13. Chapter 13
13
HER
W e separated just inside the door from the garage with only a brief kiss, both of us having underestimated how difficult it would be to quietly go to our separate areas of the house.
Thankfully, the place was blessedly quiet and still, the mourning doves cooing in the cool morning breeze the only sound. The light wasn’t on in the kitchen, a sure sign the housekeeper was sleeping in, just as he had predicted she would.
He’d lost the coin toss, but I’d lied and told him he’d won. And even though my head swam with potential worst-case scenarios when he started the ignition, I forgot them as soon as I saw the way the Cadillac’s engine purred like a lover under his careful touch, the curious grin he stole as he tested the accelerator, the way he ribbed me for my musical tastes as I fiddled with the radio knobs, and the way the breeze moved through the golden strands of his hair as we followed the sunrise through the valley and down the nearly empty highway. How could anything about this be wrong?
We’re not saying goodbye. It’s not forever , I recited to myself, thinking of Erica and Milagros as I walked alone up the silent stairs to my room. Sometimes it works out. Sometimes it works out. It’s not forever.
It may not have been forever, but when even a day seemed too long to wait, not forever sounded like a very long time indeed.
Last night, in the walled garden that we’d claimed as ours, we’d managed to see each other—no, to resee each other—in the shape of the people we would be if the world were not what it was. To feel and touch and taste what our imagined eternity could be.
But in the dawn light, there was hardly anything that wasn’t uncertain, starting with what Erica and her associates would find.
You know that if it gets to the point where only I can help my sister, I’ll go. And I won’t think twice about it.
And why were those words echoing in my head and no others? Not his vow not to give up on me, not his assertion that I was his only dream. Not the way he had looked at me, proving it was true. Why couldn’t I simply focus on what I had? The fact that he wasn’t leaving yet?
Because he wasn’t leaving yet. But he could. He could. And he could be sold on a whim, too, especially if my father’s business interests played out even the least bit different than what he envisioned. And that was without Max Langer’s scheming—or his attempts to thwart it—in play.
And if and when he left, I would have to accept that it might be forever. Because promising to agree to let him go was part of why I had him back.
It was only November. I still had my final exam to think about—and next semester, for that matter. Surely the fact that I had passed would be enough for my father to agree for the tutoring to continue. Yes, it was for an hour a day only, but we’d done more with less. And it was that thought that enabled me to at last close my eyes, even out my breathing, and sleep.
HIM
Turned out the garden was remarkably peaceful and relaxing when I wasn’t working in it. That was my main observation as I reclined that night on the cushions of the sand-colored chaise in the outdoor “room” Louisa had introduced me to, staring down at the phone. The night, alas, was no clearer than last night had been.
It was Saturday, but it felt like Sunday. The fence was done, the housekeeper’s list for me was only eight items long, and none of them involved grievous bodily injury. Plus, I’d gotten to drive . So aside from the fact that I’d heard nothing from Erica about Maeve’s whereabouts, I felt very lucky indeed.
It kind of scared me. Because fallacy or no fallacy, it was hard to shake the notion that lucky didn’t last.
That morning, I’d decided not to risk drawing more attention to myself by going downstairs. As odd as the housekeeper clearly found it to see me up earlier than her, especially on a day when I explicitly didn’t have to be, it would be odder still if she’d spotted me stumbling downstairs at 6:45 a.m. Instead, the first thing I did was hide the new phone in a different, better spot, one I was sure nobody knew about—only to go retrieve it half an hour later, against my better judgment. After all, carrying it around was exactly how I’d gotten into trouble before, and that had only led to a three-day-long argument. I suspected the next time wouldn’t go half so well.
I put the phone down and picked up the book of Roman comedies Louisa had given me. I’d been keenly interested once she’d told me more about them, but I was also secretly afraid they’d all read like Shakespeare. However, in a modern translation, the language was simple enough for even a foreigner to understand.
But there was something missing, and it didn’t take long for me to put the book down again to stare at the phone, reminding myself of all the reasons why it was a bad idea to send Louisa a message, even though she was only upstairs and I didn’t have a goddamn thing to say except that I missed her. Of course if ours was anything resembling a normal relationship, that wouldn’t matter.
