Chapter 16 #2
The unmasked man's hand cups my face. His thumb traces my cheekbone, catching something wet.
Tears. When did I start crying?
"I'll always stop them," he says. "Anyone who tries to hurt you. I'll always stop them."
He leans forward and presses his lips to my forehead. Soft. Careful. Like I'm something fragile that might shatter.
Then my cheeks. One, then the other. Kissing away the tears I can't seem to control.
His mouth finds mine and the kiss is—
Tender.
That's the word. Not hungry. Not demanding. Just gentle pressure, his lips warm against mine, asking nothing.
I cry harder.
He pulls back and resumes washing me. Methodical. Thorough. The cloth moves down my legs, between my toes, back up again. He tips my head back to rinse my hair, supporting my neck with one hand.
None of it is sexual.
All of it is careful.
When he lifts me from the tub, I don't resist. He wraps me in a towel so soft it feels like being swaddled in clouds, patting me dry with the same meticulous attention he gave to washing me.
"Arms up."
I raise them. He slides a white button-down shirt over my head—his shirt, I realize, recognizing the smell of him on the fabric. Then white boxer shorts that pool around my hips until he helps me fold the waistband over. Once. Twice. Three times before they'll stay up.
"Sit."
I sit on the edge of the tub. He produces a comb from somewhere and works it through my wet hair, starting at the ends, patient with the tangles.
No one has combed my hair since I was eight years old.
The tears come again, silent this time.
He doesn't comment. Just keeps combing until my hair lies smooth against my shoulders.
Then he picks me up and carries me outside.
The night air is warm. Stars overhead. The sound of waves somewhere in the distance.
A plane waits on the runway. He carries me up the stairs and through the cabin to a tiny room near the back with a lay-flat chair—the kind you see in first class sections of a commercial plane, but wide enough for two people.
He puts me down, then climbs in beside me and wraps his arms around me from behind, pulling me against his chest.
"Sleep," he says.
I sleep.
I sleep for a very long time because the next thing I know, there's that familiar, unmistakable sensation of falling—the subtle shift in pressure and gravity that signals descent.
My stomach dips slightly, and my ears pop as the plane begins dropping altitude. I don't even remember taking off. Don't remember the engines roaring to life, or the acceleration down the runway, or the moment the wheels left the ground.
Just the warm circle of his arms around me and then... nothing.
Blessed, dreamless nothing.
And now... I'm alone. The warm weight of him is gone from behind me. The space where his body pressed against mine feels cool now, empty.
I blink slowly, disoriented, my mind still foggy with sleep. The hum of the engines has changed pitch, a lower, descending whine that confirms what my body already knows—we're going to land.
The plane isn't that big, so when I push myself up on one elbow and lean over the side of the bed, I can see down the narrow aisle that runs through the cabin.
His legs are stretched out in a seat near the front of the plane—dark trousers, expensive leather shoes crossed at the ankle.
The relaxed posture of someone completely at ease.
I think he's talking on the phone, his voice a low murmur I can't quite make out over the drone of the engines, but I can see one hand gesturing slightly as he speaks.
The descent is sharper now, more pronounced—my ears pop again and I have to swallow to clear the pressure.
And then we're touching down, the wheels hitting the runway with that jarring double-thump that always makes my heart skip.
I struggle to sit up properly, pushing tangled hair out of my face as I twist to look out the small oval window beside the bed.
The unmasked man appears at my side, materializing from the front of the cabin with that silent, purposeful grace I'm starting to recognize as distinctly his.
I look up at him, my brain still sluggish and slow, my thoughts not quite connecting properly. "Shouldn't you have your seatbelt on?" my mouth asks without my brain's permission, the question coming out flat and automatic, like I'm reading lines from a script I don't remember learning.
He smiles down at me, and there's something warm in his expression that I can't quite process right now, something that feels too genuine for this entire surreal situation. "Did you have a nice rest?"
The plane jerks suddenly, engines screaming in reverse thrust as we decelerate hard down the runway, and I have to brace one hand against the wall to keep from pitching forward. I nod in response to his question because words feel like too much effort.
"Good," he says, and his smile widens, showing teeth, reaching his eyes in a way that makes him look almost boyish despite the expensive suit and the overwhelming presence he carries.
"I've got a limo waiting." He jerks his head toward the tarmac outside the window, where I can just make out the sleek black shape of a car gleaming in what looks like late afternoon sunlight. "You'll be home in thirty minutes."
Home. The word echoes strangely in my chest, hollow and foreign. I don't know what home even means anymore. It's been so long since I had a fucking home, the word feels like something ancient. Something lost.
I smile back at the unmasked man anyway, the expression pulling at my face like I'm wearing someone else's skin. Nodding again because it's easier than speaking, easier than trying to untangle the knot of confusion, and exhaustion, and lingering disorientation in my head. "Thanks."
The plane shudders to a complete stop, the whine of the engines dropping to a lower idle, and he reaches down to help me disentangle from the blankets.
His hands are gentle but firm, pulling the soft cashmere away from where it's twisted around my legs, and then he's steadying me, his palm against my lower back as I stand on shaky legs and start walking toward the exit.
