Chapter 18
18
Sophie
D id I leave the light on in the tasting room?
I’m half a key-turn away from getting out of the February cold and curling up with Pretty Little Liars while binge-eating my feelings on all the food Mom never lets me eat when she’s home, when I see the stupid light in my periphery. As if Kiersten getting the stomach flu and cutting our sleepover short wasn’t bad enough, now I get to walk across the property in the rainy dark without a coat. Unless I wait until morning? The thought is so tempting I nearly give in. But ultimately, I don’t need to give my dad one more reason to think I’m too irresponsible to get my driver’s license next week.
I drop my backpack on the porch and march down the path, braced against the frigid wind. The four-digit code on the tasting room door was recently changed, but I have it memorized, so I punch it in quickly. But as soon as I’m inside, heading for the main switch, the hairs on the back of my neck stand at attention.
I hear voices. Multiple. Male.
Get out. Get out. Get out. The words slam into my skull, and I have no intention of ignoring them. I spin for the exit, frantic to get back to my house, lock the door, and dial 9-1-1.
But I never get that chance.
A meaty, gloved hand shoots out from behind me and presses hard against my mouth. I can’t scream. I can’t breathe. I thrash and fight and hear my captor arguing with someone about what to do with me.
I wasn’t part of their plan.
I twist, gaining enough leverage to elbow my attacker in the ribs, hoping the blow will give me a chance to break away, but it only angers him more,and soon my vision spots and my limbs grow heavy and weak.
I’m going to suffocate.
I’m going to die.
The second voice grows closer now. When the brute behind me smashes my cheek onto the cool bar top, I catch a glimpse of the masked man before he pats me down in search of my phone. He won’t find it. It’s still in my backpack on the front porch.
I’m pulled up by my hair and commanded to walk, keep my head down, keep my mouth shut. If I obey I won’t get hurt.
My assailant’s monstrous body brushes against my back as we take the stairs to the cellar one at a time. Sickness sloshes in my belly. What are they going to do to me?
His fingers dig under my collarbone like a hook, and even though my mouth is free, I’m too afraid to cry out. Even if I did, who would hear me? My parents are out of town for the weekend, Jasper is away at college, and there are no employees expected till Monday morning.
For a moment, I wonder if I can pull off a maneuver like the kind I’ve watched in movies,where the lead actress distracts her offender and then dodges his attempts at recapture. But this staircase is steep and narrow, and even if I could make it to the top without him catching me, his accomplice is still looming somewhere above us, waiting.
So I take a different approach.
“P-please,” I stammer. “Please let me go. I won’t say anything. I swear. You can take whatever you want if you just—”
“Shut up.” He squeezes my bones until I wince, but I don’t shut up. I can’t.
“Pl ease don’t hurt me,” I try again. “I’m—”
“I said shut up !” A hot jolt of pain zings through my spine as I fall to my knees in front of the cellar’s entrance, panting hard.
The thick redwood door is a recent addition of my father’s, as is the security feature on the outside to keep my dad’s most prized and valuable possessions from walking out unattended from their locked display cases. The man behind me enters the code without hesitation.
The locks release.
“Get up.”
I struggle to engage my feet beneath me, and he pulls my hair until I’m standing. I cry out, and it’s then I note the wet warmth between my legs, soaking through my pants.
He still has a hold of my ponytail when he whispers into my ear, “Scream all you want down here, Principessa . Nobody will hear you.”
He shoves me inside my family’s cellar, where I stumble onto shattered glass. The shards slice through the denim covering my knees. But at the sound of the automatic door closing behind me, I spin to find the retreating back of my captor.
“Wait, please,” I sob. “Please don’t leave me down here.”
The tomb seals and locks me in from the outside. And then the power is cut. The security lights flicker off, and soon I’m plunged into a darkness so thick it seems to seep into my soul.
I scream for help until my voice is raw. And then until I have no voice left at all.
Someone is singing. No, someone is humming.
A smooth, melodic baritone taps on the walls of my subconscious, coaxing my eyes open as I work to make sense of the world around me. My head is propped on a throw pillow, my legs curled into the back cushions of a couch, and my spine is being played like piano keys by fingers that don’t belong to me.
