A sob cracked from me and I nodded, grabbing his battered, bloodied hand and pressing it firmly over my heart.Real, I signed.I’m real, baby. I’m here.
He lifted his hands like he wanted to speak, but he couldn’t, not with his injuries. Complete fear and terrifying, deep shame fell over his rugged, handsome face. He was so distraught as he stared up at me. He blinked hard again like he had before we’d taken the bikes, like he still didn’t believe that I was there.
Don’t go away again, I pleaded, my fingers moving quickly between the signs.Please stay with me.I swallowed thickly.I know I did that to you after Thorne. I disappeared, and I am so sorry.His eyes started to darken, to fade, and a sob left me.Rafe! Rafe, baby, don’t—don’t go.I cupped his face, running my thumbs under his eyes and shook him a little again. I made sure to be more gentle, trying to coax him to remain in reality with me. Branches snapped at my back and Kane crouched down beside us, taking in Rafe’s confused expression and torn hands.
“Fuck.” Kane dropped to his knees, studying my face. “Did hehityou?”
I lifted a hand to my slowly swelling cheek. It was, fortunately, just below my bad eye, so it really wasn’t effecting my sight. “He didn’t mean to.” Terror struck through me again as Rafe tensed beneath me. He took in what Kane had pointed out, his gaze wavering with more shame. I could feel that the swelling was bad, my cheek stinging. He’d punched me hard, but I knew it wasn’t really him that did it.No, I signed frantically.It’s okay. I’m fine. Rafe, please.But he shut down, going limp underneath me. For a second, he just stared blankly up at the moon through the thick canopy before his eyes fluttered shut and he fell unconscious. I folded myself down, hugging my arms around him and pressing my good ear over his heart, taking solace in its steady thudding.
“I’ll make us a fire,” Kane said quietly. “This spot’s as good as any, and he should rest.”
I didn’t answer, clutching Rafe. I lifted a hand and brushed it through his hair, tilting my head up to watch his chest dip with each breath of sleep. Kane returned a few minutes later, requesting my lighter. He got the fire going, its warmth flowing over us. My body relaxed slightly against Rafe’s as I stared into the flames. I closed my eyes and let myself drift, feeling the safest I had in so long lying against him.
I woke to his touch. It was feather light as Rafe traced a trembling finger down my arm, my side, then back up to my neck and the curve of my face. He paused at the indent in my temple, and I looked up, our eyes locking. A dazed smile curved his lips, and my eyes watered as he looked at me like I was a ghost haunting him as surely as I knew Thorne’s was. I was curled into him on my side in the dirt, the fire low nearby. I must’ve rolled off him at some point in the night, or maybe he’d shifted me without realizing, careful even in sleep, letting me get more comfortable.
Slowly, I leaned forward and brushed my nose against his, testing him. His breath skittered over my lips, shallow and uneven, and his hands drifted down to the dip of my waist, wedging beneath my jacket, his thumbs circling gently, almost hesitantly, the movement sliding my shirt up just enough that his warmth brushed mine. My body curved toward his on instinct, and for one fragile moment it felt like us. I let my hands drift down the hard planes of his chest and stomach, gliding beneath his shirt, pressing my palms flat against his abs, my thumbs tracing the divots of the old scars I knew by heart. He stiffened when I touched him like that, a sharp inhale tearing from his throat, and when our eyes met again, something had changed.
The softness was gone.
His gaze was dark and unfocused in a way that made my stomach twist, and his grip on my waist sank tighter as he yanked me against him, not affectionate but urgent, like he was afraid I’d disappear if he didn’t hold me hard enough. I gasped, but it was the only sound that could’ve left me before his mouth stole anything else, his kiss crashing against me, rough and consuming, his bandaged palms sliding to my rib cage as he pressed me down into the dirt. His body bore down against mine in a way that had nothing to do with desire and everything to do with survival.
“Rafe?” I murmured against his lips, knowing he’d feel me speaking and pull back, knowing that was the moment he would recognize me and smile and ground himself the way he always had.
Except he didn’t.
The smallest thread of fear slid down my spine as his mouth stayed on mine, unrelenting, his movements repetitive, automatic, like he was following a script. “Rafe, I…don’t know,” I said softly, pushing lightly against his stomach, trying to coax him back without breaking whatever fragile thing was holding him together. His grip only tightened, and my fear kicked into overdrive as realization dawned slow and sickening. His eyes were glassy, fixed on some place far beyond my face, like he was looking through me instead of at me. His mouth kept moving in the same rhythm, the same learned urgency, but there was nothing intimate about it anymore. It was mechanical. Practiced. The way a body moves when the mind has checked out.
I knew that look. I had worn it for years. It was the same blank distance I’d seen in my reflection as a Doll, the place you go when staying in your body hurts too much, when it’s easier to disappear and let something else take over. That was where Rafe was. Not with me. Not in the woods.
He was back there. Withthem.
My chest tightened painfully as I looked at him and saw not the man I loved but the survival version of him, the one forged in rooms with locked doors and guns and commands, the one who had learned that submission was the only way out. In that hollow, distant stare, I might as well have been just another Buyer.
“Kane?” I asked, turning my cheek away as Rafe kept kissing me, his lips grazing my jaw and my neck in a robotic manner. “Kane!” I shouted.
Kane jerked awake from his side of the fire and took one look at me trapped beneath Rafe before his lips curled into a snarl, rage snapping across his features as he dove over and tackled Rafe off me. He pinned him down hard, his body made wholly of violence and instinct, and I scrambled back in the dirt, shaking, tears stinging my eyes as the reality of what almost happened crashed into me. Kane punched Rafe square in the jaw and I covered my mouth.
“Don’t hurt him! He’s not fully aware!” I shouted, my voice breaking.
“I know, but this is the only thing that’s ever worked,” Kane snapped, and punched him again, blood trickling from Rafe’s nose as his body finally went limp beneath him. Kane shook out his fist, breathing hard, then looked over at me, his expression cracking as the rage bled away. “Are you okay?”
I rubbed at my throat, swallowing against my fingers before I shook my head. “No,” I whispered hoarsely. “If you weren’t here…Kane, he wouldn’t have stopped, would he?”
Kane hung his head for a second before he stood and trudged over to me, settling next to where I’d balled up next to the fire, my arms hugging around my knees. “I want to tell you that he would. I really desperately do, because I know if I don’t, youwon’t trust him, but Arden, right now, I don’t know that you should.”
“He never acted that way before?”
“You mean at Halden’s? It’s easier to ignore the pain when you’re still in the middle of enduring.” Kane sighed. “Sweetheart, you endured Room 82 for 2 years. Imagine, for a moment, that you’d never been given your lighter back.”
I shuddered.
“Now imagine that was your life from the time you were eleven.”
“What?”
“How is it possible you don’t know this?” he asked, seeming genuinely confused. “Has he really never talked about his Buyers?”
“I just know that your tattoos are brands. I thought it was like being a Doll, like with Viktor.”
