Chapter 9
SOPHIA
The kitchen smells like citrus and sugar and something close to mania. I’ve been up all night, and since baking has sort of become my comfort zone, I baked.
There’s lemon loaf cooling on the counter, two trays of muffins, a stack of scones, three kinds of bread, and something that was supposed to be focaccia but turned into a stress response.
Dawn barely brushes the windows when his footsteps reach me. I keep my back turned, tracking each one. Ten, then a hesitation—just long enough to notice, too brief to interpret. Eleven, twelve. Then nothing but the sound of my own breathing.
“You don’t write. You don’t call.” I slide a knife through the center of the loaf. “I could have died here alone, you know?”
I can feel the silence from across the room. It isn’t empty—it has a shape, a weight, the density of someone choosing their stillness very carefully.
I glance at him where he stands at the bottom of the stairs, dark against the pale morning light. Hood up. Buff in place. Hands bare. Watching.
I cut another slice. Clean. Precise. “I could have tripped on those stairs. Cracked my skull open. Or maybe slipped on the bathroom tiles.” A faint shrug.
“That’s more me.” This time I turn to face him, leaning against the kitchen counter.
“No apology? No ‘sorry I left you in the mountains like a stray dog’?”
Still nothing. No denial. Just that quiet, infuriating stillness.
I gesture vaguely to the counters without looking away from him. “I’m not sure, but do kidnappers eat?”
His gaze drifts past me, taking inventory. The bread. The pastries. The trays. The sheer volume.
“I blame you,” I add. “I was bored. So I baked.” I set the knife down and wipe my hands on a towel. “Now I can’t stop.”
A beat.
“I’ll get more supplies.” His voice breaks the silence, like a stone dropped into still water. The sound seems to alter the air between us, making the kitchen suddenly smaller.
I blink. “Great. I’ll make a list, and we can play house. Creepy enough for you?”
His eyes flicker, almost imperceptibly—not to the bread or the window. To me. And they stay there.
I clear my throat. “You should try the lemon loaf. It’s my greatest accomplishment in this house. Of course, you’d have to remove the buff if you want to eat.”
The pause before he answers is a half-second too long. “I’m not hungry.” He doesn’t move. Doesn’t retreat. Doesn’t advance. Just stands there like gravity has anchored him in place.
“You know,” I say carefully, “it’s considered rude when a guest does something nice for you and you refuse it.”
“You’re not a guest.”
“Guest. Prisoner.” I shrug one shoulder. “Same difference. Oh, wait. No. A guest can leave. I can’t.”
Something moves through him then. Not visible—he doesn’t shift, doesn’t exhale, doesn’t betray it with anything so convenient as a tell. It’s something beneath the surface of all that practiced stillness that tightens and doesn’t release.
“I bought you more clothes,” he mutters, like it inconvenienced him. “They’re in your room.”
“If you mean that room upstairs with no personality,” I reply, pushing off the counter, “that’s not my room.”
His gaze pins me. And I hold it.
“What’s your name?” I ask.
“I told you.”
“Your full name.”
Silence.
He doesn’t fill it. He doesn’t shift uncomfortably or look away or offer some deflection. He just absorbs the question and locks it behind those unreadable eyes.
“That room upstairs,” I continue slowly, “the seasons room. It’s beautiful. Are you the artist?”
He shakes his head once.
“Well, whoever did it… it’s stunning.”
“You were snooping.”
I let out a small, incredulous breath. “Of course I was snooping. There was nothing else for me to do.”
“You could have baked more.”
I gesture at the chaos around us. “If I baked any more, you’d have to start eating your way down the staircase.”
He doesn’t smile. But something in his eyes almost does—a fractional shift, there and gone so fast I’d dismiss it if I hadn’t been watching for exactly that.
And I am watching. It’s instinct at this point. I’m trained to look for tells. For flinches. For the way guilt lives in the shoulders or how grief tightens a jaw.
With him, there’s almost nothing. But almost nothing is still something.
“How do you know me, Reth?”
He crosses his arms, one hand tucking beneath his opposite bicep, fingers pressing briefly into muscle before going still.
“I don’t.” The lie lands between us and just sits there.
“I don’t have to see your full face to know that’s not true.”
His gaze sharpens.
“The apple cinnamon muffins,” I press. “Those are my favorite.”
“Coincidence.”
“The shampoo upstairs is the same brand I use.”
“It’s popular.”
“The clothes fit.” I step closer without realizing I’ve moved. “And I’m willing to bet the clothes you brought with you are exactly my size.”
