18 #2
When I make no hint that I’ll obey, he stops with the fluffing.
Without a look in my direction, he extends one long arm, hooks his fingers over the edge of the shelf, and with one sharp pull, the whole thing groans open.
It’s not just a shelf – it’s a door.
I gape. So that’s why the books looked as if they’d been stacked by a drunk librarian. Every time the door swings, it rattles the spines, toppling them over.
The opening beyond it registers, and whatever curiosity I had shrivels beneath a fresh prickle of unease. A shower room.
Another hidden space. Another thing about this house that I didn’t want to know.
I turn on my heel and retreat to the bags in search of clean pyjamas, underwear and a camisole – armour assembled in cotton and silk as I keep my awareness on the space between us.
When I gather what I need, my feet swallow the distance to the bookcase.
Beyond it, river stones are set beneath my feet and dip almost imperceptibly towards a narrow drain. Against the back wall, there’s a low wooden bench, wide enough for two, with a basket of dark stones beside it and what appears to be a poker.
No curtains. No frosted glass. Nowhere to turn your body for some privacy.
The top of Elias’ head nearly grazes the low ceiling as he steps in, banishing whatever is left of the resin-scented air.
I back away as far as I can – though it’s not much.
‘It’s the warmest room. It sits within the core of the house. No external walls.’ He knocks on one.
My eyes skim the bulk of his arms, his frame, and I suddenly wonder—
‘You built this?’ I murmur.
His shoulder lifts, almost dismissively. ‘Had help.’
There it is again – the invisible hand behind everything: the stocked cellar, the luggage, the route here, the clean bed waiting as if my abduction had been pencilled into a calendar.
‘The vents.’ He tips his gaze up to the corners. ‘They’re poor. Unless you want the room thick with steam—’ His head lowers unhurriedly, eyes landing on mine without blinking, ‘—you keep the door open.’
My face starts to go numb as the moment stretches beneath his stare.
My attention winds around him and touches the bed – positioned like a witness to peer straight into the shower room.
So…
This is how he makes it worse.
He strips the privacy away under the guise of bloody ventilation?
He leaves the shower room with no more than a passing glance, startling me back into the moment.
‘Don’t use up all the hot water,’ he says, his gaze dragging slowly from my face to my bare feet, lingering just long enough to feel like an actual touch.
My throat burns. I blink hard and grip the clothes bundle tighter as I pull the bookcase-door almost shut, careful not to send the spines tumbling.
Or expose the shaking of my hands.
Through the crack, I hear the duvet being fluffed again, and I peer through. Part of his hand is visible as he smooths it flat.
And if I can see out?
I let the answer come out on a heavy exhale rather than lodge in my head.
‘Too many layers.’
I nearly trip over my own damned feet, my patience already gone. ‘What?’
‘Just the pyjamas will do,’ he says. ‘You’ll overheat in the undershirt beneath it.’ His gaze flicks to the duvet, the fireplace, then – briefly – to his own chest.
I catch the implication and immediately – forcefully – reject it. Surely he doesn’t mean I’d overheat because of him.
Does he?
Such a small thing to take away. One layer of cotton. One small decision.
My skin crawls.
So far, he hasn’t forced anything away from me, because he is perfectly capable of forcing me to hand it over neat and folded.
My jaw closes so hard my teeth ache. Every instinct screams to tell him to go packing to hell.
‘Or…’ He doesn’t grin or make fun of my silence, simply abandons the pillows and straightens to his full height. ‘Are you saying you don’t want to sleep in the bed next to me?’
Half of his face aligns with the opening of the door.
It’s not a question.
It’s not a taunt.
It’s the promise I’d made to keep the blizzard from swallowing me whole.
I fold the damned undershirt tighter into my hand as my heart kicks up. ‘Not at all,’ I murmur, attempting to sound unbothered.
‘Mm,’ he hums suspiciously and goes on with preparations. ‘We share everything, Leah. Bed included.’
I grind the unease and the wrongness of those words until I can feel my limbs again.
