me. There’s an unsettled sensation in my stomach—not the floaty, sick kind, but the heavy, solid kind that tells me I’m trapped. He said the word “training” like a promise. I know what’s coming, and there’s no stopping it now.
I press two fingers into the inside of my elbow where the needle went in earlier. The bruise is rising. The cotton ball he taped down is gone—wrenched off in the run. I count the links on the discarded chain anyway, because counting gives my brain something to do that isn’t creating nightmare scenarios of what’s to come.
…eight. Nine. Ten. Eleven….
I stop counting when footsteps in the corridor approach. The tread is heavy, anticipatory.
His. He’s coming back.
I stand, but I don’t go to the bed. He’d like that too much. He’d like me to put myself where he wants me to make it easier on him, less work.
I have no intention of making things easy. That’s just not who I am.
I plant my feet shoulder-width apart on the steel and lock my knees so I can move. My palms begin to sweat, and I wipe them on my thighs. I make my face blank because there’s no way I’m going to show him any sign of weakness.
He’ll have to kill me if he thinks he can take me.
The first bolt throws back, then the second. The bar lifts. Light slices in as the door cracks, then opens all the way.
Danner fills the space with his body and his breath and his bad aftershave. He’s cleaned the blood off his mouth. The split is still there, fat and angry, a small red victory red flag. A strip of gauze is taped to his forearm where I twisted the screw. He smiles when he sees my eyes land on it.
“You got a good scratch in,” he says, pleased in a mean way. “Should’ve saved it for later.”
He doesn’t bother with the tray this time, or any other polite act to give this horror show a pretense of civility. He closes the door with his foot. The locks don’t seat. He wants them clear. He wants the show. He turns to me and lets his gaze crawl. It makes my skin hot and cold at once.
“Take off the shirt,” he says. “I want to see your tits.”
My stomach turns. “No.”
He walks in slowly, like there’s music he’s moving to that I can’t hear. “We can do this clean, sweetheart,” he says. “I told you the rules. No marks on the face. That cost somebody a hand once. But bruises where they don’t show? That’s just learning your place. Don’t make me teach you the hard way.”
“I’m not your student.”