But it wasn’t. And it did.
Before I could decide, the phone vibrated.
She was calling me .
I snatched up the phone and answered, “Hey,” greeted only by silence. “Lou?”
The line remained silent, but from behind me came uneven, delirious laughter. Male laughter. And a second later, the phone was snatched right out of my unwary hand.
Fuck. No shit, luck didn’t last.
“Is that what you’re calling her now?”
I rose from the chaise slowly, keeping my eyes fixed on Corey, who snapped the phone shut, weighing it in his hand like some delicious morsel he was contemplating taking a bite of.
“I know she’s not calling you anything, except ‘here, boy.’ Or maybe she just whistles.”
Corey laughed loudly and merrily at his joke. This was his birthday gift to himself, it seemed. Coming here solely to torment the one person who had been in his crosshairs for weeks—and evidently, it wasn’t Louisa.
The walking, talking thorn in my side wasted no time at all rubbing my stupidity and carelessness in my face, snatching up the Plautus book from where it lay on the chaise, holding it upside down by the spine. His face bore a bloated, rosy glow even in the rapidly dimming light. His wavy dark hair was disheveled; his polo shirt and once-crisp twill shorts wrinkled and dusty as if he’d fallen on the sidewalk somewhere along the way and picked himself up. He wasn’t entirely steady on his feet. But he was steady enough.
Enough to make my heart start pounding a fast, eerie, familiar rhythm. I should walk away. I should find Louisa. I should find the housekeeper. I should—but it was already too late, surely. Corey had the book and the phone with its brand-new call record. That was more than enough evidence for anybody who had a mind to condemn us. What was I going to do, fight him for it? I’d never been allowed to fight unless someone was betting on the outcome.
“Did she give you this?” he demanded, stifling a hiccup. “Aw, a toy for her faithful German shepherd? Does she read to you over the phone? Oh, wait. You can read. One of your little party tricks. Sure worked on my fucking boss.” He lurched closer, half of his face coming into the weak moonlight. “But a dog wearing clothes isn’t a fucking person, slave. Some of us haven’t forgotten who—sorry, what —you really are.”
Corey was drunk, but he was also lucid. The worst possible combination. Especially in free men who hated slaves who were smarter than them. A lot of whom, for some reason, tended to have violent streaks.
“He’s allowed to have it.” The door to the kitchen swung open and to my amazement, Louisa—dim moonlight crowning her face in a way a less skeptical person might have called holy—walked over. She pointed to the phone in Corey’s hand. “Daddy gave it to him.”
“Oh, so it was Daddy he nicknamed ‘Marie Curie?’” he jeered. “The one who asked him to ‘come over and give him a hand behind the dry riverbed?’ Jesus, you’re even more of a ditz than I thought if you think I’m gonna buy that.”
Well, God bless her for trying.
“What are you doing here, Corey? Really?” Wordlessly, she slipped her shaking hand into mine. It was the bravest and stupidest and most all-around surreal thing she could have possibly done. And I squeezed it back. “You’re drunk, and you’re not wanted.”
Corey looked her up and down. He had been her friend, but it seemed clear to both of us that his problem no longer even had much to do with her. He had zeroed in on a new obsession.
“Wanted?” He laughed again. “ Wanted ? Who is wanted , then? Him?” He jabbed his finger wildly at the air. He was confused, genuinely.
“Yeah,” she said, her voice quiet but steady. “Him. Go home, Corey.”
Something about us together, again, helped me find my voice. “With all due respect, man, haven’t you humiliated yourself enough?”
“What happened to ‘sir?’ Oh.” Corey chuckled harshly. “Oh. I guess since you’re fucking her and I’m not, you think ‘sir’ is too good for me?”
“I think ‘cocksucker’ is too good for you, but I was trying to be diplomatic.” I knew Louisa was smiling. Not so as to be seen. But when I briefly met her eyes, they showed it.
However, Corey was not smiling. “You fucking just can’t keep your smart-ass mouth shut for a second, can you, slave?”
“You know, I get that response a lot,” I replied. “Especially when what I said can’t be argued with.”
