Chapter 20
Cove
The worst part was not that Tobias looked at me like he was telling the truth about me being precious to him.
The worst part was that, sometimes, after days of concrete walls and silence and the terrible gentleness of his hands, some lonely, damaged part of me wanted to know what it would feel like to believe him.
I hated that.
I hated it more than the room, more than the cuff, more than the way he knocked so politely before unlocking a door he had no intention of letting me keep closed. At least those things made sense. They were ugly, but they were honest in their ugliness.
This was worse because it was not honest.
Or maybe it was too honest, I didn’t know.
Something that I did know was that I was still angry.
I was so angry I could feel it sitting inside my ribs like something with claws, waiting for any excuse to rake itself up my throat and use my voice as a weapon to attack.
I was angry when Tobias brought breakfast, and when he checked my body to ensure the bruises and scrapes were healing.
I was angry when he uncuffed me outside the bathroom and stood with his back to the wall while I showered with the door cracked open, both of us pretending that the thin line of visible tile and steam between us was some meaningful form of privacy.
And I was angrier still when he respected it.
Which was unfair.
I knew that was unfair.
I also did not care.
If he looked, then he was a monster. If he did not look, then he was proving he could respect boundaries when he wanted to, which meant every boundary he ignored was a choice.
There was no way for him to win that argument.
Good.
He didn’t deserve to win.
Still, the shower had become one of the strange little pressure points of my day.
Not because I was grateful for it, even though I was.
Not because the office bathroom was beautiful and clean and private enough to make me feel human again for twenty minutes.
But because when I stepped out afterward, hair wet and skin warm and flushed, he always looked at the floor first.
Always.
Like he had trained himself not to look until I told him he could.
Like he knew his wanting had become another form of danger.
That morning, I found him standing, facing the monitors, his hands tightly clasped behind his back and his posture rigid enough that I knew he had heard me step out but was refusing to turn.
The door to the bathroom was still half-open behind me, steam drifting into the office in pale, humid curls. My hair dripped onto the collar of the soft black shirt he’d brought me to change into.
“You can turn around,” I said.
Tobias did, eyes lifting to my face. Not the shirt that clung to my waist from the humidity, or the sweatpants that sat low on my hips and exposed a hint of my hipbones, but my face.
He held his gaze there with a focus so controlled it almost became worse than if he had been obvious, because I was starting to become aware of the true depth of his restraint.
His stare was not clinical.
Not anymore.
I knew what clinical looked like on Tobias.
I had seen it when he examined my ankle, when he reviewed water test results, and when he scanned Ben’s notes for omissions.
This was different. This was attention locked behind glass, every part of him forced still because stillness was the only thing keeping him from becoming whatever he wanted to be.
My stomach tightened annoyingly.
“Stop looking at me like that,” I mumbled.
“Like what?”
“Like you’re trying really hard not to look at me.”
A faint line appeared between his brows. “But I am trying hard.”
I stared at him, and he stared back.
My face warmed, which was infuriating, because the correct emotional response here was not embarrassment. The correct emotional response was outrage, disgust, fear, maybe a little nausea if my nervous system wanted variety.
Not heat.
Not awareness.
But then he held up the cuff meant for my wrist, the fragile civility vanished, and my mood soured immediately, dumping a bucket of cold water onto said heat.
“Do we have to?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“You know, most people would consider the whole shower-door thing enough indignity for one morning.”
His mouth tightened. “This is not meant as indignity.”
“No, it’s meant as control,” I hissed out.
I held out my wrist with as much contempt as I could fit into the gesture.
Tobias stepped closer and fastened the cuff around my wrist so carefully, so gently, it made me want to scream.
His fingers were warm as the cuff clicked shut.
Tobias’s thumb lingered for a fraction of a second, brushing lightly over the pulse point before he swallowed and withdrew his hand.
Our aquarium time came after that.
It always did now, after breakfast and the bathroom and whatever new humiliation the morning had cooked up for me.
The routine was grotesque in how quickly it had become a routine at all.
Tobias opened the room. Tobias brought food.
Tobias cuffed me. Tobias assisted me to the bathroom.
Tobias let me see the tanks. Tobias returned me to the concrete room.
I should not have looked forward to any part of it, and yet I did.
Not the cuff. Not him. Not the way the chain forced our bodies into an orbit I had never agreed to.
The fish.
I looked forward to seeing the fish.
Puff Daddy still rushed the glass when I came in, ridiculous and round and dramatic enough that the first time he did it, I almost cried.
