Chapter Six
Meredith
My wrists are zip-tied in front of me, tight enough to leave angry grooves, loose enough that Nick can pretend it’s mercy.
I’ve been on this bed for hours, listening to the wind claw at the windows, the occasional creak of floorboards outside the room.
Him.
My legs are numb, knees throbbing from being bent too long. The rope around my ankles bites into skin every time I shift, a punishing reminder that I’m not going anywhere.
And yet…it isn’t the physical ache that breaks me.
It’s the smell.
Pine sap and firewood. Smoke. Something sweeter underneath—cedar, maybe cinnamon. It smells like safety. Like Christmas. Like every fantasy I used to build in my head when I was thirteen and cold and scared and he was the only good thing in that hellhole.
Back then, that far-off cabin across the field was the place I feared most. He thinks it was our foster house that haunted me, but he never knew what happened out here.
Sometimes a truck would idle in the snow outside this place, exhaust curling up through the dark while a girl’s crying floated thin across the yard.
I learned to close the curtains. To pretend I didn’t hear.
Now I’m in the cabin.
Tied up in the middle of the woods, trapped in a place that only drags every ugly memory to the surface, with a fire blazing somewhere out there and stockings—of course—hung like he’s playing house. The boy I once protected is calling himself my savior.
The door creaks.
I flinch before I can stop myself.
Nick steps inside, boots heavy on the wood, brushing snow from his jacket sleeve. His dark hair curls damp at the ends, cheeks flushed from the cold. He looks annoyingly alive, like he just came in from chopping wood in some ridiculous cologne commercial instead of from kidnapping me.
“Hi” he says, almost cheerful. “I made dinner.”
I just stare.
He crosses the room in a few strides and crouches at the end of the bed. His fingers are warm as they close around my ankles, working at the knot.
“I’m letting you walk,” he murmurs, not looking up. “But you know better than to run.”
Do I? I don’t answer. I move my legs apart quickly when the rope falls away, wincing as circulation rushes back in sharp, needling stabs. The floor tilts when I stand; my knees buckle for a second, and his hands are already there, steadying my hips like it’s the most natural thing in the world.
Like we’re kids again.
We’re not.
He guides me out into the main room with a hand resting at the small of my back.
The cabin glows. A fire crackles in the stone hearth, shadows leaping up the log walls.
The table is set—real silverware, candles burning low, two mismatched bowls of stew steaming in the center, thick with chicken and potatoes and carrots.
Of course it’s stew.
My stomach growls, loud and pathetic in the quiet. Traitor.
“Sit,” he says, pulling a chair out for me.
I eye my zip-tied wrists and move toward it anyway, lowering myself slowly. The wooden seat is cold under my sore body. “Are you going to untie me so I can eat?” I ask, voice flat.
Nick’s mouth curves, not quite a smile, not quite a threat. “Now, Meredith. I’m not as smart as you, but I’m also not stupid.”
He takes the chair beside me instead of across, close enough that his arm brushes mine when he reaches for a bowl. He scoops up a spoonful of stew, blows on it, then brings it toward my mouth.
“Open,” he says softly.
I clamp my lips shut and turn my head away.
“Come on,” he murmurs, like he’s coaxing a skittish animal. The spoon hovers at my mouth again, nudging my lower lip. With my hands bound, all I can do is sit there and refuse.
The savory smell wraps around me—chicken, garlic, thyme—warm and thick and familiar enough to punch the air from my lungs.
Suddenly I’m not sitting at his carefully set table.
I’m twelve again, creeping down the creaky foster home stairs in the dark, every groan of the wood like a gunshot.
The kitchen smells like overcooked stew and bleach. I clutch a chipped bowl so tight my fingers ache. Greasy broth with a few limp carrot slices. It might as well be a five-star meal.
Nick waits at the bottom of the stairs, small and hunched in the shadows, arms wrapped around his knees. Eleven, all sharp edges and bruises. His lip is split and puffed, courtesy of our foster father’s “discipline.” Tear tracks have dried on his cheeks.
We don’t dare turn on a light.
I cross the hallway on bare feet, the linoleum icy under my toes. I sink down in front of him, heart thudding.
“Here,” I whisper, scooping a spoonful and bringing it to his mouth. “Eat.”
He hesitates—he always does, like he’s waiting for the trap—but the smell is too much. His cracked lips part. I slide the spoon in and watch his throat work as he swallows. His eyes flutter closed; a tiny sound, almost a sigh, slips out.