Leaving the door cracked open, making sure I can’t see any part of the bed, I leave the clothes on a shelf away from the water spray and wash quickly while keeping to the wall.
I imagine this place as just somewhere I’ve travelled to.
Another room. Another thing I’ll turn into art. And then safely leave behind.
My long hair gets a rough towel-dry, then relaxes along my back in damp, tangled ropes that seem to belong among the shower room’s brown shades.
I hadn’t brought any oils with me as I was meant to go to the shops the morning after I settled into the flat in Oslo – before my new life was supposed to begin. A fresh start, a new job, a string of mornings that belong to me.
But now… I am thoroughly, irreparably fucked.
My mind snags on that.
Stutters.
Wrong word choice.
I don’t even bother with a second glance in the mirror spanning one of the walls. My curls are already frizzing at the ends, puffing out in a halo of static defiance.
Anna and I both hate that about us – loose curls that don’t obey and rise in riot when humidity sticks.
Lotion, face serum, cream. I slather it all on like war paint. The clothes follow.
Opening the door, I step into the room. He has turned off the lights. Nothing but the fire from the hearth shivers across the floor.
‘Do you think there’s a chance I could buy hair oil somewhere?’ I ask without looking at him, trying to soften the thick atmosphere while keeping my voice casual.
He’s standing at the wardrobe by the door, pulling out folded sets of pyjamas one after another.
‘No.’
Right.
‘You can make it yourself.’
The sound I let out isn’t quite a grunt, but it’s not a word either. More like an unformed protest caught in my throat. ‘I don’t know how—’
‘I told you,’ he interrupts, scowling at the grey fabric in his hand as he examines the label, folds it between his fingers. Folds it again. By the third time, the cloth has curled at the edge. ‘I don’t want to hear such things. They’re a death sentence in this kind of place.’
He pauses just long enough to throw the question over his shoulder. ‘Have you ever tried to make oil?’
Curiously, I’ve been recklessly dependent on civilisation for that.
I glare at him sideways, grinding the last of the thought between my teeth so that nothing can escape.
The muscles in his shoulders are too relaxed for someone who always feels like a loaded trap. But… damn him… he has a point.
‘No.’
‘Then try. When you fail, try again.’
He starts shuffling the clothes again.
I chew on that, pushing my bag a little deeper into the corner where it sits too obviously like a refugee from a different life. A few pieces of clothing fall out.
‘What if I really suck at it?’ I ask. ‘Not everyone’s good at things.’
He doesn’t hesitate. ‘Then you try until you get better.’
My hands go still in the middle of folding the jumper that spilled out of the bag. The fabric hangs limp in my grip as I slowly lift my gaze towards him.
His back is now fully turned to me. The line of his spine is straight as a ruler, the muscles in his arms bunching, then releasing as he considers which attire best suits tonight’s particular brand of torture.
Until you get better.
I reach for a strand of hair and twirl it between my fingers in thought.
He said it as if it’s the only possible outcome. As if failure isn’t in the game at all.
The puppy flashes through my mind. A six-year-old boy. One mistake away from another cruel lesson.
‘What usually happened when you failed?’ I ask, making the words come out carefully.
His hand stills for barely a breath. So does everything else on him. Then he folds the pyjamas once and sets them aside without a word.
When it’s clear he’s letting my question die in the crackle of fire, I move because he does. We cross paths as I aim for the bed and he heads towards the shower room.
Crawling under the covers feels like dropping into my own grave.
The sheets are warm, but gooseflesh rises on my skin from the tension and the dread of what’s coming.
I pull the duvet higher, trying not to think of it as a shield – because it’s not. He’ll be under it soon. I do my utmost not to breathe in the scent of him woven through the bedding. Firewood. Musk.
I know enough now to suspect I haven’t yet seen the half of it.
When he’d mentioned his demons, my mind had gone all kinds of places.
Twisted ones. Sexual ones. Terrifying ones.
And after reading those few chapters earlier…
right after what he told me tonight, it feels as if I’ve thrown a rock into a pond and it made no ripples at all – as if that little rock is about to cause something worse.