The cuttlefish pulsed frustrated colors at me, clearly conveying her opinions about my absence.
The morays still needed their feeding schedule corrected because Ben, despite his many talents, had apparently decided “close enough” was an acceptable measurement for animals who thrived on consistency.
And Tobias listened.
That was the problem tucked inside the problem.
He listened the same way he always had, maybe even more intensely now, as if every word I gave him had become proof I was still there.
He listened so well that sometimes I forgot to be afraid for a few minutes.
But then the cuff would shift between us, metal sliding against metal, and I would remember.
That morning, we stopped in front of the reef system because one of the smaller wrasses, specifically one of the three fairies, was acting strangely near the back rockwork.
I leaned forward without thinking, one hand braced against the edge of the viewing barrier while Tobias stood close enough that I could feel the heat of him beside me.
Too close.
Or not too close.
I didn’t know anymore.
“That one,” I said, nodding toward the rockwork. “See how he’s hanging back?”
“Yes.”
“He wasn’t doing that before.”
“No.”
I looked up sharply. “Did you already notice?”
“Yes.”
“And you didn’t say anything?”
“I wanted to see if you would.”
I stared at him, my eye on the verge of twitching.
He looked back with perfect seriousness.
“You fucker,” I grumbled.
“I apologize.”
“You do not.”
“No,” he admitted. “Not for that, I suppose.”
Despite myself, the corner of my mouth began to quirk up.
I killed it almost instantly, but Tobias had already seen it.
His attention locked onto my mouth. It was not leering. It was not even overt. If anything, he looked away too quickly, almost like he had touched something hot.
But I saw it.
I felt it.
The awareness moved through me in a slow, terrible sweep, and suddenly the air between us was no longer only captivity and anger and barbs. There was something else there too, something I had been refusing to name because naming it would make it real.
Tobias wanted me.
Not only as his weird little captive aquarist.
Not only as the precious thing he had decided to keep.
He wanted me. Physically.
The realization should have made me step back.
It should have made me demand to return to the room, or yell, or use the cuff chain to hit him in the face if necessary. But instead, for one suspended, humiliating second, my body reacted before the rest of me could file a complaint.
My skin got too warm, and my breath hitched.
“Don’t look at me like that,” I said, but this time, my voice came out quieter than intended, and I hated that too.
Tobias’s Adam’s apple bobbed in his throat. “I can assure you I am trying not to.”
“Well, try harder.”
I looked back at the tank because the alternative was looking at his mouth, and absolutely not. No. We were not doing that. I was not doing that. My brain had enough problems to deal with without adding “maybe attracted to my captor” to the list.
The wrasse slipped behind the rockwork and disappeared.
Lucky bastard.
“You should take notes,” I said, clearing my throat.
Tobias appeared confused. “On?”
“The fairy wrasse. What else would I mean?”
“Ah, yes.”
“Okay, then take notes.”
He reached into his pocket for his phone.
His phone.
His freedom. His ability to call anyone, text anyone, open any door in the house, and rearrange anyone’s life with a few precise taps.
The warmth vanished.
Good.
I needed it gone.
Tobias’s expression suddenly shifted, and the desire disappeared behind concern so quickly it almost made me dizzy. “Cove?”
“What?” I growled, turning away from him.
I heard him slide his phone back into his pocket.
“I was only going to record the note.”
“I know.”
His brows drew together. “Then what changed?”
“Everything changes every five seconds, Tobias. I imagine that’s how most kidnappings are.”
“I—You are right,” he answered.
“I swear to God, if you agree with me one more time while continuing to do the thing I’m criticizing, I’m going to lose my ever-loving mind.”
His gaze held mine. “I don’t know how to fix this without risking losing you.”
“You already lost me.”
“No,” he said.
The quiet certainty in his voice made my chest hurt.
I turned back to him. “You don’t get to decide that.”
“No,” he agreed. “But I can refuse to accept it.”
I closed my eyes for a second, breathing through the mess of anger and fear and unwanted heat that had become my entire nervous system. When I opened them, Tobias was still watching me, but he had put more distance between us.
Not much, but enough that I knew it was deliberate.
“You’re doing it again,” I said.
“What?”
“Trying to be careful.”
“Would you prefer I not be?”
“No. Yes. I don’t know.” I pressed the heel of my uncuffed hand against my forehead. “That’s the problem. I don’t know what I want from you, except that I want to go home, and apparently that’s the only thing I can’t have.”
He said nothing because there was nothing good for him to say.