“Now,” he forged on in denial, “I could hang onto this until Daddy gets home and tell him about your late-night sex chat, too. That might be fun. But the truth is,” he said, tucking the phone in his pocket and tossing the book away to catch on the paddle of a prickly pear, where it lay open limply, its pages impaled on the spines, “I’ve been drinking, and honestly, I kind of just really want to beat the shit out of you. The problem is, you don’t fight back. But hey, I get it. I wouldn’t want to spend the rest of my life breaking rocks, either. Fortunately,” he added with a nasty grin, “I don’t have to worry about that. So I think I’ll just take back what should have been mine.” And now he looked at Louisa with interest for the first time since she’d arrived on the scene.
“ Yours ?” I repeated the word with a disgust I could almost feel on my tongue. Of course, the only thing I wanted to do at that moment was shove Corey balls-first into a cactus. And Corey, shitfaced as he was, knew it was exactly what I couldn’t do. “Fucking hell. You know, you seem to have a real problem telling the difference between people and things?”
“Things?” Corey chuckled with derision. “Let me guess, you think you fall under the first category?” He hiccupped. “You and that bitch who fucked ten mutts a day before spawning you? The one who lived just long enough for you to watch her bleed to death out of her gaping hole? I don’t think there’s any word for that but thing .”
A very old heat—one of guilt and shame and helplessness, one I’d spent almost seven years trying to outgrow and outrun and outsmart—flooded over me. Fuck this guy. Louisa was looking at me, but I didn’t dare look at her.
“Yeah, that’s right,” Corey barreled on. “Thanks to my ex-boss, I know everything. I know your master chained you up and made you watch him fuck her right in front of you. They should have cut your balls off, too, because a man who can’t protect his women isn’t much of a man, is he?”
Even Langer had been decent enough not to bring that up. But decency had no meaning for Corey.
I couldn’t bear to look at Louisa. Yes, she knew. But for some reason, hearing it from Corey seemed to negate all the comfort and compassion and forgiveness she’d offered me and all the progress we’d made. Like we were back to square one.
But to my surprise, nothing changed. She was breathing evenly. In fact, her entire mien was oddly calm. It’s not as if screaming for help would improve the situation at this point, but the serenity in her eyes was almost eerie.
“You’re wrong,” she said.
“I don’t think so.” Corey laughed. His hand went for her arm. She jerked away reflexively, but he caught her in his grip just the same. However, the entire time, his gaze was fixed on me. Watching my eyes. Watching how they moved, strained and helpless.
“Keep it up,” he told her. “Wait for your good boy to attack. As soon as he does, they’ll put him back in a cage where he belongs. I mean, we all know his history. Which does tend to repeat.”
“Lou—”
Corey flicked his chin behind him woozily. “And when they come running—I tell everyone—and poor pathetic Daddy can’t save you from the auction block, I only hope you’ll be lucky enough,” he continued, his voice low and hideous as an infected boil, “to get a master who’ll give you exactly what you deserve.” He grabbed her and jerked her toward his face, his fingers leaving an angry red mark on her satiny white flesh. Flesh she had revealed to me last night; in trust; flesh I had spent all night kissing and marveling at an infinite array of miracles, the first of which that she had ever chosen to reveal even an inch of it to me.
But choice had nothing to do with the world we lived in, as if we could ever forget. And it wasn’t the look, or the touch, or even the threat that made me ill. It was the fear behind her eyes, much as she tried to hide it, the fear I had once again failed to prevent. The fear that there was no one left in the world who could help her. The fear that she’d be sullied, violated, terrorized, discarded, just like everything that had ever been precious to me. And that maybe the streak could never be broken.
But no. No. Like she’d said, it was fifty-fifty, every time. And for a slave, those were better odds than most.
My voice was as calm as hers had been. “Get your hands off her.”
“Like I said, what are you going to fucking do about it ?”
“How about this ?” But it was Louisa who had spoken, and I had no doubt my eyes were just as wide as Corey’s as we watched her duck out of his grip, wrench her arm around, and take aim with a four-inch-long red cactus spine, the one no one had noticed had been lying flat against her wrist. He froze for a second as the spine drove into the flesh of his cornea. His scream echoed in sharp ripples through the dry night air. He cupped his face with both hands, streaks of blood oozing into the grooves of his fingers. His open eye was wild and mad, his body shivering with rage.
