17. Dangerous
SEVENTEEN
DANGEROUS
HAVEN
As days… as weeks… go by, the basement should feel more like a prison—and not just because, the last time I upset Connor by my frantic escape attempt, he proved to me that I don’t even have the luxury of locking him out as he keeps me locked in.
After all, I’m constantly locked down here, there’s no real escape no matter how I try, and, thanks to the cameras, there’s a pretty good chance I have Connor’s eyes on me at all times, whether he’s with me or not.
To be honest, some days, it does. It’s stifling and it’s lonely, and I drive both of us batty by pacing constantly as though I can worry a hole in the floor and use that to find a way out of my deranged captor’s clutches.
Other days, I subconsciously compare the finished basement to the fishbowl cell where Winter kept me for forty-one days before having the rat bastard, Cam, move me to the warehouse.
That’s when I struggle to think of this space the same way.
Yes, Connor’s made it clear that he plans on keeping me here for as long he deems it necessary; which, in Connor Heyward-speak, means forever for some reason.
But at least I can be a little comfortable here.
That’s why, without even realizing it, I’ll come out of a daze and catch myself tucked into the corner of the couch with one of the books Connor leaves for me, a blanket spread out over my bare legs, my gaze drifting toward the television he keeps turned on because, apparently, he’ll fill my silence with old sitcoms. My old cell didn’t have a television.
It didn’t have a shower, especially not one with fantastic water pressure and water hot enough to make me feel like a boiled lobster before I finally step out from under the spray.
It sure as hell didn’t have a tiny kitchenette stocked with bottled water and the fresh fruit he keeps happily slicing into neat little pieces with the same pocketknife I stole from him before I tried to turn it on him…
Despite the lock on the door at the top of the stairs, the basement isn’t quite the same thing as a prison cell. The closest thing is the darkened room built beyond the basement, with the single lightbulb, the bed, and a false sense of privacy once I lock that door.
He has a key. I should’ve known that all along.
This is his house; it’s only the place he put me so I can’t leave.
Secretly, I think that Connor is so deranged, he was pleased when I tried to escape.
Instead of being furious that I stabbed him in the ass with the knife I swipes, he’s spend the last two weeks almost lovingly patted the cheek with the cut in it.
Same with the escape. I didn’t piss him off. I just put him on guard that—even if the nightmares make me weak—I’m no meek captive that’ll simply accept her fate.
Even if it seems like I’m setting in down here…
Still, I consider the small room my sanctuary.
A place where I can retreat when the reality of being Connor Heyward’s prisoner becomes too much.
I’m good at faking it. Good at pretending that I’m not still plotting, but cameras or not, when I need it to seem like I’m alone, that’s where I retreat to.
I’m not locked-in there at the moment. Currently, I’m sitting across from Connor Heyward at the little breakfast table while he acts like this…
all of this… is perfectly normal. He’s chattering away, his voice drowning out the television in the background, talking about nothing and everything like he didn’t tackle me.
Like he didn’t sedate me—again. Like he didn’t carry me back to the house, return me to the basement, and all but move himself in right alongside me as though having my captor constantly in my face makes any of this easier for me.
He’s wearing jeans and a pale blue polo shirt, his brown hair still damp from the shower he took in his upstairs bedroom before coming back down to get this morning’s breakfast ready.
Watching him slyly out of the corner of my eye, I can’t help but think that, at twenty-eight, Connor still has that baby-faced innocence that makes him seem younger.
I swear, he looks like he should be on a college brochure, grinning with a lacrosse stick slung over his shoulder, just like the high school Connor once wielded.
Funnily enough, he doesn’t look like the kind of man who happily keeps a selectively mute and clearly traumatized woman trapped in his basement…
“How are you feeling today, sweetheart?” he asks, taking a sip from his coffee, a plate of freshly sliced strawberries untouched in front of him.
The notebook is beside my plate. Connor has started to keep plenty nearby once he accepted that I just wasn’t going to speak, though sometimes I think he’s decided ‘not talking’ is some sort of game I’m playing with him.
