If we'd breached three minutes earlier, what would I have stumbled into?
My teeth grind until pain shoots through my jaw. I breathe through my nose and count again.
One. Two. Three.
Violet stirs.
Not awake. Somewhere between the bottom of sleep and the surface of it, that place where the body moves before the mind gives permission. Her hand slides across the sheet, fingers searching. Slow. Uncoordinated. Opening and closing against the fabric like she's trying to find something that should be there.
I take her hand.
Both of mine fold around it. Scarred knuckles. Blood in the creases. Hands too large for hers, hands built for things that would make her flinch if she were conscious to see them clearly. But she's not conscious. She's somewhere in the dark, reaching, and these are the hands that are here.
She makes a sound. Not a word. Small and lost and barely there, the kind of sound that would disappear in any room that wasn't perfectly silent.
Then, so quiet I almost miss it. "Elio."
Something in my chest starts beating. Something I thought was dead, something I was certain I'd killed years ago through sheer force of will and the understanding that the organ in question was a liability. It starts beating like it's just remembered how.
"I'm here." My voice comes out rough. "Not going anywhere,tesoro."
Her fingers curl around mine. Tight. Then less tight. Then loose, as sleep pulls her back under. Her face smooths. The frown between her brows softens. She settles into the pillow, into the bed, into the hand that's holding hers.
She settles.
I'm never letting her go.
11
VIOLET
The thin mattress actually feels soft for once. And luxurious. I don't remember it being so comfortable either, or smelling anything but mildew and sweat, but here I am, surrounded by the fresh scent of linen.
The lights are brighter today too, dancing against my eyelids like actual sunlight, and the annoying buzz of the fluorescent bulb is blissfully gone. I must have fallen into another dimension inside my cell, because I swear I can feel the breeze on my skin.
I peel my eyes open, disoriented at first before the reality crashes into me. I'm no longerthere.
Was it all a bad dream? Or is this some kind of a sick joke?
My body doesn't trust this. Every muscle is locked, running the same threat assessment it's been running on a loop since I was taken. Where am I. Who's close. Where are the exits. What's the three-hour rotation.
Is this real? Is this a new kind of trick, a softer cage designed to make me lower my guard? Did they drug me and move me and will I open the wrong door and find concrete again?
Except there's no rotation here. No boots on concrete, no distant screaming filtering through the walls. Just birdsong andthe wind in the orange trees and my own pulse slamming against my ribs like it hasn't gotten the memo.
I pinch the inside of my arm. Hard. Fingernails digging into the soft skin above the wrist until it bruises.
It hurts.
The sheets are real. The sunlight is real.
I'm in Elio's room. His bed. His sheets. His space, the one that smelled like citrus and leather, that I tried to reconstruct from memory in a pitch-black cell and couldn't. Because memory is a liar and a cheat, and it dulls everything down to save you the pain of wanting what you can't have.
Memory was wrong. It's stronger than I remembered. Everywhere. In the pillowcase, in the duvet, in the air itself. Like the room has been soaking in him for years and doesn't know how to stop.
He didn't put me in the other room. The gilded cage with the view of the sea I couldn't reach, the pretty suite with the door that locked from the outside. He put me here. Where he sleeps. Where we were together in those last few impossible days before everything detonated, and I woke up on concrete with blood in my hair.
His room. His bed.