Warmth blooms in my chest, bigger than the thin blanket on my bed, bigger than the whole shitty house. For once, I made something better.
We’re halfway through before we hear it—the heavy tread above us. Floorboards groaning. He stiffens. My heart slams into my rib cage.
“Come on,” I hiss, grabbing his hand.
We bolt for the back, wrestling our feet into boots with shaking fingers before slipping out the back door into the night. The door clicks shut just as the footsteps hit the top of the stairs. From this side I hear our foster dad calling out into the dark.
“Sugarplum, that you?”
Outside, everything is still. Snow blankets the yard and the old pine by the porch, muting the world. Our breath puffs white into the freezing air. We drop onto the back steps, my bony hip pressed to his, the bowl forgotten beside us.
“I’m sorry,” he chokes suddenly. Not for anything he did. For the bruises, the screaming, the way I always end up in trouble because I won’t stop stepping between him and the blows. His voice breaks; something in my chest does, too.
“Shh, it’s okay,” I murmur, wrapping an arm around his shoulders, pulling him into my side. His face buries against my shirt, hot tears soaking through the thin cotton. “Look,” I whisper after a moment, nodding past the yard.
Beyond the fence, across a stretch of snow-blanketed field, the cabin sits half-hidden in the trees.
Dark. Quiet. Its windows catch the moonlight so it looks lit from within.
Once, I saw the orange glow of a truck’s taillights there, exhaust curling up like breath while a girl’s thin cries carried across the snow. I never told him about that night.
“One day we’ll have a place like that,” I tell him instead, weaving the lie smooth. “A cabin just for us. No one to hurt us. Just warm fires and…peace.”
He lifts his head, eyes reflecting the stitch of moonlight. The bruises on his face look even darker out here. “Just us?” he whispers. He sounds so hopeful and so completely wrecked that my heart physically hurts.
“Just us,” I say firmly, pressing a quick kiss to his hair. “As long as we have each other, we’re safe.”
He nods and leans in closer. We sit there until the cold gnaws through clothes and skin, clinging to that fantasy until even my teeth are chattering. Only then do we sneak back inside.
“Meredith?”
My name snaps me back so hard I sway.
I hadn’t realized my eyes were closed. A single tear tracks down my cheek. Before I can turn away, Nick’s thumb is there, catching it. He wipes it away like it physically hurts him to see it.
For a heartbeat, it’s him. The boy. Bruised and skinny and looking at me like I’m the only thing keeping his world from collapsing.
My chest twists.
I hate that I still recognize him under the man who zip-tied my wrists. I hate that some traitorous, half-starved part of me aches for him.
“Don’t touch me,” I snap, jerking my face from his hand.
The softness vanishes. His jaw tightens; the muscle there ticks as he inhales once, twice, like he’s counting.
“Meredith,” he says finally, quieter, voice threaded with something frayed. “Why do you have to make everything so difficult?”
He sets the spoon back in the bowl with a soft clink and stands. The sudden movement makes me flinch back into the chair. Firelight throws half his face into shadow, sharpening the angles, turning his eyes into dark pits.
“I went through all this trouble to cook for you.” He spreads his hands, like he’s pleading with a stubborn child. “To take care of you. I told you that’s what I’m doing. But you have to meet me halfway. You need to eat.”
He steps closer.
I shrink back even though there’s nowhere to go, the chair solid against my spine. Anger claws past the fear.
“Make everything difficult?” I let out a short, disbelieving laugh. “You kidnapped me, tied me up, dragged me out here like an animal, and somehow I’m the problem because I don’t want your fucking stew?”
His eyes flash. “I’m protecting you,” he bites out. “You belong here. With me. When everyone else left you to rot, I didn’t. Why can’t you see that?”
His hand reaches out—reflex more than thought—and I kick. My foot hits the bowl. It flips, crashes, explodes on the floor in a spray of broth and vegetables. Stew splatters across the worn wood near the hearth.
We both go still.
The fire pops, loud in the sudden silence.
I barely have time to register the fury that flares across his face before his hand clamps around my forearm.
“I didn’t want to do this, Meredith,” he growls, voice raw.
Panic detonates in my chest.
In one smooth motion, he drops back into his chair and hauls me with him.
The world tilts. Suddenly I’m staring at the floor, the room upside down, my body draped over his lap.
My bound hands are crushed between my stomach and his thighs, utterly useless.
I kick, twist, try to lever myself off him, but his arm bands across my lower back, pinning me like I weigh nothing.
“Let go! Get off me!” I snarl, rage and humiliation burning hot behind my eyes.