“Three minutes,” I say, and set the watch where she can see it.I step away, to the edge of the room, listening to her breathe.She closes her eyes, nails into her palms.When her hands stop trembling, she tips her face toward me and taps three against her thigh.Okay.I pull the gag.
“What did you do?”
“Found my breath,” she says.“Made the fear smaller with my count.”
“Again.”Five minutes this time.When she taps, I’m already there, cutting her free.“Stop means stop,” I remind myself out loud, carving the law into my bones.
I cuff her to the steel pipe and turn the lights out completely.I sit across the room with my back to the wall.I listen for the difference between panic-breath and control-breath.At first it’s shallow, quick.Then she finds the count.“Three.Five.”I hear her whisper into the dark.My chest hurts with something I’ll never fix.
When I flip the light, her eyes are wet but stubborn.“Good girl,” I say, unlocking the cuff.“You stayed present.”
“Sometimes, this scares me,” she whispers, voice hoarse.
“Good,” I say, and cup her jaw so she feels the steadiness in my hand.“Fear means you’re still alive.”I kiss her temple.
The next day I ration her water and don’t give her food.I let the clock eat half a day while we work.Her mouth goes dry; she keeps telling me her head aches.I finally set a glass on the floor in front of her and tell her to earn it by getting out of the tie without help.She studies the plastic, the angle, her wrists.She pivots, threads a lace, pulls until the tie smokes apart.She doesn’t reach for the water.She looks at me.I nod.Then she drinks.
“Again,” she says, wiping her mouth.I laugh, low and relieved, because I didn’t have to ask.
When she hits walls, I change the drill, not the goal.I time her, write the numbers on a notepad and leave it where she can see them.3:11.2:47.1:59.Odd.Odd.Odd.Her smile when she beats herself is a savior I didn’t know I needed.
I watch everything.Her pupils.Her hands.The way her shoulders creep toward her ears when she’s afraid, but I never let theMachinetruly touch her skin.
The after is what keeps me sane.Arnica on her wrists.Salve along the healing split in her lip.Honeyed tea in a mug that fits both her hands.I sit on the floor with my back to the wall and let her climb into my lap, the only soft I allow to live here.
When I have gone through my to-do list and then gone through it again, when she stops asking “what’s next” or “are we done” and instead anticipates, when she starts finishing her coffee and tries to beat me down here, punching the bag while she waits for me, when I feel like the only thing left to tell her is that I love her, I kneel in front of her, gun oil still on my hands, and say the words I’ll put in her head every fucking day until they’re louder than anything else.
“I willalwayscome for you, Lindy girl.No matter how pissed I am right now.No matter how bad it gets.No matter who takes you.No matter what they do to you.Never forget that.Never.”
Her lips tremble, but she nods.“There are men in this world who will do things that make you wish for death,” I tell her, forehead to forehead.“You don’t give in.You don’teverfucking give in.You fight.Do you hear me?”
She nods again.
“You fight like hell, Lindy girl.You hold on.”I kiss her brow, then press mine back to hers.“I will find you,” I whisper.“Every time.”
The house keeps our silence, our already spoken secrets.The basement is our truce.We don’t talk about ghosts.London’s name isn’t so much as whispered.Drill after drill sands the edge off my rage.Somewhere between tape and zip ties, between blindfold and steel, forgiveness shows up unexpectedly.I don’t point it out, or ask if she feels it.I don’t need to, because it takes up most of the oxygen in the room.Iwillalways chase her.I will always save her.I will destroy this earth before I let it take her from me.No one gets to take her from me.She dies at no other hand.If she ever wanted to end me, she could without all the theatrics and lies; she’d only have to leave.
So I armor her.We both follow the rules and I break more each day for her.And until the truth proves itself, I choose her anyway.Whenthe truth proves itself; I choose her still.
twenty-two
I usedto flinch when he raised his voice.
Now I flinch when he doesn’t.Silence is worse.It means he’s watching me.Assessing.Calculating how far he can push before I break.And he pushes.Every day, a little harder.
The quiet isn’t empty.His judgment is very, very loud and very, very heavy.I understand his anger.In Cassius’s world, black and white makes sense.His hands end lives.Black and white lets him sleep.It lets me justify his choices.In his world, he is a bad man who does bad things for the right reasons.That's the lie we both tell.We live in the gray.He wears it like armor; I breathe it like air.I see the ghosts, but he creates them.
I’m hurt that he didn’t give me the benefit of the doubt.That part sits the sharpest under my breastbone, a small, wicked thorn.And still, I choose him.I refuse to shrink to the big, bad assassin.I refuse to apologize for trusting him with my truth.Training may be a penance to him, but it’s a promise to me.I’m done being the girl who breaks when people leave.He is my oxygen, and yet, as cruel as it is, I can never forget how to breathe alone.
So when each new morning comes, I go downstairs.
The basement has its own weather.The ghosts like it down here, all the edges, corners, and places the light forgets.Gideon leans on the stair rail like a foreman.The grocery-store creep still drips at the collar, his eternal bloom of red.The man who took me sits on the weight bench with one leg soaked in blood.The skin over his kneecap looks like a peeled apple.He taps a black widow charm against his teeth.Clack.Clack.When Cassius makes the light and the noise disappear it’s all I hear.Clack.Clack.The alley man with one eye filmed, and neat throat seam perches near the heavy bag and watches Cassius instead of me.Before Cassius I would see a spirit here and there, and it did happen most days.But, since Cassius, they're everywhere.They are constant.He kills them and I collect them.
He’ll cut you into a shape he likes,the kneecap ghost says.
She already is a shape he likes,Gideon answers, tipping two fingers to his brim at me.You’re gonna be okay, kid.
We won’t help him,the grocery-store man rasps, eyes skittering to Cassius, then back to me.We’ll help you.
