I’m no longer alone.
9
SOPHIA
The kitchen smells like citrus and sugar and something close to mania. I’ve been up all night, and since baking has sort of become my comfort zone, I baked.
There’s lemon loaf cooling on the counter, two trays of muffins, a stack of scones, three kinds of bread, and something that was supposed to be focaccia but turned into a stress response.
Dawn barely brushes the windows when his footsteps reach me. I keep my back turned, tracking each one. Ten, then a hesitation—just long enough to notice, too brief to interpret.Eleven, twelve.Then nothing but the sound of my own breathing.
“You don’t write. You don’t call.” I slide a knife through the center of the loaf. “I could have died here alone, you know?”
I can feel the silence from across the room. It isn’t empty—it has a shape, a weight, the density of someone choosing their stillness very carefully.
I glance at him where he stands at the bottom of the stairs, dark against the pale morning light. Hood up. Buff in place. Hands bare. Watching.
I cut another slice. Clean. Precise. “I could have tripped on those stairs. Cracked my skull open. Or maybe slipped on the bathroom tiles.” A faint shrug. “That’s more me.” This time I turn to face him, leaning against the kitchen counter. “No apology? No ‘sorry I left you in the mountains like a stray dog’?”
Still nothing. No denial. Just that quiet, infuriating stillness.
I gesture vaguely to the counters without looking away from him. “I’m not sure, but do kidnappers eat?”
His gaze drifts past me, taking inventory. The bread. The pastries. The trays. The sheer volume.
“I blame you,” I add. “I was bored. So I baked.” I set the knife down and wipe my hands on a towel. “Now I can’t stop.”
A beat.
“I’ll get more supplies.” His voice breaks the silence, like a stone dropped into still water. The sound seems to alter the air between us, making the kitchen suddenly smaller.
I blink. “Great. I’ll make a list, and we can play house. Creepy enough for you?”
His eyes flicker, almost imperceptibly—not to the bread or the window. To me. And they stay there.
I clear my throat. “You should try the lemon loaf. It’s my greatest accomplishment in this house. Of course, you’d have to remove the buff if you want to eat.”
The pause before he answers is a half-second too long. “I’m not hungry.” He doesn’t move. Doesn’t retreat. Doesn’t advance. Just stands there like gravity has anchored him in place.
“You know,” I say carefully, “it’s considered rude when a guest does something nice for you and you refuse it.”
“You’re not a guest.”
“Guest. Prisoner.” I shrug one shoulder. “Same difference. Oh, wait. No. A guest can leave. I can’t.”
Something moves through him then. Not visible—he doesn’t shift, doesn’t exhale, doesn’t betray it with anything so convenient as a tell. It’s something beneath the surface of all that practiced stillness that tightens and doesn’t release.
“I bought you more clothes,” he mutters, like it inconvenienced him. “They’re in your room.”
“If you mean that room upstairs with no personality,” I reply, pushing off the counter, “that’s not my room.”
His gaze pins me. And I hold it.
“What’s your name?” I ask.
“I told you.”
“Your full name.”
