Plastic bit into my skin.
I didn’t jerk. I didn’t gasp. I didn’t give them anything pretty to watch.
I tested the tie once, a small twist of my wrists, just enough to feel where it would cut if I fought it too hard. Cheap plastic. Not a chain. Not unbreakable. Not right now, not with brute force, but later? Later was a word I could use.
I tucked that knowledge away.
Zach climbed in beside me.
Not Jasper. Not the other Shepherds.
Zach.
He shut the door and the last sliver of outside light vanished. The SUV went dim, lit only by the dashboard glow bleeding through from the front. My eyes adjusted fast. Survival had trained them to.
Zach sat too close, knees nearly touching mine, shoulders squared like he was trying to look calm on purpose. Like he was playing a role and needed me to believe he belonged in it.
The engine started.
Gravel crunched beneath the tires, loud in the enclosed space. The SUV rocked as it rolled forward, and the house disappeared behind us like it had never existed at all.
I stared straight ahead and made my body go still. Still didn’t mean weak. Still meant controlled. Still meant I got to choose what I spent my strength on.
The vehicle turned. Another turn. The suspension shifted with a bump and my shoulder knocked the door. I counted automatically.
Left. Right. Long curve. Short one.
If I survived this, those details mattered. And I planned on surviving.
Zach shifted beside me, a faint rustle of fabric. Close enough that I could feel the heat of him. Close enough that the betrayal had a pulse.
“You’re angry,” he said quietly, like he was commenting on the weather.
I let my gaze drift to him, slow and deliberate. “I’ve been kidnapped.”
He flinched. Not dramatic. Just enough to tell me some part of him still knew the words were wrong.
“We wouldn’t call it that,” he said.
“Of course you wouldn’t,” I shot back. “You people don’t call anything what it is. It’s always a prayer and a lesson and a blessing. That’s how you sleep.”
His jaw tightened. “You wandered,” he said. “You’re confused.”
A laugh tore out of me, bitter and ugly. “I didn’t wander. I drove to the address you sent, because you dangled children infront of me like bait. And I wasn’t confused when you wrapped your arms around me so Jasper could step out of the shadows.”
Silence thickened, filling the SUV with something heavy. The road noise was a steady noise beneath it, tires singing against pavement like a warning that never changed pitch.
Zach stared ahead, hands clasped together between his knees, knuckles pale. “I didn’t lie when I said I thought about you,” he said after a moment. “Every night.”
I turned my head slowly, meeting his eyes in the dim. “Save it.”
His throat bobbed. “You don’t mean that.”
“I do,” I said. “I don’t care what you thought. I care what you did.”
He looked like he wanted to argue, then decided not to. Or maybe he was waiting for the part where I softened. Where I remembered teenage promises and let him stand in them like shelter.
He didn’t know me anymore.
