Right. I can do this.
A forensic exhibit of my existence lays scattered on the smooth surface. ID, keys, receipts, all the little artifacts of daily survival exposed under the overhead lights. Each item is a fragment of my life, a snapshot of how I subsisted subjected to his frigid, methodical inspection.
“Let’s see who you are.” He selects a smooth gray stone from the chaos and turns it over in his palm. “A rock.”
I lick my lips, suddenly parched. There’s no way to say this without sounding dumb, so I may as well lean into it. “I found that on my first solo hike. It’s not just a rock. Look, it’s shaped like…”
Why am I explaining myself?
He hasn’t earned the story, and he definitely wouldn’t care that it resembles a heart from one angle and a bird from another. The stone offers physical proof that perspective matters. That hike—which I went on three months after running from my mother’s suffocating world—was the first time I’d really, truly been out in nature. I sat by a stream, hungry and terrified, the stone just waiting for me to find it and ground myself.
No, he doesn’t deserve that tale.
And he doesn’t press with any probing questions.
The rock lands back on the table, already forgotten, as his hand moves to a folded scrap of paper. I’ve had a lot of scraps like that in my purse over the years. My mind tumbles over itself trying to remember this exact one.
He opens the note with careful deliberation and scans the purple-inked list in my handwriting. “‘I am a beacon of abundance.’”
Right. I’d tucked that one into the little pocket next to my wallet, half spell, half reminder. All desperate hope.
Heat climbs up my throat and settles in my cheeks. I try to mask the embarrassment, but he watches every twitch. A killing machine logging data. “That’s a positive affirmation. To manifest what you want.”
It’s too early for this interrogation. I haven’t even had my water yet.
He holds my gaze, his eyes shifting from that blank, polished sheen to something colder.
Disbelief. As if the wordmanifestbelongs to some dead language. He doesn’t believe me, not for a second.
I almost laugh at the cruelty of the universe.
At the absurdity of a kidnapper and his captive discussing the law of attraction. If I weren’t so afraid, I’d double over in fits.
He’s methodical. Unhurried. Picking my life apart piece by piece.
First the birth control pills. He clicks open the pack with narrowed eyes.
“Got a boyfriend I need to worry about?”
I nearly jump at the tone of his voice.
My face flushes hot. I keep up-to-date on my meds, but I haven’t dated in months. Haven’t had sex in over a year.
Though that’s none of his business. So why do I care what he thinks?
I definitely don’t.
I straighten my shoulders. “Even if I did, something tells me you wouldn’t be worried.”
He blinks and hangs his face. Breathes out a noise almost reminiscent of a human laugh.
“So no boyfriend. Care to tell me why Jordan Bennett has a dentist appointment three months from now, MissThorne?”
I hold his gaze, though not a single part of me wants to explain the reason for the alias I chose after running away from home all those years ago.
Still, on a deep inhale, I start talking. “I’ve been…on my own for a long time…since I was a teenager. I didn’t want certain people,”my mother, “finding me. So I used a different last name. I still put ‘Bennett’ on certain documents. It’s habit.”
When I startedThe Thorne Identitya few years ago, I was an adult and no longer cared if my mother contacted me.Sometimes, though, I wonder if on some semi-conscious level, I wanted her to find me and reach out.