My body feels disconnected, like I'm piloting it from a distance—one foot in front of the other, down the narrow aisle past the galley and the seats he'd been occupying earlier.
The door at the front of the cabin is already open, late afternoon light spilling in along with a rush of cool air.
He holds my elbow as we descend the stairs, his grip supportive without being controlling. At the bottom, there's smooth tarmac under my feet, and the black limousine is waiting about twenty feet away.
The unmasked man walks me to it with that same steady hand on my elbow, opens the door, and waits while I duck my head and slide across the buttery leather seat. The windows are tinted so dark, the world outside looks dim and distant.
He settles in beside me, pulling the door shut with a solid, final thunk that seals us into the quiet, climate-controlled space.
The silence becomes awkward immediately for some reason. He clears his throat. "So… I… I'm not sure if you've figured it out yet, but… I… like you, Scarletta. I know how this all started was… weird, so it's possible you haven't realized that I like you yet…"
Weird is not the word I would use to describe what 'this' has been.
"But I do," he continues. "And I'm hoping you like me too."
For a moment, neither of us says anything. That awkwardness is thick enough to slice with a knife now.
The scoff I've been holding in finally comes out as I turn to look at him. "I don't even know your fucking name."
He laughs a little here. Like I said something funny. "It's Caleb. Caleb MacLeay."
I nod, looking him in the eyes. "OK… Caleb. Well… I'm just—"
"It's all right," he says, hurriedly putting up a hand.
"I'm not expecting you to make any kind of commitment right now.
You've been through a lot. I just want you to know that I enjoyed our time together and…
would like to see you again. Minus—" he waves one hand through the air, like he's trying to clear something away. "Minus the games, ya know?"
The words hit me sideways, scrambling in my brain before they finally slot into place.
When they do, laughter bubbles up from somewhere deep in my chest—sharp, disbelieving, edged with something that might be hysteria.
"You want to date me?" The question comes out louder than I intended, echoing in the confined space of the car.
"Like... dinner and a movie? Coffee shops and holding hands in public? "
He presses his lips together—not quite a smile, not quite a grimace—and nods slowly, deliberately. His eyes never leave mine. "I do. But if you're not ready for that yet, I understand. Take whatever time you need." He pauses, and his voice drops lower, softer. "I'll wait."
I stare at him, my mind spinning uselessly like wheels stuck in mud.
What is this man's deal?
What the actual fuck is his fucking deal?
He's been stalking me for months, bought me in a Christmas auction that wasn't even real—just a premise, really—so he could reenact scenes from my book. Which, by the fucking way, ended up with me blacking out and losing memories!
Then he took me to an island under the guise of a Valentine's Day scavenger hunt meant to bolster my trust in him—which worked! I did trust him.
I trusted him to keep me safe so explicitly, I put a blindfold on, put ear buds in, and walked into an elaborately staged psychological gauntlet based on a story I wrote in the privacy of my own twisted imagination that ended up being part of some…
seriously fucking twisted—I don't even know what that was.
I don't understand that man's presence in my maze.
Why was he there?
I'm not going to ask because clearly, he wasn't supposed to be. He was there to hurt me, that's all I understand. And he did.
He fucking did.
And then he got tortured and murdered for it.
And now, Caleb, the masked-unmasked man, is sitting here in a luxury car offering me... what?
A relationship?
Romance?
The kind of normal I've never been able to sustain even when I tried?
And invitation to the St. Patrick's Day… fucking… leprechaun dungeon amusement park?
What? What is he offering me here?
The limo rolls to a stop and I realize that I'm home. Or—whatever this fucking apartment building is.
Caleb smiles, then opens the door and gets out, offering me his hand.
I don't take it. I scramble out, the cold Idaho air hitting me in a real way that it didn't back at the airport, and I walk right past him.
"It's OK," he calls after me. "I'll wait."
I go inside, climbing the steps up to my floor, my hands shaking as I approach my door and realize I don't have my phone, or my key—but when I try the handle, it's open.
Of course, it's open.
This man, this masked, unmasked Caleb man, controls everything.
Everything but the weird old Russian murderer who made his way into my rape-fantasy sex maze, killed my attendants, and…
I slam the door behind me and what do I see on the counter, but my phone and my keys. Plus the clothes I wore to the island—his clothes, I remind myself. Smelling freshly laundered and folded neatly.
I lock the door, crawl into my blanket fort that is now a glamping tent, and find my laptop still open, waiting for me, but dead because it ran out of battery.
I plug it in to the charger and for a moment I just breathe…
Softly, slowly, in and out.
Then I pick up a glass half full of water on the tiny table next to the laptop, reach up, grab each of the cameras mounted on the inside of the tent, and drop them into the water.
I scramble back out of the tent, get a step ladder from the entryway closet, and one by one, I do this for every camera in my apartment.
Then, I go back to my laptop, turn it on, find the file on my desktop, and disable the keylogging hack.
Fuck. This.
Fuck all of this.
Because what just happened to me wasn't fun.
It wasn't a fantasy, it was a fucking nightmare.
I am a freak.
I am nothing but a freak.
But fuck it. That's fine. I can live with it. I can live with 'freak'.
What I can't live with is this man.
This unmasked man, this Caleb.
Because he's a goddamned monster.
And going back to him… would make me one too.