Shadows flicker on the ceiling from a light source I can’t see from my current angle. And it’s then I remember. The storm. The power outage. The panic.
August.
Groggily, I sit upright, my head throbbing something fierce at the sudden change in orientation.
“Easy there,” August says, steadying my arm.
I twist on the cushion until my feet are firmly planted on the floor, hoping to simultaneously ground myself and delay the mortification sure to come. It’s already seeping in. I slap my hands over my face and groan.
“I’m so embarrassed. You must think I’m a total freak—and maybe that’s exactly what I am. But I’m also horrified that you—”
“ Sophie .” The pained way he says my name cuts off my words. I don’t want to look at him, but it’s clear that’s exactly what he wants from me when he reaches for my hand and gives it a gentle squeeze. “You’re safe. That’s the only thing I care about. The only thing that matters.”
Time slows again as his words burrow into my heart, and even though it’s difficult to look him in the eye, I do.
“I owe you an explanation,” I say.
“No, sweetheart,” he counters as he runs his thumb along the back of my hand. “You don’t owe me anything you’re not ready to give.”
The threat of overexposure is a current that runs through each of my limbs, my core, my heart. And I’m certain that if August were anyone else, I would take the out he’s so graciously offered and push this decade-old trauma down deep where it belongs.
Until the next time it surfaces, that is. This thought is immediately followed by another. Haven’t my captors stolen enough from me?
The answer resounds inside my head as I study the patience etched in August’s expression. I drop my gaze to our joined hands, drawing from his strength as I open my mouth to tell a story that sounds like fiction but is as real as the scar tissue on my knees.
On the tail end of a long exhale, I do my best to summarize the nightmare I’ve failed to outrun for the last ten years.
“Wh en I was sixteen, I was in the wrong place at the wrong time....” I begin.
August stills beside me as I describe the details of that fateful night. The light in the tasting room. The masked men. The broken glass. The dark cellar. The locked door.
I don’t know how long it takes me to tell it, but when I finally come up for air, August’s voice sounds almost robotic when he asks, “How long were you down there?”
“Close to forty hours. From Saturday night to Monday morning, when Maria, our cleaner, found me. I was ... disoriented and pretty dehydrated.” I think of the blue Gatorade Maria retrieved from her son’s sports bag in her trunk. How she forced me to drink while I tried to recount the details of what happened.
A muscle in his jaw jumps. “And where were your parents?”
“Laguna Beach. They always take their anniversary trip in February since business is slow.”
When he says nothing to this, I tell him about the open investigation with the sheriff’s department, and about the statements I gave and the suspects they interrogated, and how ultimately, nothing ever came of any of it.
Except, of course, my crippling anxiety of being trapped in the dark, and my father’s belief that I staged the whole thing for the sake of attention. “As embarrassing as it is to admit, Detective, I’ve had my doubts regarding the accuracy of Sophie’s story for some time now. She’s always been a bit of an attention seeker, a drama queen. You know the type.”
It’s this , the part of the story that haunts me the most, that I can’t ever seem to admit out loud. Not to August; not even to Dana.
Still, I’m not too blind to see how if not for overhearing that phone call six months into the investigation, I never would have found the courage to pursue the arts and apply to a college three thousand miles away from home. I never would have learned the power of the stage, or how to become someone else anytime I needed to escape myself.
I side-eye August on the sofa, wondering what must be going thr ough his brain as I watch the steady tick of his jaw. But the longer he waits to speak, the more I want to fill the silence.
“I’m okay now. I mean, it’s been ten years. And honestly, it could have been so much worse—”
“Don’t do that. Please , don’t minimize this.” He pushes forward on the sofa, unclasping our hands to grip his head. “You are not okay; none of this is okay.” When he unclenches his hair, all I want to do is smooth it back into place. “I had an hour to prepare for whatever scenario you might share with me once you woke. I promised myself that whatever it was, I’d be ready to hear it, to support you through it.” He twists his neck in my direction, eyes trained on my face. “But what I can’t understand is why nobody checked on you? You were sixteen —why did your parents think it was okay for you to not answer your phone for a day and a half? Dehydration is no joke!”