“You little bitch!” he yelled as he staggered half-blindly toward her, fingers clawing through her shirt, digging into her skin, his breath heavy as he wrenched her breast tissue toward himself, throwing her down on the chaise so hard one of the legs collapsed. “You’re going to regret that for the rest of your fucking life.”
She screamed as one of his bloodied hands pressed down on her tenderest place with all the strength of his body weight as the other one tore brutishly at whatever fabric of her clothing he could get, intent on taking whatever he could take.
Unfortunately for him, he wasn’t dealing with a helpless, trembling, chained-up child anymore.
A second later, I had Corey off her and on his feet. He growled and lunged, but I jabbed my elbow into his throat and followed it up with a whipping uppercut that sent him tumbling backward. But he recovered more quickly than I expected, hissing as he charged. With a snarl, he grabbed hold of my weak shoulder—the arm I’d almost lost—with a grip as sharp as white-hot metal teeth, twisting it back against its already-limited range of motion. I stifled a scream at the sharp crack of my shoulder bones reverberating, grinding against each other, followed by a faint sound of tissue tearing again, awakening the old wounds, the old scars, the old sorrows. Not now. I drew up my strength, my other fist slamming into his chest, propelling us both onto the sharp trunk of a dead paloverde. The thin bark cracked and splintered under our combined weight, shards of wood flying off in all directions like shrapnel.
Corey, enraged, rolled out from under me, slamming me back where I had just been. We were back up an instant later, with Corey throwing wild, desperate punches that I easily blocked, followed by aiming a knee to my chest. I stumbled back but countered with what I had left, delivering a punch to his stomach, followed by a knee to the solar plexus that sent him staggering, and finally a hook that caught him in the jaw and sent him crashing to the ground.
He roared, attempting to scramble away, but whatever was left of his energy quailed as I went to the ground after him, unleashing the kind of one-handed fury I hadn’t had to use since some bored overseers had thrown a skinny thirteen-year-old farm slave into a bare-knuckled match against a kid four years older and a hundred pounds heavier, expecting a quick kill and an even quicker payout on their bets, only to find my barrage of precisely calculated blows to his brainpan raining down so quickly he could barely cover his face.
They never bet against Lucky Sevens again, and neither would Corey.
After I’d pummeled him into oblivion, Corey lay spent, still, chest laboring to fill his lungs, blood seeping into the earth like spring rain.
And everything was silent again. Time had stopped. I stood there for a second, unthinking, unseeing, my shoulder throbbing as hard as if Corey had left a knife buried in it. My body was still as tense as if I expected another blow, my hands balled into fists and spattered burgundy alternating with dirt and blood, mud and grit, wood and bark. Finally, with a shaking hand, I swiped some limp hair out of my face and turned to face Louisa. Her sheet-white face emerged out of the gloom. During the fight, she’d been helpless, even to call for anyone to come, knowing how unlikely it was to result in anything in our favor. But now, gingerly approaching Corey’s prone body, she seemed—foolishly and yet fittingly for a girl who aspired to heal—preparing to aid the person who least deserved it.
“Should we—”
But a scream left the sentence unfinished. I spun around again to see Corey lurching toward her—barely seeing her except as the closest target for his rage—with a heavy pair of metal garden shears, discarded under a nearby sage bush, raised high above his head.
Like so many of my decisions that night, it was already made. I lunged for the shears with both hands, through the piercing agony in my shoulder, wrenched them out of Corey’s grip, and brought them down on the side of his already bloodied head with a crack.
Corey toppled like lead, his head coming down on the top of a barrel cactus before he rolled off and hit the ground. Blood seeped out from his wound and stained the dust below him, the spines embedded in his flesh. He was still.
Neither of us looked closer. Did it even matter now?
I turned to her, shoulders heaving in exhaustion and adrenaline. But whatever thin wire had been keeping Louisa preternaturally calm until now had snapped.
She stood rooted to the spot, a veil of blind panic flooding over her face as rapid breaths rattled unevenly out of her chest. She wasn’t even seeing me.
