10. Colton
TEN
COLTON
Down came the rain and washed the spider out. Out came the sun and dried up all the rain, and the itsy-bitsy spider climbed up the spout again.
Time suspends as her hand swings through the air, her soft smile wrapping around my fears like a hug. I open my mouth and a piece of potato lands inside, the sweet taste of fancy ketchup causing my cheeks to tingle.
Her wide eyes shine, long chestnut hair in windswept waves around her face and down her bare shoulders. Beneath her chin, she steeples her hands and blinks at me, breath held, bottom lip pinched between her teeth.
I can’t keep the grin from splitting my face. And she erupts into laughter, her cheeks rosy with delight. “I knew you’d like them this way!”
“You shouldn’t treat him like a baby,” my father says, peering at me over the top of his upturned boot where his hand is stashed. The other is brushing the boot, the old brush in his hand flicking dirt everywhere. Dirt that she will clean up after he’s left the room, and do it wearing a smile. He strokes the boot again as I chew and swallow the bite of parmesan crusted potato.
“I was just being playful,” my mom replies to my father who isn’t even listening anymore. “Right, Coley?”
I smile at her but she doesn’t return it. Instead, her face screws up, all the color draining, then refilling, her complexion steely and… then the kitchen falls away, and there’s just concrete.
Mom is gone.
I’m hallucinating.
I don’t try to keep my eyes open–though now I notice that both can open. What’s the point? Look around this box I’m trapped in? No fucking thanks. No one has been down with food in three fucking days and I’m on the brink of snapping.
That’s actually a lie. I already snapped. I screamed and shouted and cursed and made a fool out of myself with my maker as my witness for over an hour.
Nothing changed.
I’m starving, dehydrated and so goddamn fatigued I’m starting to think that even though it’s been just over a week and half, I’m already giving up. My body feels like it’s inching toward death with how unable and slow it’s become. My muscles ache with a fatigue I haven’t earned, not one from starvation but one that comes after an intense workout or a long, tortuous ride through the mountains on my horse.
And I haven’t done much but take a piss and yell.
Still, my body is unlike it’s ever been. I’m starting to wonder if I’m being drugged. But if I am, I don’t know how to stop it. I can’t refuse the slim amounts of food and water I do get, or I’ll die.
Maybe not yet but eventually. And I don’t think Forrest has any plans to set me free and make me pinkie promise not to tell.
Something tickles my eyebrow as I run down my dilemma one more time, the smell of my filth starting to make me nauseous. I reach up and swat at whatever that was—a fly, maybe? Fuck. A fly would be good. It would give me something to focus on.
I’d watch him land on things.
Lord, listen to me.
Muffled in the distance, the grandfather clock tells me the time, but I’m too tired to count the chimes, too tired to take in every detail the way I was the first few days of captivity.
I swat at nothing yet something still tickles my eyebrow. But this time, there’s something cool on my head, damp maybe. My eyes slowly open, and I have to blink a couple of times to set my vision straight.
For a moment, the shackles around my ankles and wrists no longer ache. The hunger in my core quiets its vibrant song. The foreboding of death falls away. My muscle pain subsides. But just for a moment… as I lay eyes on Kinleigh Conway.
My Kinleigh Conway.
My heart begins to race so fast my vision blurs and my ears fill with the low hum of blood rushing through me. I let out a breath I’d held, my chest burning from the trapped air.
“Are you real?” I croak, my cracked lips moving, words failing me as I process her beauty.
Her hair is long, down to her waist, yet wavy as ever. Though she’s not smiling, I know her smile has only grown more beautiful. She looks exactly how I fantasized her to look the other night. I lick my lips, trying to steady my wild thoughts. Did I… summon this? She must not be real.
I had a dream about her. What she’d look like now. Who she’d be now. And here she is.
“You’re not real,” I breathe out, sadness crushing the sliver of hope that has risen in me. I’d be a fool to get hopeful in my situation. “I’m just seeing what I want to see before I die.”
