“And I have no intention of ever letting you go.”
She stiffens slightly in my arms but doesn’t pull away.
“You understand that, don’t you?” I lift her chin, forcing her to meet my eyes. “There’s no walking away from this. From me.”
25
AMELIA
My body aches as Gabe leads me back to the cabin. The physical evidence of what happened between us clings to my skin—dirt, sweat, his release still warm inside my ass. I should feel violated. I should be plotting escape.
Instead, my mind spins in chaotic patterns.
Inside the cabin, Gabe runs a bath and helps me into the steaming water. His touch is gentle now, almost tender as he washes forest debris from my hair. This contradiction—the ruthless predator who just claimed me versus this attentive man bathing me—makes my heart stutter with confusion.
“Why am I not screaming?” I whisper, more to myself than to him. “Why did I call out to you in the forest?”
He doesn’t answer, stroking a washcloth down my back.
The truth unfolds in my mind like one of my canvases. I recognize pieces of myself in Gabe—the obsessive attention to detail, the ability to see patterns others miss, the darkness lurking beneath his fabricated facade.
I think of the men he’s killed, preserved like grotesque art installations. Men who hurt others. Men like the gallery owner who cornered me years ago, his hand sliding up my skirt at my first showing.
“What does it say about me,” I ask, voice barely audible over the water, “that knowing what you’ve done doesn’t make me want to run?”
My moral compass spins, unable to find true north. Is it trauma bonding that makes me feel connected to my kidnapper, or something that existed before he brought me here?
“I don’t know who I am anymore,” I admit, tears mingling with bathwater. “I don’t know if I’m broken or if I’ve always been this way.”
Gabe sits on the edge of the tub, his fingers moving through my hair, working out tangles. The gentleness feels almost more intimate than what happened in the forest.
“As I told you, I was ten when I met Adrian,” he says, his voice soft but steady. “School playground. Three older kids had him pinned against the fence. He wasn’t crying—just staring back at them with this completely empty expression.”
His hands pause in my hair.
“I stabbed one of them with a pencil. Right in the thigh.” A small smile touches his lips. “Adrian and I ran. We’ve been inseparable since.”
I sink deeper into the water, letting it muffle the sounds of the world. But I can still hear him clearly.
“We recognized something in each other immediately. Both... different. My father was a drunk who used his fists to communicate. Adrian’s mother—” He stops. “That’s his story to tell. But we understood each other’s wounds.”
Gabe reaches for a cup and pours warm water over my hair to rinse it.
I watch Gabe’s face darken as he continues, his hands still moving through my wet hair.
“My father wasn’t just a drunk. He was…cruel about it.” His voice drops lower. “Every day, he’d start drinking at exactly five-thirty. Not five twenty-nine, not five thirty-one. By seven, he’d be looking for reasons to get angry.”
Gabe’s fingers tighten in my hair, then consciously relax.
“The first time he broke my arm, I was eight. I spilled milk at dinner. He twisted until he heard the snap, then made me clean up the mess one-handed.” He speaks with clinical detachment, but his eyes have gone somewhere distant. “My mother watched from the doorway. She never intervened—not once.”
The water around me has cooled, but I don’t move, afraid to break whatever has opened between us.
“My mother took it too. Black eyes she covered with makeup. Bruised ribs that she’d wrap herself. I’d hear her crying at night, promising herself she’d leave.” His jaw tightens. “For years, I thought we’d escape together.”
He reaches for a towel and unfolds it.
“She left on my tenth birthday. I woke up, and she was just... gone. No note. Nothing.” His voice remains steady, but something flickers behind his eyes—that dangerous emptiness I’ve glimpsed before. “She left me with him. Alone.”
