I’m about to sit up when I hear breathing. Someone else is in the room. My heart thumps in my chest. It takes a couple of seconds to identify the slow, heavy breaths of a person in a deep sleep. Whoever it is, is lying on the floor between me and the door.
I lie frozen while minutes tick by. The breathing continues, its rhythm even and unbroken. This is ridiculous. I can’t just remain here, in this bed I don’t recognize, paralyzed by fear and indecision. And then, because I have nowhere else to go and nothing else to do, I peer over the edge of the bed.
The bulky shape of a man, his back to me, is stretched out on a bedroll. I take in his short black hair, broad shoulders stretching the seams of a white T-shirt, a muscled leg twisted in the folds of a sheet.
Some of my fear drains away. I can’t explain it, but the sight of the makeshift bed on the floor is oddly reassuring, as if this man is watching over me.
Suddenly, the shape shifts, the head snapping around to face me. When I see his face, those gray eyes blinking away sleep and centering on me in a swift, assessing glance, my breath stalls on the rush of returning memories: my desperate bid to escape, the phone call to my father, Kane and Jill—no, Nolene, Iremember now—wrestling me into the storeroom, the door closing, and then darkness, endless darkness.
Terror crawls along the edges of my mind, looking for a way in.
The rising panic must show on my face because Kane’s eyes widen in alarm and he sits up, directing what is supposed to pass for a reassuring smile my way.
After a second or two of silence, I burst out laughing.
Kane stares at me in confusion. “Why are you laughing?” he asks, the worried look on his face telling me all too clearly he thinks I’ve given in to hysteria.
I can’t stop laughing long enough to explain. The release feels good, chasing away some of the shadows in my mind. Sitting up, I finally manage to control myself enough to point to my teeth.
Frowning, Kane leverages himself up and looks at his reflection in a small mirror on the wall. He bares his teeth. They’re a bright blue. He gives a disbelieving shake of his head. “I checked the soap, the shampoo bottle, the shaving foam. I shook out the bedding.” He pauses, his tone full of reluctant admiration. “I forgot about the toothpaste. The little troublemaker.”
I’m still laughing when the memory of what he did comes crashing back, too raw and too painful to be held at bay any longer by amusement. Kane forced me into that storeroom. He exploited my fear of the dark. All traces of humor disappear.
If Kane notices the change, his face doesn’t betray it. “I was warned she had a new practical joke she wanted to try.” He rubs his teeth. “Whatever this stuff is, it’ll probably take a while to fade.”
He turns from the mirror and pulls a pair of sweatpants on over his boxers.
“Why are you sleeping in here?” I ask, my voice emerging all hoarse.
He doesn’t look at me. “I was keeping an eye on you.”
“Afraid I’d escape?”
His gray eyes collide with mine. “I wanted to be here when you woke up,” he says in a low voice. “I didn’t want you opening your eyes and thinking you’d been left alone again.”
“Oh.” So he was worried. After what he did, he should be.
He sits on the corner of the bed, carefully keeping his distance. “How are you feeling?”
There are so many answers to that question. “Better,” I finally settle on. Anything to avoid another storeroom. After a moment, I give in to curiosity. “Who is she? The one who did that to your teeth?”
“An old friend. We have this immature, practical joke thing going.”
“Sounds like an interesting friendship.”
“It’s an unbalanced one. She has such an armory of tricks up her sleeve, the scales tip in her favor.”
We both fall silent, as if realizing the incongruity of our conversation, considering the circumstances.
I clear my throat. “I have one you can try.”
He looks confused. “One what?”
“A joke you can play on her.”
“Okay,” he says, visibly recovering.
I tell him what I have in mind.
