The street rolls sideways.Neon smears.The night swallows me whole.
twenty-seven
They shoveme to my knees hard enough to rattle my fucking teeth.My wrists are tied behind my back, the rope biting deeper with every breath.God damn cowards.There’s still a slight sting at my neck where their needle went in.Lindy had me distracted, and even then these fucks need luck and drugs to knock me out cold.
The room smells like damp cement and rust.
Andher.She’s here.
I find her instantly.My body knows the exact angle, the exact distance, without looking.She’s on the floor at first, wrists and ankles bound.There’s a cut on her cheekbone, swelling along her jaw, a bruise curling dark and angry up her thigh.And still, she’s devastating.My Lindy girl with hair tangled and dripping with sweat, lips parted on shallow breaths, eyes half-lidded floating between exhaustion and defiance.
It’s the first time I’ve seen her since she stood in that hotel room and told me she needed space.The first time since I let her leave.Even beaten, she’s fucking breathtaking.She lifts her lashes and my chest forgets how to work, but bruises are proof-of-life.My heart starts again.
I breathe her name and try not to come apart.My fixation with her has always had my body reacting.Gravity pulling me into her orbit.But this isn’t pull; it’s oxygen.I taught her to survive without me.I won’t survive without her.I need her more than the air in my lungs.She may believe her survival depends on me, but the truth of it is, without her, the air won’t come.
They haul me up and dump me into the chair facing hers.When they first tossed me in here, they’d had her hung from the ceiling chain.Now they’re strapping us into chairs, six feet apart.The chain run between the chair frames is short, teasing short.I lean until my knees almost touch hers.Almost.I count the bruises forming under her skin.I watch the tremor in her fingers and know it’s not fear.It’s from holding herself together for me.Her smell cuts through the stench of mildew and metal—vanilla and coffee and that strawberry shampoo.It hits me harder than the blood in my own mouth.
The room’s a concrete box, wet in the corners, rust bleeding down the walls.One flickering bulb sways overhead, swinging our shadows huge against the wall.There’s a drain in the center of the floor.She’s barefoot.Ankles zip-tied to the chair legs.Wrists bound in front of her, rope digging angry red into her skin.My gaze catches on every mark.My body catalogs each one the way I memorize a kill.
“Lindy,” I whisper.It tastes like vomit when I say it.Her head comes up.Those eyes.That blue.I could drown there.There’s a tightness in my throat I didn’t have when I walked in here, and it’s not from the chokehold they dragged me in with.
Two men lean against the wall.One with a knife, one with a length of chain wrapped around his fist.Their eyes slide between us.
“You two look like a picture,” Knife says, stepping forward.“Real touching.Like you’d die for each other.”
He’s wrong.I won’t just die for her.I’ll wipe out the world first and grin doing it.
The knife’s spine scrapes the curve of her shoulder.Every muscle in me locks tight enough to snap bone.
“You see that, sweetheart?”Knife murmurs, still looking at me.“You make him soft.”
“No,” I growl.“She makes meunhinged.That’s worse for you.”
“I disagree,Machine.I think that she controls you, so now we do.She stays breathing and you heel on our command.”
“Cassius,” she says, not loud, but enough to pull my eyes back to hers.“I can take it.”Her pulse pounds at her throat.
I shake my head.“Not for me.Not ever for me.”
The punch snaps her head to the side; her hair spills forward.She straightens, never breaking eye contact with me.Something fractures in me.
“I’m going to chop off a fucking body part for every time you touch her,” I tell him, my voice a blade, “You will beg for death.”
Chain Man moves in, breath hot and rotten at my cheek.“Well then, I better make it worth it, you watching her scream.”I yank against the rope until it bites deep, skin tearing.Blood slicks my palms.I don’t care.She’s looking at me like we’re the only two people in the universe, and I hold onto that like it’s air.
Knife drags the flat across her collarbone.The world narrows to her odd numbered breaths.“Pretty skin.Will be even prettier with scars.”I grind my heel into the instep of the man behind me.I twist my right wrist until bone gives and somethingpops.Pain flares hot, but the rope loosens.
My hand slips free.
Knife notices too late.He looks from my hand to my face, and I let him see the promise there.I surge forward?—
Something heavy cracks the side of my skull.My knees slam concrete.Shouting.Another hit at my temple.Light bursts behind my eyes.I’m falling.The last thing I see is her bruised, busted, beautiful face.
The sound of her breathing pulls me back.The way the chair legs scrape as she shifts, the faint click of her teeth.It’s just us now.I keep my eyes on the corner where they disappeared.The chain between our chairs is short enough to make it a form of torture.My body aches to close the gap.To wrap her up until I feel her heart against mine, steady and alive.
“You’re hurt,” she says.Ridiculous.She’s the one bleeding.
“You’re alive,” I tell her.“That’s the only thing that matters.”
