Chapter 28
My stomach bottoms out and I feel a throb of terror and longing flood my muscles until I’m frozen with it.
He watches me, his smile fading into that brick-wall stare; so hard to read but so focused on me. “Doesn’t matter how far,” he murmurs. “Doesn’t matter how fast. Run away, Tommy. Or safe word.”
Red. It’s on the tip of my tongue. I feel so mixed up. Run away? While he chases me? Is this like…reliving trauma? Or is this rewiring something inside me? What are we even doing?
And why am I so thrilled at the idea of being hunted by someone who wants me enough to chase me?
Someone that I want to want me that badly.
Isn’t that supposed to be like, Trigger 101? This is fucked up, isn’t it? This is the entire bedrock of my issues. All of it, wrapped up into the idea that I should’ve run away when I had the chance.
I didn’t run away back then. Deep down, I was terrified that they’d simply chase me, catch me again, and punish me.
I didn’t want to be chased by those men, by that man.
I couldn’t stand the thought of being hunted by his version of ‘love’.
And he would’ve hunted me. I know it in my fucking soul.
That man was obsessed with me, would’ve chased me to the ends of the earth.
His love for me was sick, but real. I didn’t want it, but it felt real.
But this?
I realize that I’m panting for air, my fingers trembling, my extremities getting staticky as my adrenaline response hits the wall and prepares me for flight.
“What if I get away?” I ask hoarsely.
The room feels too quiet, our voices too loud. My nerves are dialed in, my senses high-strung.
“You won’t. Not because you can’t; you don’t want to.
This isn’t about getting away. Not really.
This is about testing me. I’ve told you before, and I’ll say it again–it’s alright to test me.
I don’t mind. I’ll pass every test, I’ll cross every hurdle.
I will get my hands on you, one way or the other. ”
I’m shivering all the way to my lungs. My skin is on fire, my heart pumping at full speed. I’m about to explode. I have no idea how to detangle the mess I am right now.
But I know how to run away…don’t I?
I don’t move, my feet are rooted to the floor.
I can run. I can.
I lurch, only to sway back into place, stuck.
I want to run, and I want him to follow. I want this.
I can’t move. I’m chained to the floor.
“I’m going to count down from ten,” Young-gi finally says, watching me struggle.
“If you haven’t said your safe word by then, I’m going to start chasing you, even if you’re right here in front of me.
And that’s fine, too. If you want to be caught right here, then I’ll catch you. Whatever you want, Tommy.”
I swallow hard, feeling torn in two.
He doesn’t wait for long. “Ten.”
I run.
As I tear through the doorway into the hall, I start crying, and laughing. I throw myself down the stairs as fast as I can, rush into the kitchen. Young-gi calls out his numbers louder, so I can hear him even though he’s staying behind, giving me a head start.
“Nine, eight.”
My mind is racing right along with my heart, strategies and possibilities rushing through me. I blow through the kitchen, snatching a meat tenderizer from a utensil block near the fridge.
“Seven.”
I get to the front door, and my adrenaline must be working overtime because it only takes one swing with that mallet to break the door handle off the inside of the door.
It’s loud, and Young-gi’s counting pauses, like he’s trying to figure out what I’m up to.
I drop the mallet and slam the door shut behind me.
I know that not having a knob will slow him down, but not for long.
I hit the elevator call button, over and over and over, as fast as I can.
“Come on, come on,” I chant, tears on my cheeks, a wobbly laugh making my voice high-pitched. I think I might pee, I think I might vomit, I think I might get a boner. Shit, I’m so fucked up.
I finally hear the elevator approaching, but I can’t stop hitting the button. I’m too keyed-up.
“Tommy,” I hear Young-gi call from right inside his door. “What a good, clever boy you are.”
I shiver hard, down to my toes. I didn’t even have time to put my shoes on, and I don’t give a shit. He’s one door away from snatching me before I’m even able to truly run. I’m terrified; I’m ecstatic.
I hear Young-gi working on his door, trying to unlatch it without the knob. It rattles in the frame like a horror movie, and my vision tunnels.
The elevator opens and I tumble inside, hitting the door close button and the one for the ground floor.
Just as it starts to close, Young-gi gets his door open and sees me, but he’s too late.
