Chapter 7
The morning light catches on the desk where he’s left breakfast again. Toast with butter, berries from the mini-fridge, and an orange peeled in five neat strips then reassembled into its original shape. The eighth one this week. Maybe the ninth.
The bruises on my ribs have faded to yellow-green shadows. Seven days since he carried me back up those stairs. Eleven days total in this apartment.
The space has become familiar in ways that unsettle me.
The precise angle of morning sun through the window.
The way the floorboards feel cool under my bare feet near the bathroom.
The soft click when he folds his bedroll against the back wall every dawn, the scratch of stubble when he washes his face at the sink.
The flashes of my reflection in the dancer's mirror he brought for me.
Cedar soap that lingers in the air long after he's gone.
These small rhythms have replaced the terror that held me rigid those first nights.
Papa's watercolor has moved too. Sometime in the last few days it migrated from the desk, where it lay face-down like contraband, to the wall above the bed, hung on two small nails without a word of explanation.
My father's garden, displayed where I sleep.
I don't know what to make of that, so I've decided not to ask.
I've figured out that we are above La Sirena, an elite nightclub that even I have heard of.
Even a small-town girl from Pristine knows that this is where the rich and powerful come to party in Miami.
Which explains the fine quality of the oak desk and cashmere blanket, but not the cheap kitchen or cramped apartment.
Every fact I garner only adds more questions.
And I still don't have an answer to the biggest question of all: why am I here? He refuses to discuss it, but it seems to have something to do with security for the club.
It is apparent that Gunner heads La Sirena's huge security detail. He answers calls, sends text messages, all related to perimeters and weapons and threats.
He slides the Glock into his waistband with the same precision he uses to peel my daily orange. The knife stays in his boot, always there, a reminder of what he is beneath the careful domesticity.
The lamp sits on my bedside table where he moved it without explanation, casting its green-tinted glow across the pages of Persuasion each night.
The door hasn't been locked again since that morning after he carried me back.
I've tested it twice, both times finding the hallway empty, the cameras he mentioned watching from every corner.
Yesterday morning he let me walk with him to the back garden at dawn, though we didn't speak.
Just stood in the humidity while he checked something near a stone bench covered in bougainvillea, his hand near his weapon even there.
What disturbs me most is what hasn't happened.
Eleven days since he took me from Papa's cottage. Eleven days sleeping eight feet apart in this small space. Eleven days of meals delivered with precision, of sharing four hundred square feet without a single violation of the boundaries he set that first night.
The world taught me what men who look like him do to women who look like me.
The lessons started young: cross the street, hold your keys between your fingers, never be alone with someone whose hands could wrap around your throat.
Yet here I am, alone with exactly that man, and he sleeps on the floor.
He brings me paint supplies in my father's brand.
He peels oranges with the patience of someone who has nowhere else to be.
And he won't look at my face.
His refusal to look makes my skin prickle.
The held breath before something breaks.
More unsettling than if he stared. More disturbing than if he watched me constantly.
Because men like him are supposed to look.
They're supposed to take their fill of what they've claimed.
Instead, he tends to me with the careful distance of someone handling something radioactive.
My breath catches sometimes when he enters, just a small hitch I can't control. His cedar scent fills the apartment, and my body responds before my mind can stop it. My responses are more real than anything Jarrod ever squeezed out of me, even though I am a prisoner.
I need to understand what he is. The only test I know is the one he's refusing to give me.
If I can make him look, really look at me, I'll see what kind of man has me locked in this tower above a club.
If he keeps refusing, I stay suspended in this strange purgatory of careful meals and unacknowledged proximity.
The mission crystallizes as I stand at the counter, pressing my thumb to the inside of my left wrist where I've painted a delicate line of leaves. Small marks I've been adding when the urge strikes, keeping Papa's garden on my skin while I'm trapped here.
I'm going to make him look at me. Whatever it takes.
Three nights later, the cabaret music drifts up louder than usual. I'm alone. He's been gone since dinner, down in whatever office he manages security from. The bass thrums through the floorboards, punctuated by applause that suggests something special is happening below.
I follow the sound down the back hallway, past the laundry room where I've been washing my few clothes, toward the service stairs. At the top landing, I discover a small balcony overlooking the main floor, a service vantage point tucked behind the upper architecture where nobody can see me.
La Sirena spreads below me in all its art deco glory. My breath catches at the sight. Warm golden light bathes hundreds of guests. Crystal chandeliers cast dancing shadows across walls of burgundy and brass. The crowd glitters with diamonds and silk, Miami's elite in their element.
A woman commands the stage, tall, statuesque in a black gown that pools at her feet, her hair a vivid green.
Her voice fills the space without effort, something torch-song slow that makes the room hold its breath.
She must be the club's headline performer, the one who draws people back night after night.
Movement below catches my eye. Adrian, who brings me food occasionally when Gunner is busy, works the floor with fluid grace.
He touches a shoulder here, shares a laugh there, his attention completely present for whoever stands before him.
Even from up here, I can see how he makes each person feel like the only one in the room.
His white shirt sleeves peek from under his dark jacket, his hair just disheveled enough to seem approachable rather than perfect.
Then the music shifts. The singer's song ends, the lights dim slightly, and a new figure steps onto the dance floor.
The woman wears deep red, beaded along the bodice and hem, the dress ending just above her knees. Her dark hair is swept up, her feet bare against the polished wood. She stands alone in the center of three hundred watching eyes.
What follows isn't burlesque, isn't strip-tease, isn't anything crude.
It's sophisticated and sensual, living in the space between art and seduction.
She moves slowly, using the floor, her own body, the air itself as partners.
Every gesture deliberate but never crude.
She knows exactly what she's doing, commanding the room's attention while maintaining complete control of how much she reveals.
My whole body recognizes what she's doing. She's dancing, owning every eye in the room. This is the kind of dance I got expelled from the academy for, and this woman is doing it to adulation.
The hunger that follows the recognition makes me grip the balcony railing. My nipples tighten against my sleep shirt. I press my thighs together, but it only makes the ache worse.
I want to be her. Want those eyes on me as I move through the choreography I've been perfecting in private. Want to peel away layers while three hundred strangers watch, to register their desire in my own body, to know I'm the source of the room's held breath.
This is why the conservatory expelled me. Not for being too sexual, but for enjoying being watched while I was.
This hunger to exhibit myself, to be witnessed in my most raw and sensual form, it's what I've been hiding behind wrap skirts and teacher smiles. The good girl Papa raised shouldn't want this. But I do. God help me, I've always wanted this.
Seeing it performed, claimed, celebrated, seeing this woman turn her body into art while the audience pays rapt attention, it transforms from shame into possibility.
And underneath the general hunger, a specific face surfaces.
Not three hundred strangers. Him. The man who refuses to look at me is the audience I've been imagining without admitting it to myself.
Every time I dance alone in his apartment while he's gone, every small adjustment I make to catch light from the window, every moment I spend aware of where he is in our shared space, I've been rehearsing for his eyes.
The realization makes heat pool low in my belly, wetness gathering between my thighs that I don't want to acknowledge but can't ignore.
This exhibitionist need isn't new. I've carried it since the conservatory, maybe before.
But naming it, claiming it, wanting him specifically to witness it, that's the revelation that changes everything.
I stay through the rest of her performance, memorizing how she uses the space, how she balances revelation with restraint. When she finishes, the applause is thunderous. She doesn't bow, just walks off with the same control she maintained throughout.
I return to the apartment, my body still humming with recognition. The exhibitionist hunger I've been hiding has a shape now, a stage, an audience of one who won't even look at my face.
That's going to change.