TEN
Coco
Creole vs. Cajun Cuisine:Creole cooking, influenced by European and African flavors, often uses tomatoes, while Cajun cuisine, rooted in French Acadian traditions, is known for its smoky, spicy dishes cooked in one pot.
The lights have dimmedto a soft twilight, mimicking the end of a day I can’t actually see. It doesn’t soothe me the way unwinding after a long day should. It instructs. Another reminder that even time is managed for me here.
Under different circumstances, I might admire the precision.
Right now, it only reinforces how far underground I am. Layers of earth and concrete separate me from the rest of the world. This is a place designed to absorb a person without leaving a ripple behind.
I’ve been alone for hours. Ridge left sometime after two, long enough ago that the quiet has shifted fromneutral to invasive. I’ve done everything I can think of to keep from counting the minutes.
I worked out first. Movement helped at the beginning. My body needed it after being confined to that small bedroom at the cabin.
But there’s only so much enthusiasm I can summon for a Peloton before it starts to feel like another form of compliance forced on me.
Sweat still dampens my shirt, cooling slowly along my spine. I’m hyperaware of it. Of every place fabric clings. Of the weight of my own skin. Being locked down here strips away distraction and leaves my body front and center, whether I want it there or not.
That awareness didn’t start today. It’s been lingering since last night, refusing to settle back into something neutral.
I move on to the kitchen. Every cabinet, every drawer, everything is clean and orderly, stocked with intention.
Grabbing an apple, I take a bite and lean against the counter as I look around for the hundredth time. It isn’t much, but it’s better than coffee and cheese crackers, which is a low bar I’m grateful to clear.
Normal things. Domestic things.
They unsettle me more than the restraints did, like comfort offered where it doesn’t belong.
It was only yesterday morning that I woke up tied to a bed in a strange place. My sense of time hasn’t caught up to that yet. Neither has my sense of scale.
A night shouldn’t change that much. And yet my body holds onto details I’d rather file away and never revisit.
Heat, weight, uninvited pleasure. The fact that I slept deeply after he left me in that room, after what we did, and without dreaming irritates me more than it should.
I wander the bunker, restless energy pulling me fromroom to room. I pause at the edge of the pool, tempted for half a second, then step back. The idea of water pressing in around me down here feels less like luxury and more like being swallowed.
Maybe tomorrow.
I try one of the movies Ridge mentioned. The voices grate almost immediately. Every line sounds too crisp, too artificial. I shut it off halfway through, irritated by how dependent I’ve become on constant noise and endless choice.
I plop on the sofa in the personality-less living room. The place is definitely more comfortable than being tied to a bed in a single bedroom, but it’s definitely not warm.
I tell myself this is temporary. A holding pattern while Ridge handles whatever forced us out of the cabin. The longer I sit with that thought, the less convincing it becomes.
My attention drifts to the study door.
He told me it was off-limits, the only room that stays locked. He had been clear about that, firm in a way that did not invite negotiation.
I respect it, partly out of caution and partly because I understand what lines looked like in a place like this.
Still, something about it keeps pulling me there.
I shift on the couch and really look at the door for the first time instead of just acknowledging it. The seam where it meets the frame is not flush. It is subtle, the kind of thing you would miss if you were not already restless.
The door is closed, but not pulled all the way in.
I cannot stop wondering if there might be something inside that explains any of this. The urgency. The rules. The way he watches everything without ever seeming distracted.
