22. Jael
Sticky - FKA Twigs
I ’m allowed to leave the bed. But the handcuffs remain.
Bront? lets me shower. He helps me change into more clothes out of Ms. Klum’s closet. He grunts and gestures toward the kitchen, and when I wander into the room, I find two plates of food set out on the table.
We sit down to share a meal together like two normal people.
We’re anything but. We’re the misfits who chain each other up and point guns around. We’re the ones who stalk and hunt and lure each other into traps.
It feels like acting to pretend otherwise.
The slightly sweet, slightly tangy aroma from the tomato sauce is enough to distract me. I haven’t eaten a real meal in over twenty-four hours and Bront? actually cooked us spaghetti out of the ingredients he found in the pantry. A meal I hadn’t been ambitious enough to try myself during our time in the cabin, mostly because I can’t really cook.
I chose to rely on the canned soup and pouches of oatmeal for a reason.
Bront? looks ridiculous sitting down in the chair across from me. The entire dining set is too small for him. The table’s half his size. The chair wobbles under his heavy weight.
I can’t help snorting back a laugh as I shake my head and look away. When I chance a glance back, I can read his reaction despite his silence and the mask obscuring his face.
It’s become an unexpected talent of mine—picking up on his emotions by looking into his dark forest-green gaze.
I clear my throat. “Sorry. But you know you’re a huge dude. Everything looks miniature next to you. I feel like you’d need specially made furniture…”
He offers no insight either way, setting down a fork and knife for himself and then for me. His massive hand wrapped around the metal utensils make those look small and toy-sized too.
I direct my attention at the plate in front of me.
He really has put together a full-course meal. There’s the spaghetti in the center of the plate and some crisp garlic bread on one side. Steamed veggies on the other. He’s poured us fruit punch to drink.
All ingredients I’d spotted in the pantry and the freezer.
I hold back the smile threatening to spread on my lips. “Do all stalkers in minotaur masks know how to cook?”
My smart-alecky question goes unanswered. Instead, he gestures to the plate he’s put together for me, signaling he wants me to eat.
I sigh and pick up the fork. “Okay, but you have to too—which means that mask has to come off, right?”
He blinks, his broad shoulders tense and still.
I understand immediately, a pang of guilt from last night hitting me.
Up until now, as I woke in bed to the morning light streaming through the window and the hot shower awaiting me, I hadn’t let myself think about it. I’d blocked out everything that happened between us last night.
It was easier to pretend it never happened.
How else was I supposed to function around Bront? when I’d said the cruel things I did? How was I supposed to act after he retaliated in the most twisted, perverse ways and made me come?
Made me enjoy every second of it.
But some of the things I said weigh on me. The conflicting emotions war some more, leaving me caught between the genuine loathing I’ve felt for him and the other feelings he’s begun to stir…
“I don’t think you’re hideous,” I mumble. “I said you were… but you’re not. You just… you look different… and that’s okay. It makes me more curious than anything. It makes me want to know you. I mean, you know, know where the scars come from.”
It feels like I’m going from bad to worse the more I try to explain. Pausing a second time, I inhale another breath and distract myself by spooling spaghetti onto my fork.
“You’re not pathetic. You don’t… you don’t make me sick. I said what I said because I was desperate. I was angry and I wanted to hurt you. Handcuffed to a bed didn’t leave me many options. Mean words had to do. Please… take off your mask.”
A long moment passes between us where I’m left to spool more and more spaghetti noodles onto my fork and he peers at me from across the table. I’m beginning to wonder if this is a hopeless endeavor and things are too fractured between us when he moves. His hands reach up to lift the minotaur mask.
It comes off, revealing his naked, mangled face.
My posture relaxes, my insides fluttering. I smile without realizing it. “That’s better. Thanks.”
I taste my first mouthful of spaghetti and hum in surprise. The garlicky tomato flavor hits my tastebuds more pleasantly than anything I’ve eaten in days. It’s way tastier than the soup and oatmeal I’d relied on.
“This is pretty good,” I say, going for a second forkful, then a third. “Who would expect you could cook?”
I laugh at my own question, feeling lighter than I have in a while.
A strange pivot after the turmoil I’d felt yesterday. I’d been worried and desperate as Sheriff McGrath and Deputy Dudley confronted me. Scared out of my mind as I fled into the woods, trying to escape Bront?. More furious than I’d ever been in my life when I woke to the handcuffs snapped shut on the bed posts.
Swept up in a powerful orgasm that knocked me out for hours.
So many emotions that any person would have whiplash.
But here I am the day after, more focused on spaghetti and my strange meal companion.
“You could’ve let me starve, you know,” I say in between more bites. “After what I did to you, I’d deserve it. I left you without food for more than a day. I didn’t even give you water.”
He’s taken to shoveling the spaghetti into his mouth. He eats just like I’d imagined he would—barbarically without regard to manners and polite society.
It makes me laugh as I pause and watch him tear the garlic bread in half and shove it into his mouth.
He even ditches the fork and scoops up a handful of spaghetti that he dangles over his face and swallows whole.
I’ve never seen anyone eat like he eats before. Not in person. Not without an ounce of shyness or shame. He couldn’t give less of a fuck about what anyone thinks and it’s… refreshing.
“So you’ll cook for me, bathe me, tend to my wounds…” I list off. “You’re not angry with me when you could be.”
He stops between tearing off more garlic bread. His gaze snaps back to mine, steady and unwavering.
“I was scared,” I confess, purging more guilt. It gnaws away at me, begging to be heard. “That’s why I behaved like I have. You’ve terrified me for so long. You stalked me and made me feel crazy. After everything that’s happened—all the ways people have used me and hurt me—I just… I took it out on you.”
Silence.
The spaghetti noodles slip between his fingers. The scars and misshapen features do little to disguise the expression on his face—his wide brow ridge is creased as if in concern, his jaw set. He’s listening to every word, absorbing everything I say.
“You stalked me for years… why?”
When no answer comes, I clutch the fork tighter in my grip. Frustration mounts, familiar and quick.
“Ow!”
I wince and drop the fork, turning over my palm. I’ve clutched the fork so hard I’ve reopened the gash on the inside of my hand.
Blood dribbles to the surface and drips onto the table.
Before I can even react, Bront?’s moving. One second he’s in his chair, the next he’s crossed the kitchen and snatched a towel from the handle on the stove. He’s at my side, taking my hand in his and pressing down on the open gash.
It’s one of several nasty cuts I sustained after running blind in the woods. I hadn’t even realized how scraped up I was until he had bandaged me up last night.
My breath stalls in my throat.
His touch elicits a strange sensation inside me. A tingling warmth spreads, pooling low in my stomach.
He’s so close, I can feel the heat radiating from his skin. I can practically hear the drumbeat of his heart through the thick cavern of his chest.
His hands are so rough and calloused yet so perplexingly gentle as he handles me.
Attentive.
If there was one word to describe him, it would be attentive. For better or worse, he’s watched me for years. He’s paid me more attention than anyone else ever has in my life.
He releases my hand once he’s determined the bleeding has stopped and then tosses the bloody towel in the sink, where it joins the pile of dishes I had left behind.
My cheeks are flushed as he reclaims his seat across from me.
“Um… thanks,” I mutter. “It’s going to take me time to adjust. Some time to learn not to get so frustrated by your silence. I just wish… I’d like to know more about you.”
He tilts his head as if considering what I’ve said.
An idea comes to me and I use his silence to my advantage, taking it as permission to continue.
“How old are you? Over thirty?”
Pause.
And then… he nods.
“But under forty?”
Another nod.
I chew on my lip. My focus falls to the scars decorating his neck, chest, and shoulders and every other part of him. He still hasn’t put on a shirt to replace the one I’d cut off him.
“Were you born this way?” I ask, gesturing to his scars.
He hesitates again, then draws chills onto my skin by shaking his head.
I frown, feeling sad for him not for the first time. “Then… will you tell me what happened? I’d like to know.”
A long silence stretches between us with no head gestures to answer. He’s considered what I’ve asked and finally decided to speak.
His voice sounds as startling as the first time I’d heard it—a naturally hoarse grunting sound.
“Someday.”
I nod this time, accepting his answer. “What do you want from me?”
His dark eyes hold mine, sending more chills down my spine. “You.”
You.
YOU.
The three letter word bounces around my head as I blink and quickly look away.
My pulse ticks up, beating faster. I’m thrown by such a simple answer that probably should’ve been incredibly obvious yet feels so overwhelming at the same time.
This man has stalked me, watched over me for years, and all along the only thing he wanted was…
I push it away, banishing it from my thoughts. If I don’t focus on what’s most important, then I’ll get confused and lose my way like I have in the past.
I have to find my sister.
Drawing a breath, I push my plate away and say, “I appreciate it. But the only thing I want is to find my sister. Nothing else matters until I do.”
Something flickers in his gaze. Knowledge that glints plain as day.
“I can show you.”
My brows snap closer. “What?”
“I can show you.”
He sounds so certain, like he’s known all along.
I swallow hard, my senses suddenly heightened. “Okay… then show me.”