“Ah, shit.” In another second, I would completely lose her. Rapidly trying to get control of my own breath, I cupped her face in my hand with a grip I was sure was too tight, but no less than what the situation called for, forcing her to meet my eyes. “Look at me, Lou. Stay with me. Breathe. We’ll figure this out, yeah? But I need you with me, so you have to breathe.”
And all of a sudden, she returned.
“Fuck, Lou.” I exhaled and kissed her forehead in awe. “What was that?” I asked. “And here you thought you weren’t good at anything.”
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. There were tears in her voice, but at least that meant she was present. “I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have—”
“No. I’m glad you did,” I said, cutting her off. “It was either that or—well, the important thing is that you’re safe. Yeah? That’s all that matters.”
“No,” she cried. “It isn’t because—” She tried to look at Corey again, but I jerked her chin back, keeping her focused on me and my words.
“It’s all that matters,” I repeated firmly. “Yeah? Like I said, we’ll figure something out. We always do. Right?”
She nodded.
I pulled her terrorized, shaking body into the shelter of my own dirt- and blood-streaked arms, knowing that whatever comfort I could give her would only be a farce—a laughable mockery of what a free man could offer. What a free man wouldn’t have to offer because he wouldn’t be in this situation in the first place. I wondered, for the millionth time, why she hadn’t taken off running a long time ago. Fuck, if I were her, I would have.
But she was braver than that. And smarter. So much smarter, in all the ways I wasn’t. And when she looked into my eyes, even though I couldn’t protect her from what she feared the most, there was still hope behind them. Hope, even as the walls we’d built to shelter each other were crashing down into the sea.
In truth, I hadn’t believed it when I’d told her we’d figure things out. I’d said it, almost selfishly, just to keep from losing her. But now, her eyes were almost enough for me to believe that we could.
“You have to go,” she said quietly.
“What?” I blinked.
“You have to go. Tonight. Right now. Back to Erica’s. She’ll know what to do from there.”
“But I—”
“Take the car. The keys are inside. The GPS will take you to campus, and you can find your way from there. Daddy will still trigger the chip, but not until tomorrow when he gets back. I can come up with a story and buy you a little bit of time. We’ve done it before. I plan, you execute. Speed chess, right? Right?”
Her voice seemed to come from underwater. My vision blurred for a second, and she looked at me as if afraid I’d now lost the plot.
But I nodded. “You’re right.”
A breeze rattled, of all things, some terra cotta wind chimes from far off in the garden.
And that was it.
But still, we stood there, with no solace but in the cold of the desert night, no warmth but in each other.
We’d come back here because we thought that, if nothing else, it would buy us time together. But we’d got it wrong. If it had to be goodbye no matter what, then it should have been that morning. Properly, by choice. Like real people, instead of fugitives.
As my shoulders rose and fell, she gave me the only things she had left to give: her spine, brushing my bruised hand over it; her curls, to gather and let fall. She gave me her manicured hand—how could it still be so flawless after that ?—to caress my ruined and throbbing shoulder, to trace my blood-streaked cheeks and jaw, brushing away the strands of hair she’d once thought shimmering, now dull and dirt-covered and matted to my face. And finally, she gave me her lips. And then she had nothing left to give, except time.
Time. How had it all come down to seconds?
Louisa pulled away from the kiss. “I—”
All at once, the floodlights snapped on, effectively blinding us. Harsh, naked fluorescent light, designed to lay bare all the hardest, ugliest parts of the world. This was the light of dealerships and auction houses, buildings made of cinderblock and steel, chains and cages made for animals, where no one, least of all slaves, ever went by choice. Where I always seemed to end back up, despite every good thing I’d ever found in this nonstop horror show I’d been forced to call a life. Where Corey had insisted I would end up again, and it was looking like he might be right.
I’d thought I wouldn’t get lucky again—as if I’d ever been lucky. What kind of twisted fucking luck would give me this girl, only to lose her like this ?
From the garage access door strode a figure, moving slowly, on a bad leg that, like always, he was unsuccessfully trying to play down.
The old valet.
Well, it was time to start praying. Just this once because if a god was good enough for Louisa to believe in, it was at least worth a try. And because dammit, he or she or it or they or whatever the fuck was up there owed me at least one favor, surely.
But the word on Louisa’s lips—once she made out the figure behind the valet—stopped me before I could even begin.
“Daddy.”