Chapter 6
I dress in the dark. My jeans, my semi-clean t-shirt, which I scrubbed with soap in the bathroom sink. The shoes I wore the day he took me, waiting by the door like patient dogs.
Except me.
Through the walls, I hear it. The distant clatter of kitchen prep. Life happening beneath me while I plan my escape.
He told me the apartment door is unlocked, but that he would know if I tried to leave. So I figure he has somebody watching the corridor. Or a camera, more likely. So I won't go that way.
The bathroom window is small, meant for ventilation, not escape. But I'm small too, made smaller by years of making myself fit into spaces that weren't quite right. The window opens outward onto the fire escape. Iron and rust and March humidity already making the air thick.
I pull back the curtain. Stand on the toilet lid. The window resists at first, paint sticking in the humid morning air. Then it gives, swinging wide to reveal the ladder bolted to the building's brick face.
My hands shake as I grip the sill. Not from fear of the height. Two stories is nothing to a body that's been thrown by dance partners. They shake because I'm running from something that started growing in the dark last night. That curiosity I named. The way my body went warm when I said his name.
The fire escape is exactly what I expected. Rusted in places where the Miami rain has worked at it for decades. The ladder sections are intact, though the bottom one doesn't fully extend. There's a drop at the end. Four feet, maybe five.
I climb out headfirst, twisting to get my shoulders through, then my hips. My feet find the grating. The metal is already warm despite the early hour, the March humidity making everything feel damp and close. The air clings like a second skin.
Two flights down. I move carefully but not slowly.
Each step deliberate. Years of ballet mean I know exactly where my weight is, exactly how to place each foot.
The rust flakes under my palms as I grip the railing.
At the first landing, I pause, listening.
Nothing from inside the building. Just the distant hum of early morning Miami, delivery trucks on the main streets, the faint pulse of music from clubs that never close.
Second landing. The ladder ends here, but there's still a gap to the alley floor. I lower myself to hang from the bottom rung, my body extending fully. The drop is shorter now. Four feet from my toes to the asphalt.
I let go.
The landing jars through my ankles, my knees. But I've landed from higher jumps a thousand times. My body knows how to absorb the impact, how to roll through it. I'm standing in the alley behind the building, dawn light just starting to gray the sky.
The cross street is visible at the alley's far end. Forty feet of open ground. Beyond that, Miami. Beyond that, anywhere that isn't this apartment, this man, this version of myself that noticed how his breath catches when I move too close to him in the kitchen alcove.
I run.
Twenty feet from the street, my body stops me.
Not my mind. My body. Like someone pressed a hand to my chest, like the air itself became a wall. My feet plant themselves on the asphalt before I've registered why.
He fills the alley mouth completely. Black clothes, massive frame, absolutely still. My brain can't process it all at once. Just fragments. He's there. He knew. How did he know?
The streetlight behind him throws his face into shadow, but I know he's looking at me. Not at my face. He never looks at my face. But at me. The whole fact of me, standing in his alley before 6 A.M.
My lungs forget how to work. The morning air sits thick in my throat, refusing to go down.
He starts to walk toward me. Not running.
Not hurrying. The slow, measured pace of a man who knows the outcome is already decided.
His boots crunch on the asphalt. Deliberate, unhurried, certain.
Each step closes the distance with the patience of someone who has all the time in the world.
The walk is so slow I could count the seconds between his steps, so certain I know he'll reach me no matter what I do.
I could run back. Scramble for the fire escape, climb three rungs before he caught my ankle and yanked me back down without effort.
My body even tenses for it, ready to coil and spring.
But it's a fantasy that only lasts as long as it takes my brain to process the size of him, blocking out the entire mouth of the alley, his feet planted in a way that says he's already performed every calculation and found all the variables wanting.
There was no version of this morning where I escape.
Maybe there never was.
He doesn't break stride until he's only a few feet away, close enough that the heat roiling off his body competes with the thick Miami air.
I can smell the faint sharpness of cedar soap, can see the lines of the Saint Michael tattoo in stark relief.
Up close, he's not just big—he takes up all the space there is, and then somehow more.
I keep expecting him to speak, to say something clever or cruel, but he doesn't. We just stand there in the alley, the two of us, the world peeled away until all that's left is my ragged, embarrassing breathing.
The air between us thickens with all the words neither of us is saying. Words like: You know I can't let you go.
