1
RYDER
Why didn’t you try to run?
The words echoed in my mind, a constant reminder of what I hadn’t done earlier that day. I was no closer to finding an answer now than I had been when I’d stayed quiet.
I should’ve screamed. I should’ve tried to get away from him and run to the front door. I should have bitten the fucking hand he’d put over my mouth… but I hadn’t done any of that.
Instead, I’d stayed quiet like a docile little animal, and I wasn’t even sure why.
Maybe I was afraid of what would happen if someone found me like this. They’d see me, and he was a celebrity. What if they thought it was only some sort of game? What if I burst through the door only to find that it was someone on his side?
What would he have done to me?
That was what it came back to, that same bone-chilling thought over and over again: what would he have done? I didn’t know, and that was more terrifying than anything. Hewas a wild card, someone who’d proved emotionally unstable at best, and I was having to watch myself as it was.
If I’d tried to run again — if I’d tried to get away from him — he’d have punished me, and I was so, so tired of being punished.
“Toby?”
I pretended to be asleep, keeping my breathing as even as I could, and he brushed hair from my forehead. It was creepy to know that he was just… touching me while he thought I was sleeping. But then, he thought he owned me, so it wasn’t surprising.
“Wake up, Toby,” he urged me with a gentle push to my shoulders. “You won’t be able to sleep tonight if you don’t get up from your nap.”
I slowly opened my eyes even though it was the last thing I wanted to do, yawning and stretching out. It didn’t matter how little or much sleep I got. I never felt like I got any rest anyway.
“You’re so beautiful,” he told me.
I had to fight not to flinch. I didn’t want to hear him saying anything like that. I didn’t want his compliments any more than I wanted his orders.
I just wanted him to let me go, and that wasn’t going to happen.
How was it that I could keep resigning myself to this fate, only to feel the fire of a fight inside me all over again at every turn?
I didn’t want to lose myself.
As hard as it was to accept that I wasn’t going to win, I didn’t want to become… what he thought I was. I might not have been fighting, but that was because I was so tired…
I wanted to tell myself, too, that it was because I needed to gain his trust so when I made an escape attempt, it reallymeant something. My heart started to race at the mere thought of trying to escape again. The last time had gone horribly, but that had been a stupid try too. With the mitts on, I hadn’t stood a chance of unwinding the leash from around his hand, and I’d known it.
So why had I even tried?
Why hadn’t I tried this time, when I’d had a chance?
I didn’t have an answer to that question, no matter how much I tried to find one.
“Thank you,” I finally said when the expectant look on his face started to turn into something darker. I was going to have to learn to wrangle the man and the beast alike, and I didn’t think the two could be separated. I’d seen the mask he wore, and I’d seen glimpses of what was beneath it.
I didn’t want to see more than that.
“We’ll hold off on training for the rest of today,” he said, leaning in to brush his lips against the corner of my mouth.
It was like he wanted to kiss me but was too afraid to, and I was too afraid to let him. He was acting like I was there by choice, like I really wanted him, and I guessed… I’d been letting him think that. There wasn’t anything else I could do if I wanted to be upstairs and away from the dungeon-like basement.
This was far better, even if it meant losing myself just a little bit more by giving in to what he wanted.
I was already lost, though, and I wasn’t sure there was even a way of coming back. Even if I was rescued, what if I was too damaged to go back to my ordinary life? I’d have nightmares of the man’s scarred face for the rest of my life.
