Outside, the sky spread like a void, enormous and indifferent to everything.
Chapter
Twenty-Two
CALEB
The balcony railing was warm under my ankles. It always got that way in the afternoon when the sun crept over the back of the house and hit the courtyard below. With its weathered amber stone, iron furniture, and window boxes planted with purple flowers, the courtyard looked exactly like every photograph ever taken of the French countryside.
Probably because it was in the French countryside.
I’d discovered the balcony the first morning, when I’d dragged my chair outside, propped my heels on the metal, and watched the sun move across the sky like I had nowhere else to be. Which I didn’t. Because I was in France, a country I hadn’t asked to visit, sitting in a house I hadn’t asked to stay in, eating food I hadn’t asked for that tasted so goddamn good it made me want to throw the dishes over the balcony.
According to the little television in my room, Burgundy was experiencing a heat wave for early December. At least, that was my best guess. The French was rapid-fire and incomprehensible on every channel. I’d found one American movie with French subtitles. The wall-mounted flatscreen I’d spotted downstairs probably had English-speaking channels, but I wasn’t about to go find out.
So I was limited to French weather reports and ten-year-old action movies with poorly dubbed dialogue.
I stretched out my legs and rested my calves where the sun had baked the railing until it was almost too hot to touch. The heat penetrated my pants.
Jesse’spants. Every morning, clean clothes appeared in the bathroom. Whatever I’d left in the hamper the night before vanished while I slept. Well-made and comfortable, the clothes fit as well as the sweater I’d swiped from Jesse’s closet the morning of my first shift.
Ahead of me, rolling fields stretched to the horizon. A castle turret peeked above the hazy edge. I stretched an arm out and stuck my thumb over the turret, and the landscape suddenly looked a lot like Vermont. My parents had taken me skiing there a few times, back when they were still pretending we were a respectable, All-American family. If I squinted, I could pretend I was in New England instead of three thousand miles from everything I knew.
Except I couldn’t really pretend. Because back home, nobody had wanted me dead.
No gift.
No control.
Fresh anger stirred in my chest, where it had simmered for a week now. Every time I got a little too comfortable, I stoked that shit all over again, keeping the embers alive. It was better than letting myself feel other things.
A knock sounded at the door.
I didn’t move.
“Lunch,” Jesse said, his voice low and careful through the wood. He never changed it. Never yelled or pleaded. Like me, he’d committed to an emotion and decided to run with it. So several times a day, I got Polite, Careful Jesse like I was a wounded animal he was afraid to spook.
The soft clink of dishes drifted through the door. Then silence. Then his footsteps retreated down the hall.
Jaw tight, I waited for the sound to fade.
He’d given me a house tour the night we arrived, both of us tired from the overseas flight and the hour-long drive in a sleek black sedan that had been mysteriously waiting for us at another secluded airfield.
“You’re welcome to use any bedroom you want,” he’d said, showing me around. I’d given the place a cursory once-over, taking in the big rooms and high ceilings. The walls covered in paintings. A dining room with furniture that looked like the Founding Fathers might have signed important papers around it. A library. A garden. A big living room Jesse called “the salon.”
“Make yourself at home,” he’d said. “I want you to be comfortable.”
I’d chosen a bedroom on the second floor and closed the door.
And for the past seven days, I’d emerged only to use the bathroom across the hall.
My door was never locked. I’d checked that first night, half-hoping to discover I’d been imprisoned just so I’d have a reason to smash something.
But nope, the porcelain knob had turned, and I’d stepped into the darkened hallway. The house had been quiet. Jesse hadn’t come running. And the next morning, he’d delivered golden pancakes, fluffy eggs, and coffee with his soft, polite knock and careful voice.
I wasn’t sure how he knew I had no intention of eating with him. Although, he’d probably gotten the hint when I ignored his ass all the way across the Atlantic.
That first morning, he’d tucked a note under the plate:
