Chapter 5
His hand brushes mine in the doorway and my body betrays me completely. Three days of careful distance destroyed by half a second of accidental contact.
The kitchen alcove is too narrow for two bodies to pass without touching.
I'm rinsing my coffee cup when he moves toward the sink, and I step out as he steps in.
The back of his hand catches the back of mine.
His skin burns against my cold fingers, calluses rough against my knuckles, and heat shoots straight through my core, sudden and total.
We both freeze. He goes utterly still at the sink, his massive frame blocking out the morning light from the window. Neither of us acknowledges what just happened, but my pulse hammers so hard I'm sure he can hear it.
My body remembers touch exists, remembers wanting exists, and I hate him for waking that memory. Three days in this apartment, three days of him tending to my needs while refusing to look at my face, and this is the first time we've touched since he gripped my arm at my cottage threshold.
"Has my father been told something?" My voice comes out small, testing the boundaries of what I'm allowed to ask. The question has been burning in my throat since I arrived.
"Yes. You sent a text." He doesn't turn from the sink, refilling a water bottle with his back to me. His black t-shirt stretches across shoulders that could break me without effort. "Said you needed time away."
"Me? I didn't send a text."
"I sent it from your phone."
The violation of it sits bitter on my tongue. I shoot him an angry glare, but he never looks at me properly so I don't know if he saw.
But then he goes still again, like I've hit something true. The Saint Michael tattoo on his forearm flexes as his hand grips the bottle tighter under the running water, and I know he saw.
"Miss Macie's?" I ask, quieter now, pulling back from whatever edge I just touched.
"Family emergency." He turns off the faucet. "She arranged a replacement."
The thought escapes before I can stop it: "You did your homework. I'll give you that."
The words surprise me as much as him. My real voice, dry and observational, surfacing without permission.
He freezes completely, water bottle half-raised.
For three heartbeats, neither of us moves.
The morning light catches on the knife in his boot, the gun at his hip, all that contained violence going perfectly still because I let my actual voice slip out.
Then he walks past me, careful not to brush against me again. The doorway that seemed too narrow a moment ago suddenly has enough space. He leaves without another word.
My hand shakes as I set down the coffee cup. The small victory of making him react tastes like danger. I press my hand to my sternum, trying to slow my racing heart. I don't know the rules. Don't know if that tone is allowed, if punishment comes later, if I've crossed some invisible line.
This is Thursday morning, and nothing has gone the way I expected.
I've been here for three days, and he hasn't looked at my face.
Not since the electric contact across the living room in my cottage when I first laid eyes on him.
Since, then, nothing. Not those first two nights when I ran through every protocol I knew.
Not during the silent food deliveries. His eyes slide past me like I'm furniture, landing on walls, windows, anything but my face.
Every tool I've developed for being looked at, my years of ballet training, working on posture, poise, and presence, are useless against a man who refuses to look.
Through the window, I can see glimpses of a garden two stories below. Bougainvillea spilling over a wall, a stone bench, the edge of what might be a citrus tree. Beautiful, tended with obvious care. Someone loves that garden.
My father would love that garden.
Two hours pass. He's back at the desk with his files, and I pretend to read on the bed while actually studying him.
The tilt of his head when he concentrates.
The way his pencil moves in precise annotations.
The Saint Michael on his forearm catching morning light, sword raised, wings spread.
A warrior saint on the arm of a man who could snap my neck without effort.
Something catches my eye on his desk. A watercolor painting, face down in the corner.
Just the edge visible, but I can see pink bleeding into the paper, the buckle of watercolor paper that's gotten wet.
My chest tightens. But I can't see enough to know, and I won't ask.
Won't give him the satisfaction of knowing I'm curious about anything in his world.
The silence between us has texture now, weighted with all the things we're not saying.
"The garden." I break the silence, gesturing toward the window. "Downstairs. Whose is it?"
"Building's." He doesn't look up from his files.
"Who tends it?"
The pencil stops moving. A pause that stretches too long before he answers. "Staff. Various staff."
The lie sits between us like a third presence. I make a small sound in my throat. Not quite a laugh, not quite a scoff. Just a single note that says: I know you're lying.
I return to my book, but my mind keeps circling. In my head, I'm composing what I'd say if I were brave enough: Various staff don't make gardens look like that. That's the work of someone who cares.
The almost-smile doesn't quite reach my face. When did I start narrating my kidnapping in my own head? When did the terror ease enough to let wit creep back in?
The bathroom tiles are cold under my feet, grounding me in the endless present of this captivity.
Ten minutes of small rituals. Washing my face, brushing my teeth again, the activities that fill captive hours.
My reflection looks hollow-eyed, hair escaping the loose bun that Miss Macie would be shocked at.
I avoid looking too directly at the woman I'm becoming.
When I emerge, I stop short.
On the kitchen counter: paint tubes, brushes, a sponge, clean rags, a plastic palette.
My breath catches, heart racing. Liquitex Heavy Body.
The label might as well be my childhood name.
Thirty years of Papa's paintings made with exactly this brand.
My hand knows the weight of these tubes before I pick them up.
Anger flares hot in my chest. He's been studying Papa. Either his work or his studio. Somehow he knows the brand, knows what it would mean to me. Extracting details, providing for needs I haven't voiced. Everything but actually looking at me.
The apartment door opens and closes. He's gone again.
I glance up and see something else new—a floor-to-ceiling dancer's mirror on a stand. I will be able to check my poses in front of my reflection, to make sure my lift doesn't drop.
But first, the paints. I stand at the counter, holding the magenta tube. Papa's favorite pink. My hand closes around it, my body a step ahead of me. I won't paint anything he can take. Won't give him something to hang or confiscate or study.
But I need to paint something. The urge is older than this captivity, older than my fear, older than almost anything except dance.
I turn my left hand palm up, then over. The back of my hand. The only surface in this apartment that's mine.
I gather supplies and bring them to the desk: three pinks, green, black, the smallest brush. That watercolor on his desk taunts me from its face-down position, but I focus on my own work. I sit on the side opposite his papers, claiming my own space at his desk.
On the palette, I mix the pinks until they match my memory: Maman's heritage roses in late spring.
The ones Papa still tends every year, pruning them with religious devotion though she's been gone nineteen years.
The ones she planted the year before she died, when I was six and she was already getting thin but still laughed when dirt got under her fingernails.
The rose takes shape on the back of my left hand. Small, palm-sized, below the knuckles. Cabbage-shaped petals in three shades of pink, one dark green leaf pointing toward my wrist. My mother's flower.
I haven't painted since I was seven. The rose is primitive. Petals too uniform, one shade slightly muddy. But it's mine. On my skin. In this apartment where I'm held captive. A small defiance, a tiny claim to who I was before this room. Something to bring me closer to my father.
The watercolor lying face-down on the desk catches my attention again, and I flip it over.
Suddenly, I can sense Papa in the room. This is his work.
I would recognize his brushstrokes anywhere, his color palette.
The painting is beautiful, of course. A small walled garden with a stone bench in the center, bougainvillea creeping up the walls, light catching the leaves of a citrus tree.
It is the garden downstairs, the one I can just see if I press my nose against the window.
Could this be why Gunner took me? Because of a painting Papa did of his garden?
The door opens, and I drop the watercolor with a start. Gunner fills the doorway completely, has to duck slightly under the frame. The Saint Michael tattoo flexes as he grips the doorframe. Six and a half feet of contained violence studying my small rebellion with paint.
I slowly pick up my small paintbrush and resume work on my hand. If he wants to see what I'm doing, he'll have to look at me directly. He'll have to break his own rule.
Thirty seconds of silence. I feel his attention on my hand, on the small rose taking shape. My brush keeps moving, adding a shadow to a petal, though my hand trembles slightly. The pause stretches, weighted with something I can't name.
He doesn't speak. Finally walks to the kitchen, gets water, leaves again without a word.
I add the final touches to the leaf. Cap the paints.
Rinse the brush carefully, watching pink water swirl down the drain, then darker pink, then green, then clear.
The supplies stay on the counter. I'm not putting them away, not accepting or rejecting, just leaving them in limbo like everything else in this apartment.
I return to the bed, the rose drying on my skin. My mother's garden on my hand. A small bright thing in this cold place.
Night falls in the familiar rhythm I'm learning. He brings dinner, something with rice and vegetables that smells like someone who knows how to cook made it with care, and sets it on the desk without looking at me. Maybe I should paint a rose on my damn face, then he'll have to look at me.
The knife in his boot catches the lamplight as he moves. He sits in the shadows, pretending to read files he's probably memorized, while I eat in the pool of lamplight he gave me.
"Why the hell am I here?" I finally demand. "I just got home from work one day to find some strange massive man waiting for me, he kidnaps me just to feed me oranges? What is going on here?"
I don't expect an answer, and I don't get one. Just a line of tension across the back of his massive shoulders, which doesn't dissipate no matter how many times I huff and sigh.
At ten, I go through my evening routine. Change into the gray sleep shirt that's become my uniform. The fabric is soft from wear, hitting mid-thigh, the only comfortable thing in this place that stays so cold. I brush my teeth, wash my face, avoid the mirror. Come out to find him still at the desk.
I climb into bed, turn toward the wall. Twenty minutes later, I hear the familiar sounds.
The bedroll unfolding, boots being removed, the thin blanket settling.
Eight feet between us in the dark. Close enough that I can hear him breathe when the traffic noise fades.
Far enough that we can pretend we're alone.
The day runs through my mind:
Our hands brushing in that narrow doorway. Half a second of contact that lit every nerve. His heat against my perpetual cold. The way we both froze.
Gunner writing as me to my father. The violation of him pretending to be me.
My dry observation that stopped him cold. The real me, slipping out before I could stop her.
These moments stack up in the dark, each one a small adjustment to what I thought I knew. I've been here three days and expected violence at every turn. But I've found something else.
My body registers what my mind won't name.
The place between my thighs aches with each heartbeat, wet and wanting in a way that horrifies me.
My nipples are hard against the soft cotton, visible even in the dark.
My body goes its own way, wanting the hands that took me, craving the eyes that won't meet mine.
Not desire. That's too clean a word. Curiosity. About the hands that peeled the orange with such precision. About the man who lies about gardens. About why he won't look at me when looking is what everyone else does. About what would happen if he did.
The violence I've been waiting for hasn't come. The realization sits strange in my chest, rearranging everything I thought I understood. Instead, I'm lying in his bed with my mother's rose drying on my hand while he sleeps on the floor, and nothing makes sense anymore.
I press my thighs together, trying to ease the ache.
It only makes it worse. The fear is still here, real and present.
But something else has joined it in the dark.
Something that makes me wonder what those scarred hands would feel like on my skin.
Something that makes me listen to his breathing and wonder if he's really asleep.
The thought forms before I can stop it, landing hard: What else am I wrong about?