Chapter 29
Chapter twenty-nine
Dylan
I’m curled up in Dante’s bed, wrapped in his blanket, and I cannot stop shaking.
The tremors have nothing to do with cold.
I’m warm now. Dry. Dressed in soft clothes that smell like laundry detergent and something underneath that is purely him.
But my body hasn’t received the message that the danger has passed.
My body is still convinced I’m in that torture chamber, tied to a chair, freezing wet clothes clinging to my skin and taking all my warmth.
I squeeze my eyes shut and try to breathe.
It was just the shower. Just the pipes. Just a stupid plumbing issue that made the water turn cold. It used to happen at Aunt Moira’s old place all the time. There was no malice in it. No intent. Just bad timing and old infrastructure and the universe’s cruel sense of humor.
But my body doesn’t care about logic. My body remembers the cold. The endless, bone-deep, soul-crushing cold that seeped into every part of me until I could not remember what warmth felt like.
A sob catches in my throat. I swallow it down.
I had a full-blown panic attack. Over cold water. Over a shower that got a bit chilly. I fell apart completely, lost all grip on reality, and ended up naked and terrified in the corner of a bathroom like a wounded animal.
How broken am I?
The question circles through my mind, vicious and relentless.
I thought I was doing better. I thought I was healing, adapting, finding some way to survive this impossible situation.
I made macarons. I smiled at his rusty half-smile.
I kissed him on that hideous orange sofa and felt something other than fear for the first time in weeks.
I had sex with him. Let him touch me, hold me, make me feel things I have never felt before.
I woke up in his arms this morning and felt safe.
Safe. What a joke. What a pathetic, delusional joke.
I’m not safe. I’m not healed. I’m a mess of trauma and terror held together by denial and desperate hope. One cold shower and the whole fragile construction comes crashing down.
A soft knock at the door makes me flinch.
I hold my breath, waiting. The door does not open. Dante does not come in. Instead, I hear the quiet clink of ceramic being set down, and then footsteps retreating down the hallway.
I wait until the footsteps fade completely before I move.
The door creaks when I open it, just a crack, just enough to see.
The hallway is empty. On the floor outside the door sits a mug of tea, steam still rising from the surface.
Next to it is a packet of biscuits. McVities dark chocolate digestives.
The exact kind I mentioned liking once, forever ago, in a rambling tangent about comfort food.
He remembered. Of course he remembered. He always remembers.
I grab the tea and the biscuits and retreat back into the bedroom, closing the door behind me. My hands are still trembling as I wrap them around the warm mug.
The tea is perfect. Strong, with just a splash of milk, exactly how I like it. I take a sip and feel some of the tension in my chest begin to ease.
He is not coming in. He is giving me space. Part of me is relieved by that. The part that is still shaking, still caught in the echoes of the flashback, still seeing his face from the torture chamber instead of the man who bought me cookbooks and watched me bake.
But another part of me is sad. Desperately, pathetically sad. Because I want him here. I want his arms around me. I want to bury my face in his chest and let him tell me that everything is going to be alright, even if we both know it’s a lie.
I want comfort from the man who caused my trauma, and I don’t know what that says about me.
Nothing good, probably.
Especially since I did the whole, last-night-was-a-mistake and it’s not-me-it’s-you, routine at breakfast. I told him I had no regrets but it wasn’t happening again.
So why do I want him to come in here and hold me?
I sip my tea and try to sort through the tangled mess of my thoughts.
Last night. Last night was supposed to be part of the plan.
The seduction plan. The escape plan. The cold, calculated strategy to make Dante fall for me so completely that he would let his guard down, make a mistake, give me an opening to run.
Or even better, declare his undying love for me and let me go by choice.
It was supposed to be callous. Heartless. A means to an end.
But it didn’t feel like that. Not even close.
It felt like the most honest thing I have ever done.
Like every touch and kiss came from somewhere real, somewhere deep inside me that I didn’t even know existed.
When he looked at me, when he said my name, when he held me like I was something precious, I forgot all about plans and strategies and escape.
The truth is, I just wanted him. Pure and simple and terrifying.
I should be ashamed of myself. I should be disgusted by my willingness to sell myself, as well as my inability to keep my emotions separate from my survival tactics. I should be horrified that I have developed genuine feelings for the man who tortured me.
But I’m not. And I don’t know if that’s strength or madness or just another symptom of how fundamentally broken I have become.
Maybe it’s all three.
The tea is half gone now. I set it on the nightstand and pull the blanket tighter around my shoulders.
What am I doing? What the hell am I doing?
I’m sleeping with my kidnapper. I’m having breakfast in his kitchen and panic attacks in his bathroom. I’m falling for someone who makes people scream for a living, and I cannot even tell anymore if my feelings are real or just some twisted survival mechanism.
Stockholm syndrome. That’s what they call it, isn’t it? When captives develop emotional attachments to their captors. When fear and dependence get all tangled up with affection and desire until you cannot tell the difference anymore.
Maybe that’s all this is. Maybe my brain has simply decided that loving Dante is safer than fearing him, and has constructed an elaborate delusion to make that possible.
But it doesn’t feel like a delusion. It feels real. Realer than anything I have experienced in years. Realer than the bakery, realer than my old life, realer than the identity I built to hide from my family’s shadow.
When Dante looks at me, I feel seen. When he touches me, I feel wanted. When he remembers the small details, the chocolate digestives and the way I take my tea, I feel valued in a way I never did before.
Is that Stockholm syndrome? Or is it just what it feels like to be cared for by someone who pays attention?
I don’t know. I cannot tell anymore. The lines between trauma and tenderness have blurred beyond recognition.
The tea has gone lukewarm, but I drink every drop anyway.
The panic attack has faded now, leaving behind a hollow, wrung-out feeling that I recognize from last time. This is not my first breakdown. Will not be my last, probably. But each one is taking something out of me, leaving me a little emptier, a little more fragile.
How many more can I survive before there is nothing left?
I should try harder to escape. I know I should.
If I had any sense of self-preservation, any shred of rationality left, I would find a way out of this flat and never look back.
I would run as far and as fast as I could, put oceans between myself and Dante, and spend the rest of my life trying to forget any of this ever happened.
But I don’t want to leave. That is the terrible, shameful truth at the heart of everything.
I don’t want to go back to my old life. I don’t want to return to the crushing loneliness that I pretended was contentment. I don’t want to face my aunt and explain where I have been, don’t want to lie about what happened, don’t want to carry this secret alone for the rest of my days.
I want to stay here. In this flat with its ugly sofa and its newly broken bathroom door and its complicated, dangerous, inexplicably tender captor.
I want Dante. Despite everything. Because of everything.
God, I am so messed up.
I lie back against the pillows and stare at the ceiling. The sounds of the flat filter in around me. The hum of the refrigerator. The distant rumble of traffic. The occasional creak of floorboards as Dante moves around in the other room.
He is out there. Waiting. Probably drowning in guilt, if I know him at all.
I should go to him. Should tell him that I am okay, that I don’t blame him for the shower, that one panic attack does not erase everything else. That I was too hasty in saying last night didn’t mean anything.
But I can’t make myself move. Not yet. I need more time. More space. More distance from the terror that consumed me in that bathroom.
He will wait. He always waits. Patient and watchful and so desperately hungry for any scrap of connection I am willing to offer.
It should be pathetic. Instead, it just makes me want him more.
I close my eyes and try to quiet my mind. Try to find some peace in the silence, some clarity in the chaos.
A phone starts ringing.
Not my phone. I don’t have a phone anymore. This is Dante’s ringtone, sharp and insistent, cutting through the quiet of the flat like a blade.
I hear him answer. His voice is muffled through the walls, but I can make out the tone. Clipped. Professional. The voice of a man who is very good at compartmentalizing.
The conversation is short. A few words, too quiet to distinguish. Then silence.
Footsteps in the hallway. They pause outside the bedroom door, and I hold my breath.
He doesn’t knock. Does not speak. Just stands there for a long moment, a shadow visible through the crack at the bottom of the door.
Then he moves away, and I hear other sounds. Drawers opening. The rustle of clothing. The distinctive click of something metal being checked and secured.
He is getting ready for work.
The realization hits me like a bucket of ice water. Work. His job. The job that involves soundproofed rooms and screaming and all the things I have been trying so hard not to think about.
Someone called him. Someone needs him. And he is going to go, because that is what he does, because that is who he is, because the man who brings me tea and remembers my favorite biscuits is the same man who makes people beg for death.
I hear the front door open. Close. The click of locks engaging.
And then I am alone.
Alone in the flat where I am prisoner and lover and victim and something else I cannot name. Alone with my spiraling thoughts and my empty mug of tea.
I curl tighter into myself and stare at the door he didn’t open.
He left without saying goodbye. Without checking on me. Without any of the small gestures that have come to mean so much.
Part of me understands. He is giving me space. He left to do his work instead of bringing his work here. He thinks his presence would make things worse. He is probably right.
But another part of me, the selfish, needy part that I am trying so hard to ignore, wanted him to knock. Wanted him to crack the door open and ask if I was okay. Wanted him to choose me over whatever violence awaits him.
He didn’t. Of course he didn’t. Because at the end of the day, that is who he is. A man who answers when the family calls. A man who puts duty before desire. A man who cannot escape his own nature any more than I can escape my trauma.
We are both trapped. Both broken. Both stumbling through this impossible situation without a map or a compass or any hope of finding our way out.
Maybe that’s why I feel so drawn to him. Not despite what he is, but because of it. Because he understands damage in a way that no one else ever has. Because he looks at my broken pieces and doesn’t flinch.
Or maybe I am just making excuses. Romanticizing my captivity to make it bearable. Telling myself pretty lies because the ugly truth is too heavy to carry.
I don’t know anymore. I don’t know anything anymore.
The flat is silent around me. Empty. The absence of Dante’s presence is a physical thing, pressing against my skin.
I close my eyes and wait for him to come back.
It’s the only thing I can do.