Kinleigh’s focus shifts to my other eye, where she begins tending to what must be a new cut. She dips her washcloth in a basin of water she’s brought down, sitting near my hip on the bed.
“I fucked up,” I mutter, processing the situation.
I should’ve fought for Kinleigh back then. Demanded to know why she did what she did. Not let her walk away from me without answers.
If I would’ve had the courage, we could’ve stayed in Buffalo Trails. I could’ve helped my dad, raised Carsyn with him, and none of this would be happening.
And now I’m disappointing the only family I have left by dying on a fool’s errand.
“I should have stayed here. And never let any of this happen,” I murmur, a lazy gray fog rolling through my thoughts, pushing them further from my mouth. My eyes close again, and then something cool hits my wrist, beneath the shackle, where my skin is beyond tender, torn open in a blistering wound on the top.
The cool liquid alleviates the burn for the first second then a biting pain tears through my wrist and up my arm, my shoulder filling with a blinding ache. My eyes shoot open, looking at my wrist where Kinleigh is pouring antiseptic over my wounds. Beneath my arm she’s placed a white terry cloth towel, collecting the blood-tinged antiseptic that drips off me.
“Goddamn it!” I grit out, my spine lurching, causing my sore body to curl off the mattress. Sweat slides down my brow and I raise my other shackled arm to wipe it away with the back of my palm, my eyes never leaving her.
She works diligently to bandage me, and along with the pain comes clarity.
I am not hallucinating.
I am not dying, not yet.
Because I can feel the antiseptic, the tape as she yanks it off and replaces it more perfectly. I can feel it all. And I can smell the dirt and blood run off. The bandages in the wax paper wrapping.
I’m alive.
Which means… Kinleigh Conway is real, and she’s here.
“I thought I’d never see you again,” I blurt out, my voice hoarse and shaky. I don’t know if that’s the hunger, or her.
Sitting up on the bed, my entire body howls in burning agony, all of my muscles so fatigued I feel like I could faint. I grip the bedframe and hold her eyes, our faces only two feet away after over ten years apart.
I smell like a filthy cowboy who’s been trapped in a cellar with a toilet for nearly two weeks.
“Kinleigh Conway,” I add, trying her name out loud.
I haven’t said it out loud in so many years. Too many years.
Her wide, beautiful eyes fill, and a singular tear slips through her dark lashes, carving a streak down her cheek. She ceases her bandaging as I bring my hand to her face, swiping her tear with my thumb. My hands are cracked and calloused, marked with filth from the cellar, and a stark contrast against her creamy, soft skin.
“Don’t cry,” I start to tell her, trying as hard as I can to push myself up against the wall so we can talk.
The cellar door slams into the wall and Kinleigh jumps to her feet, eyes wide and full of horror.
“Get your ass up here, now!” Forrest shouts, while Kinleigh is already collecting the basin, washcloth, and supplies.
She turns toward the stairs and using the last of my energy, I reach out and take her wrist. Her hair is so goddamn long, and I can’t help but remember the sight of it strewn through the tall grass between our properties, her new post puberty body on display.
She only stands there for a split second but I memorize everything. I force my weakened brain to hold tight. The memory of us twinkles in her eyes as she blinks back at me, nostrils flaring, chest inflating. I open my mouth, but Forrest shouts again, and she’s turning on her heel, heading up.
But I memorized it all.
The cinch in her waist and bloom in her hips. Her full breasts. The thick, wavy hair, a beautiful sun-kissed amber. Her skin is as soft and pure as I remember, and though she didn’t speak or smile, she is still the most breath-taking creature I’ve ever known.
The door slams closed, leaving me in darkness, my brain no longer lost in rolling clouds and ethereal fog.
Suddenly, despite my body still being trepid and weak, my mind is clear.
I need to get out. I need to report Forrest.
And I need her.