Just another normal day . . .
Iknockedthreetimes.Waitedthe beat. Opened the door.
She was sitting cross-legged on the bed with Midge in her lap and the Quasimodo book closed beside her, one finger holding her place. Her hair was down—loose, dark, the way it had been the night I pinned her on the study floor. She'd washed it. I could tell because it moved differently, catching the lamplight, and the observation lodged itself in my brain with a specificity that was not appropriate for a man delivering dinner.
I set the plate on the nightstand. Chicken, roasted potatoes with rosemary, a handful of green beans and a few florets of broccoli. Midge's bowl went on the floor—chicken again, shredded, plain. The dog's stub of a tail started thumping before the bowl touched the hardwood.
I sat on the floor. Back against the wall. Notebook on my knee.
She watched me settle. Her eyes tracked the notebook.
"We're doing the rules now," I said.
Her arms crossed. Not dramatic—functional. The gesture of a woman who wanted her hands where they couldn't betray her.
I opened the notebook. My handwriting was bad—always had been, the scrawl of a man whose hands were built for different work—but the words were legible, and I'd spent an hour this afternoon making sure they were clear. Each rule on its own line. Each one considered. Each one, if I was honest with myself, written with the image of her face in my mind, calibrating the language to what she'd accept and what she'd fight.
"One. You don't leave the property without me. Two. No contact with anyone outside this house. Three." I paused. Looked at her. "No picking locks."
Something flickered across her face. Not quite a smile. The ghost of one, suppressed before it could fully form, the way a match flickers before the wind kills it.
"Four. Three meals a day. Five. You tell me if you're hurt or sick. Six. You sleep a minimum of six hours."
I closed the notebook. Held her gaze.
She didn't respond immediately. She stroked Midge's ear—the good one—with a slow, repetitive motion that I'd learned was how she soothed herself while pretending to soothe the dog.
"And if I skip a meal?"
Her voice was even. Measured. The question delivered with the precision of someone testing the structural integrity of a bridge by placing weight on it, one pound at a time.
"Consequences."
The word again. It sat between us the way it had sat between us in the kitchen—heavy, warm, alive with implication. I watched it land on her. Watched the shift in her posture, the almost imperceptible tightening of her crossed arms, the way her chin lifted a fraction of an inch.
"If I pick the lock?"
"Consequences."
"If I don't sleep six hours?"
"Have a guess."
“Consequences?”
“Clever girl.”
She tilted her head. The lamplight caught the scar through her left eyebrow. Her eyes were dark and steady and aimed at me with the targeting precision I'd learned to associate with the most dangerous version of her — not the version that swung bookends, but the version that watched and calculated and chose her moment.
"What if I talk back?"
Low. Deliberate. The question was a key being inserted into a lock, and she was turning it slowly, feeling for the mechanism.
"Depends," I said. My voice was steady. My pulse was not. "On how you talk back."
Silence. Three seconds. Her eyes didn't leave mine.
"Would youspankme?"
