Chapter 7 #2
Instead, his jaw tightened like he was physically holding back violence. Not toward me—toward them. Toward people who hurt children and called it charity.
"I could kill him," he said finally, and the calm certainty in his voice made me believe he would. “I would do it for you.”
"He's not worth it," I said, though part of me wanted to give him their address, wanted to see what the Beast would do to a man who hurt little girls.
"You are."
I swallowed, my mouth suddenly dry.
"I trust you," he said suddenly, the words coming out like they surprised him too. "And I care about you more than I should."
My heart did something complicated in my chest, part hope, part terror. "Dmitry—"
"We're going somewhere. Away from this apartment, away from the city." He stood, started clearing plates with efficient movements. "You could run if you wanted. Once we're outside, away from the locks and cameras. You could disappear."
The offer hung between us, real and terrifying. Freedom. The thing I'd been fighting for since the moment he'd grabbed me. He was giving it to me, just handing it over like it was nothing.
"I won't," I said immediately, the words coming out before I could think about them.
He paused, dish in hand. "Why?"
Because you sat with me last night. Because you taught me to breathe. Because you know what Mr. Henderson did and you want to kill him for it. Because somewhere between the first corner time and last night's breathing exercises, this stopped being captivity and became something else.
"Because Bear needs his medication schedule," I said instead.
From his pen, Bear whined at the sound of his name, probably sensing the tension in the room. His tail thumped hopefully against the blankets, eternal optimist that he was.
"Right," Dmitry said, but there was something in his eyes that said he heard all the things I didn't say. "Bear needs consistency."
He moved toward his room, probably to get dressed, then paused in the doorway. "Wear something warm. Layers. It's cold where we're going."
"Where are we going?"
"Somewhere special," he said, and there was something in his voice I'd never heard before. Something that sounded almost like hope. "Somewhere I've never taken anyone else."
After he left, I sat at the kitchen island, trying to process what had just happened. For the first time in my life, I had a real choice. Not the illusion of choice that foster care offered—this home or that one, this abuse or that neglect. A real choice. Stay or go. Trust or run.
Bear yipped from his pen, and I went to him, picking him up and holding him close. He licked my face with enthusiasm, tail wagging so hard his whole body shook.
"What do you think, Bear?" I whispered into his fur. "Do we trust the Beast?"
He barked once, decisive, and somehow that settled it. We were going wherever Dmitry wanted to take us. Not because we had to, but because for the first time in four years, I wanted to choose something other than survival.
"Good," I told Bear, setting him back in his pen. "Then let's go somewhere special."
The black SUV smelled like leather and Dmitry—that cologne he wore that was all cedar and smoke, expensive and dangerous in equal measure. I pressed my face to the window as we crossed the George Washington Bridge, Manhattan shrinking behind us like a bad dream I was finally waking from.
We headed west through winter fields that looked like someone had painted them in shades of brown and gold.
The conversation was sparse but easy, neither of us feeling the need to fill every silence.
When I'd start to tense—my shoulders creeping toward my ears, my breathing getting shallow—he'd notice immediately.
"In for four," he'd say, not looking away from the road. "Hold for four."
And we'd breathe together, him driving one-handed while demonstrating the rhythm with his free hand, me matching him until my chest loosened and I could see the landscape again instead of just my reflection in the glass.
The turnpike gave way to smaller roads, then smaller still, until we were climbing into mountains that made me feel tiny in the best way.
Skyline Drive unspooled beneath us like ribbon, marked by signs with names that sounded like poetry—Little Stony Man, Spitler Knoll, Thornton Gap.
Bare oaks reached across the road toward each other, branches making tunnels of wood and sky.
He paid cash at the entrance, tucking the day pass into the visor with the practiced movement of someone who'd done this before. But when I looked at him, really looked, there was something uncertain in his face. Like he was sharing something precious and wasn't sure how I'd receive it.
We parked at the Upper Hawksbill trailhead, and the air that hit me when I opened the door was mountain-clean and cold enough to bite. It tasted different than city air—thinner, sharper, like breathing clarity itself.
"We're going hiking," he said, pulling a backpack from the trunk. Inside, I could see water bottles, granola bars, a first aid kit. Prepared, always prepared, even for something as simple as a walk in the woods.
"I've never been hiking," I admitted, suddenly self-conscious about my stolen sneakers and his track pants that I'd had to roll up four times.
"Then this is a good day for firsts."
The trail started gentle, gravel crunching under our feet, the world shrinking to just our breathing and the sound of wind through bare branches.
He walked half a step behind me, and I could feel his presence like a physical thing—not threatening, just there.
When the grade steepened, his palm would hover at my back, not touching unless I wobbled, withdrawing the moment I found my balance.
It was like dancing, I realized. This careful attention to space and consent, always asking with his body language, never assuming.
When I'd slow, he'd slow. When I'd speed up, excited by a view through the trees, he'd match me.
We moved together like we'd been doing this for years instead of minutes.
Midway up, we stopped on a flat outcrop of quartz and lichen. The rocks sparkled in the weak winter sun, and I could see for miles—valleys and ridges folding into each other like the earth was keeping secrets.
"It's beautiful," I said, then immediately felt stupid for stating the obvious.
"Yes," he agreed, but when I glanced back, he wasn't looking at the view.
Heat flooded my cheeks that had nothing to do with the climb. "Tell me about the scar."
He knew which one I meant. In the honest daylight, he pulled up his henley, showing me that knife line under his ribs again. It looked different in natural light—pinker, angrier, more real than it had in the apartment's darkness.
"A boy with nothing to lose did this," he said, fingers tracing the raised tissue. "Sixteen years old, cornered, desperate. Came at me with a kitchen knife because I was collecting a debt from his father."
"What happened to him?"
"I let him go." He dropped his shirt, but kept talking. "Told Alexei the father had paid. