He was in the shower this morning, and he barely looked at me when he came out fully dressed, black gloves with green stitching back over his hands, white bandana around his throat.
I took a shower alone, feeling his eyes on me as I closed the bathroom door between us, but he didn’t call out to me.
When I saw in the mirror the deep purple and yellow bruises along my left side, over my shoulder and my arm, I wanted him to see it, too. To know what I would do for him.
But I said nothing and let the water sting the ache away, from battering my body against the dungeon door, trying to get to him.
A tray was brought to our door, set atop a silver cart with rolling wheels. Pancakes and fruit and bacon and a carafe of coffee presented without our asking. Sullen ate as if he never had in his life, half-sitting on the cherry oak desk pressed against the opposite wall of our room.
I occupied one of two chairs cloistered around a small table by the window, where Sullen stands now.
He said nothing to me as I sipped coffee, but when I didn’t eat from the half of the food he set in front of me, I felt his gaze on mine. When I looked up, he nodded toward the tray, his own mouth full, no words leaving his lips.
I picked at the fruit and ate an entire pancake smeared with butter.
It was good, but the worries gnawing at me stole the joy from any of it.
“Did you learn anything?” I ask now, in the quiet dark as I sit on the end of the bed dressed in a black shirt and black sleep shorts, my hair braided over one shoulder.
Another thing I did to stave off the boredom.
He left me after he ate, informing me in a stiff manner he was going to Sanford’s room. He told me to keep the knife out—it’s on the desk now—but that he would prop Sanford’s door open so he could listen for me.
I know he did it, too.
I looked through the peephole at the room across the hall, one down.
The door was wide open.
My heart fluttered then, when I saw it.
But I spent the rest of the day pacing, drawing at the desk on a Dreary Inn notepad, more than a few times looping mine and Sullen’s names together in cursive. I balled those up and threw them away in the golden trashcan beneath the desk.
Lunch arrived at my door.
Then dinner.
I ate little, pushed the cart back out into the hall, tried to listen in on whatever Sanford and Sullen were spending hours discussing, but all I heard was strange silence.
Sullen doesn’t look at me. His hood is pushed back, revealing the soft curve of his ears, the haphazardness of his haircut. He is so tall, his back broad, even the hoodie doesn’t hide the muscular build of his shoulders and his gray, fitted joggers he must have stolen from the Emporium cling to the roundness of his ass.
I bite the inside of my cheek and look away, wondering if Sanford told Sullen about whatever came of his introduction to the pretty employee last night.
But thinking of Sullen discussing something like that feels off. He doesn’t like small talk. Today, it seems, he doesn’t like to talk at all. At least, not to me.
“How do you feel?” I try again, attempting to coaxsomethingfrom him. I keep in mind he was stabbed, locked away, that he defended me physically, would have probably died for me underneath that grimy hotel.
But I want to know something. Anything.
Like when we’re leaving. Where we’re going. What Sanford said to him.
What if his grandfather turned him against me?
My cheeks heat, my body soon after, thinking perhaps after all I’ve done, he won’t choose me like I’ve chosen him.
“What did you eat for lunch?” There is an edge to my voice. I tighten my arms around my shins, my knees to my chest as I shift on the king bed, golden sheets beneath me. My spine is straight despite the ball I’m shaped into, and I look down my nose at his stubborn back across the room, my position and the lamp from my side of the bed too dim to illuminate details like the view from the window, the courtyard I didn’t get to dine with him at. I could have gone myself, and part of me wanted to, just to prove he doesn’t have me on a leash.
But I was partly afraid to be far from him, and partly… I’m not so sure I’mnottethered to him.