He moves first, which is how it always goes with him. I'm not ready, not even a little, when the arm comes around my waist. His hand is enormous, fingers spanning my side like a corset. He scoops the backs of my knees with his other arm and lifts me in a single, seamless motion.
My perspective tilts. The alley spins, and I'm airborne.
My heart lurches up into my throat, but I don't scream or thrash.
I just freeze, the way animals do at the moment of capture.
His grip is harder than necessary, finger bones pressed in deep enough to leave a record.
Not malicious, only certain. Like he expects I'll wriggle, or bite, or try to run again, and he isn't taking chances.
I want to flinch. I want to say a lot of things, all of them humiliating.
But I don't. Instead, I go limp in the cradle of his arms, making myself deadweight.
Let him do the heavy lifting, if that's what he wants.
Maybe it's what I want too. The shame of that thought is like a second skin, hot and close-fitting, but I can't shake it off.
He starts up the back service stairs, carrying me like a sack of flour.
The movement is smooth, each step measured and unhurried.
I expect to bounce or jostle but he absorbs every impact, the force of his ascent barely translating into me at all.
My cheek presses against the fabric of his t-shirt, a thin barrier between my skin and the heat of him.
I can feel the way his breathing stays measured, never spiking, never ragged. Like I'm a burden of no consequence.
My eyes drift shut for a second, and I notice the sticky humidity on the back of my neck, the faint vibration of his pulse against my temple. My hands are balled so tight that my nails bite my palms.
On the second landing, I expect him to say something. An insult, a warning, a question about why I tried to run. Instead, there's only silence, except for our feet and the echoing drip of AC units above us.
He doesn't look at me during the ascent.
Not even a glance down to check if I'm behaving, or conscious, or frightened.
The only time his focus shifts is to scan the hallway before pushing open the apartment door with his shoulder.
Even then, his face is set in profile, jaw clenched, eyes flat.
I want to believe he isn't angry, but the strain in his neck tells another story.
We cross the apartment in twelve steps. I count them.
In each one, my body registers the points of contact: where his fingers dig into the meat of my thigh, where his forearm traps my knees, where his chest supports my ribs.
With every footfall, I rehearse what I'll do next.
Fight him when he puts me down? Scream? Cry?
The only plan I can commit to is keeping my mouth shut.
He deposits me on the bed with more force than required. The bounce shoves me toward the wall. I have a wild, animal urge to scramble away, but I don't move. His message is clear: You want to run? You can try. But this is where you live now.
I lie there, the throb of new bruises lighting up the left side of my body.
My chest rises and falls too fast, a visible betrayal, but I don't care anymore.
I look at him—really look at him—standing in the doorway, blocking escape.
His arms are loose at his sides, but the tension is everywhere else.
In his shoulders, in his jaw, in the way his eyes avoid mine even now, after everything.
He stands there, a silent sentinel on the threshold. Neither of us speaks. I want to ask if he's disappointed in me, if he was expecting better, or if this was always just a test he knew I'd fail.
His voice, when it finally comes, gives me the longest speech he ever has.
"Four miles of cameras in every direction. You run, I know before you make the corner. The city is your prison." He pauses, and something shifts under the words—regret, maybe, or just a different kind of warning. "I'd prefer not to have to restrain you."
The last phrase lands differently than the threat that preceded it. Prefer not to. The first indication that any of this matters to him beyond the operational.
"I understand," I whisper, the words escaping before I can stop them.
He turns, walks out. The door closes with a soft click.
Then the lock turns from the outside.
The sound is decisive. Final. For five days I've been technically captive, but the door has never been locked. Now it is. Now I'm literally imprisoned, not just theoretically. The click of the lock changes everything and nothing. I was never free. But now we both know it.
I lie where he dropped me, my left ribs throbbing with each breath.
My body holds the memory differently than my mind.
The heat of his chest through my shirt, the controlled power in his arms, the way being lifted by him made something low in my belly clench with recognition.
I press my thighs together, hating the dampness I find there.
I lift my shirt to check the damage. The bruises are perfect ovals, dark as storm clouds against my pale skin.
My finger traces one, and I have to bite my lip against the sound that wants to escape.
Not quite pain, not quite something else.
Tomorrow they'll be purple-green. Then yellow.
Then gone. But right now they're fresh enough that I can see the exact shape of his fingers, can measure the spread of his grip.
Four small points where his control slipped.