His eyes flare with heat as I sag against the back wall, and the doors shut between us.
I hear him hit the call button, trying to get it to re-open, but I’m already in motion.
I let out a breath and my knees go out from under me until I’m trembling on the floor. And as my mind wakes up, I wonder if this means I win. I’ll get to the lobby way before he can take any stairs, and if he waits for the elevator, I’ll be long gone anyway.
So…what happens now?
My excitement congeals.
Did Young-gi expect me to leave his penthouse? Was I supposed to stay there? Did he want this to be more like hide and seek? What if this isn’t what he meant? What if he doesn’t come to chase me because I already won?
What if, this time, I got away…even though this time, I didn’t really want to?
My stomach heaves because I don’t know what to do, what to think. My adrenaline is crashing into despair, into anxiety.
But then everything stops. The elevator lurches to a sudden halt, only a few floors below Young-gi. A blaring alarm goes off, and the lights switch to emergency runners along the floor. The elevator door pops open with none of its usual mechanical whirs.
The fire alarm is going off, and the elevator can’t run during an alarm.
My heart soars. Young-gi isn’t letting me get away that easily.
I smile like a lunatic as I scramble to my feet and hop out of the elevator, where it hovers a little too high above the floor it was trying to spit me out on.
My eyes are already looking for an escape route, and the bright red EXIT sign at the end of the hall is a siren song.
I sprint to the door and slam into it, tumbling into the emergency stairwell.
I pause, breathing hard and listening harder.
There. Footsteps above me, running down the stairwell.
Chasing me.
I burst back into motion, going recklessly fast. People start pouring into the stairwell, but I shove past them, nearly slipping several times in my socks.
“Out of my way!” I shout, grabbing the railing, running for my life. “Move!”
Some people just shout back at me for being a jackass, but some people think I know something they don’t, and suddenly everyone is trying to get down the stairs as fast as possible.
People from the top of the building catch up to the people closer to the bottom, everyone yelling and shouting and panicking and pushing their way to the exit.
I finally make it down, pressed in on all sides by the crush of people. They’re all sprinting now, carrying their cats or dragging their little dogs, rushing for the front exit of the lobby.
But I stop and stand there, a rock in the river of people.
The door is right there. If I make it outside, I can get away. Like, not for just a little bit, but maybe forever. New York City is big, and I’m a ghost. He would never find me.
And that’s an option. I could do that, it would be like safe wording, in a way. I could leave him behind right now, and truly escape everything he makes me feel. I could leave him.
Oh my god, I can leave. A floating, soaring feeling splits me open and lifts me away. I’m crying, I’m smiling, because I finally know, for sure, that if I ever needed to again, I would run without making myself suffer first. I could do it. I could do it right now.
But I don’t want to.
Scanning my surroundings, I take off in the opposite direction, heading deeper into the building.
The ground floor has a huge, fancy lobby with a bar and restaurants, all of which are also evacuating.
There are some marble stairs leading up to the second floor, and I take them three at a time.
When I’m at the top, I glance over my shoulder.
Young-gi is already out of the emergency stairwell, staring at me like a man possessed, pushing through the people in his way, coming after me.
I take off running. The building rapidly emptied, and I’m alone as I rush through what appears to be a conference hall, a venue, and another gorgeous lobby.
The alarm is still blaring, covering any sound of Young-gi’s pursuit, so I don’t know how close he is, but I can feel his eyes on my back.
I know he can see me, but I don’t dare look over my shoulder in case it slows me down.
I burst through some open double doors into an empty fine-dining venue, plates still on tables and chairs pushed out from the hasty exit of the patrons.
I vault over a table, scattering plates, sending them to the floor.
I rush through the dim interior and through the doors to the kitchen.
It’s much brighter in here, everything in chrome and silver.
The alarm is muted, so I can finally hear my harsh breathing, the sound of my terrified excitement.
An exit sign calls to me, but I know it probably leads out into an alley, or onto the street. I don’t really want to get away; I want to be caught, so I should stay inside.
But I don’t want to make it easy on him, either.
I slide to the side of the still-swinging kitchen doors, just in time. Young-gi barrels through them, flying past me. He must see me out of the corner of his eye, because he tries to abort his momentum but I’m already slipping behind him, running back the way I came.