He doesn’t quite understand that words feel stuck somewhere inside of me now.
He doesn’t understand that if I open my mouth and let one word out, everything else might come out with it.
In the time since I’ve become Connor’s pet project—the woman that he rescued, but that he also became convinced he can fix—I’ve caught him watching me closely, wondering exactly what happened to me during my other captivity. I’ve let him form his own conclusions, leaving it at that.
He doesn’t want to know. Not really. At least, I don’t want him to look at me and think of the humiliation.
The beatings. The abuse. It’s bad enough that I can’t forget.
My fragile psyche is so close to shattering, but instead of blocking every bad fucking thing that happened to me, I’m cursed to remember all of it.
The cell.
The men.
The things they made me do.
The things I let them do to me because I hit a point where surviving… that became the only thing that mattered.
For reasons I don’t want to look too closely at, I never started to track how many days I’ve been locked in Connor’s house.
In his home, not our home. I could easily do so now.
I have a pen and paper, plus Connor who is careless with his phone.
Probably because he knows there isn’t anyone I could call for help—and no guarantee I’ll be able to speak if I could think of any number to dial other than 911—he habitually leaves it where I can grab it.
I don’t have a phone. Winter did something to that.
It’s missing. Same with my car keys and my purse, my wallet, my identification, and my cards.
I’m sure the Harmony Heights police have all that, following the report of my disappearance, but I’m not worried about it right now.
I’ll get replacements when Connor finally releases me… because he has to.
Right?
Either way, all it takes is a glance at his phone screen—which, I notice from the simple white dress I’m wearing, is a candid picture of me from last year’s Claiming ceremony that I had no idea Connor took…
or any clue why he would use it as the wallpaper for his phone—to know the date.
It’s been about two weeks since I went from one cage to another, and he has the nerve to ask me how I’m feeling after he shut down my attempt to get away from him last night?
I grab the pen, flip open the notebook resting on the tabletop.
Watching the way I put the tip of the pen to paper, Connor’s eyes gleam like he’s honestly interested in my answer.
You know what? The faux concern only makes me press harder when I write:
Prisoner.
How do I feel? Like his fucking prisoner.
I shove the notebook across the table so he can’t miss it.
Connor sets his coffee mug down before he reads it. His expression doesn’t change. If anything, he looks thoughtful.
Then he steals my pen.
His printed handwriting is considerably neater than my cursive scrawl. Of course it is. Connor even writes like a smug asshole.
He slides the notebook back toward me.
Wife.
For a second, I just stare at the word. Then, because I can’t control myself, I throw the entire notebook at his head.
Connor catches it with one hand before it can make contact, and the bastard laughs. Not a chuckle. Not one of his little amused exhales. He laughs like I’ve delighted him, like my rage is the best part of his morning, like he doesn’t understand that I fucking mean it.
“Good morning to you, too, honeybun,” he says with a crooked smile.
I flip him off.
Connor’s grin widens. “Careful, baby. You keep flirting with me like that, I might start thinking you like me.”
Flirting? How deranged is he that he constitutes a middle finger as flirting? Well, in that case…
Purposely meeting his amused stare, I mouth two words at him. He reads them easily enough.
Fuck you.
Connor leans back in his chair, looking pleased. “See? We’re communicating. Progress. I told you you’d love me eventually. This is a good start.”
Love him?
I won’t.
I can’t.
I hate him. I hate him so much.
I also hate that part of me doesn’t hate him at all, and he is completely aware of that fact…
The only thing worse is how an exchange like this—bickering like an old married couple over breakfast—doesn’t make me scared. Instead, it brings out an emotion that I thought Mickey and Cam and Noah finally beat out of me… and that seems to please Connor even as I’m chucking a notebook at him.
Because how do I feel?
Even if for only the moment, I feel like the old Haven Smith again.
The first time I realize that the strange purple flowers growing in the window well connected to the basement aren’t sprigs of lavender, but rather foxglove, I think my surprise gives me away.
At the very least, Connor definitely notices me noticing it. But you know what? He doesn’t say anything about my sudden interest in the flower, and that catches my attention.