His eyes don’t answer immediately. They drop instead. Slowly. From my face… to my throat… lower, the intensity of it causing me to shift my weight.
When they return to mine, it feels like being caught. “Lucky guess.”
I straighten my spine, like posture alone can stitch my composure back together. “Okay.” I nod once. “We’ll go with that. For now.”
I turn back to the counter and pick up the knife again, slicing another piece of lemon loaf—slower this time. The flour has settled. The kitchen smells like citrus and warmth and something that almost resembles ordinary, and I am acutely aware of exactly how far behind me he’s lurking.
“So, what do you do?” I ask. “Or is kidnapping women what you file your taxes under?”
“Children’s book illustrator.”
I stop mid-slice. “What?”
“For tax purposes.” He shrugs, and even behind the buff I can see him smirking.
“Funny,” I quip and resume cutting, but I can feel it—the weight of him watching me. My mouth dries, and I swallow, cutting too far, too thin, and the slice falls apart. Shit. “So,” I start. “You going to tell me where you’ve been?”
“No.”
“Are you planning on letting me go soon?”
“No.”
“How about telling me why I’m here? Oh, let me guess. That’s a no.” I turn to face him, and he’s right behind me. Close enough that my breath catches in my throat, close enough that my body jolts on instinct, the knife jerking up between us before my brain catches up—pure reflex, pure survival.
For one suspended heartbeat, the knife is pointed straight at his stomach. I don’t know who moves first. One second there’s space between us. The next, his hand closes over the blade.
Steel bites into flesh with a wet, intimate sound, and I freeze, horrified, as his palm closes tighter, stopping the knife dead inches from his body. Blood wells instantly, spilling between his knuckles as he drives the knife to a halt inches from his body.
My fingers are still wrapped around the handle. His hand is closed around the edge. We’re locked together by the same weapon, and he never breaks eye contact. Not when the metal cuts him. Not when his skin splits open. Not when my breath stutters against his. He just holds it there. Holds me there.
My chest lifts on a breath that doesn’t quite finish, and the movement presses me into him—into the hard line of his torso, into the solid heat of a body that should feel unsafe but instead feels devastatingly alive.
The contact sends a sharp, electric awareness through me, and the proximity floods my senses.
He smells like winter air and worn leather, with something darker threaded beneath it, a faint trace of smoke that clings to him like memory. The heat between us sparks fast, then falters, volatile and uninvited. It’s the kind of reaction that doesn’t care if you’re ready.
His breathing changes, just slightly. It’s still controlled. Still measured. But deeper now. Like he’s not the one standing here with his hand split open. Like I’m the dangerous thing.
Blood drips onto the tile, and the scent shifts as iron rises between us, turning everything more intimate than it should be. My throat goes dry, my pulse everywhere at once—wrists, neck… lower. I should let go.
I don’t.
“You’re bleeding,” I whisper, the words slipping out before I can stop them.
As if pain is easier than stepping back, his grip tightens, and the blade shifts a fraction, slicing deeper into his palm, the movement pulling me closer to him.
His gaze drops to my mouth, lingers, then back to my eyes. “Stop fucking studying me.”
I shake my head once, barely. “That’s not—”
“You won’t like what you find.” His jaw tightens, the words landing like a confession, like he’s telling me the truth for the first time.
My gaze flicks to his hand again, to the blood that won’t stop, and something inside me twists—something instinctive, something trained, something that has spent years reaching for broken things and trying to make them safe.
With a tug, he jerks me up close, the edge of the knife pressing against his stomach now. “You think you can kill me?”
I swallow hard, my eyes trained on his. “I might be vulnerable here, but I’m not stupid.”
“What’s so stupid about wanting to kill the man who kidnapped you?”
“Because if you die, I die.”
Confusion settles on his brow, and my fingers finally loosen on the knife’s handle. “Every door out of his house has a code,” I state. “If you die, there’s not a chance in hell I’m getting out.”
“Smart girl.” He drops the knife, blood splashing across the tiles as he steps back. The distance is so abrupt, it’s like he’s tearing himself away from the edge of something.
His eyes stay on me for one last beat—blue, cold, burning, then he turns and storms up the stairs, boots hitting wood hard enough to make the house tremble.
I’m frozen, staring at the smear of blood on the floor, my heart still pounding. But it’s not the sight of blood that makes my stomach turn. It’s the realization that for one fraction of a second, when he was right there, bleeding in front of me…
…I didn’t want him to move away.