“You’re ... angry.” It’s a curious, almost hesitant observation.
“Of course I’m angry .” He shakes his head, stands, begins to pace. “I’ve never heard of an investigation being called off when there’s a minor involved! You were attacked, Sophie. There had to be evidence. Fingerprints? Tire tracks? Surveillance footage? Something! How would they know the door codes unless it was an inside job?” He throws up his hands. “It doesn’t make sense.”
“I know,” I say, feeling myself shrink back with every doubt he brings to the surface. “They wore gloves, and my parents didn’t have security cameras at that point.”
“What about the staff?” he presses. “Were they all called in for questioning?”
I nod. “They were released.”
“And the weird accent you heard? Did you tell them about that? Could you identify it if you heard it again? Did they even have you talk with a—”
“I told the police everything I could remember, August,” I cut in with a calm I don’t feel. “Everything I told you.”
“And when they failed to do their job, your parents didn’t push back?”
“Th e department said they ran out of resources.”
“They ... they ran out of resources ?” August repeats in a lethal tone. “How could any parent be satisfied with that?”
“Because they didn’t believe me ! That’s how!”
At my outburst, my eyes round in horror. If there is anything more mortifying than admitting you weren’t loved or protected by the two people who should have loved and protected you most ... I don’t know it. The confession sets my cheeks ablaze, the heat searing into my palms as I cover my face.
“It’s fine,” I lie, hoping to ward him off.
Instead, it brings him close. So close I don’t have to part my fingers to know he’s crouched directly in front of me.
“It’s not fine,” he says with a tenderness that pricks my eyes. “I can’t even imagine how that must have hurt you.”
I say nothing.
“Sophie. Look at me, please .”
It takes everything in me to grant his request.
“I believe you,” he says. “I. Believe. You.”
Three words that simultaneously reopen and heal a wound he didn’t cause.
My bottom lip begins to quiver. “I overheard my father on the phone with the detective. He thinks I fabricated the story and staged the evidence—everything from the clipped circuit board to the broken glass in the cellar to locking myself inside only a few hours before our housekeeper found me. The only thing that could have proved how long I was in there was my dehydration, but I never went to the doctor. Maria, like most of our staff, was afraid of my father and the ramifications of crossing him. She insisted I eat, drink, and shower before my parents came home. By the time they saw me, their doubts about my story were already starting to creep in. My father turned down the option of funding a private investigation.”
Still balancing on the balls of his feet in front of me, he cups my face in his hands. “I’m so, so sorry.”
Tears slip from the corners of my eyes. “You did nothing wrong.”
“Neither did you.”
The hot coil in my chest begins to unravel as his eyes search my face, and I know without a fraction of doubt that he was right before. That I’m safe here. That I’m safe with him.
It’s been more than ten years since the nights I spent trapped in that cellar. Ten years since I hummed Gigi’s favorite hymn in the darkness to block out the fear. Ten years since I began to question if I would ever experience the kind of affection August has shown me over the last few months.
He’s only a fraction of a breath away, but in this moment it feels too far.
When I flatten my palm to his chest, I don’t use it to push him away like I did on the beach. This time, I use it to grip the fabric of his shirt front and pull him close. So close that when I brush my lips against his, I feel his body tense and his breath pause. For all of three seconds, the kiss I’ve imagined a hundred times over is dreamlike in its execution. Warm and soft and achingly sweet...
And then it’s over.
August loses his center of gravity and topples to the side, catching himself with one hand as his backside hits the floor.
His face looks almost as stunned as mine feels. Did I really just kiss him? And on the same night I spilled my guts about my childhood trauma? Wow, how beautifully romantic of me. But before I can utter a word of apology, he makes a miraculous recovery, wasting no time in reclaiming my mouth.
Within two heartbeats, it’s clear this kiss is not some pity-driven momentary lapse in judgment. Rather, August kisses me the way I imagine he’d compose an original song. Like he’s searching for each right note in a melody only he can hear. I’ve performed on dozens of stages in my short career as an actress, but no music has ever caused my lips to hum like this. Or my heart to sing.
We may not know what comes next for us, but I do know I never want this song to end.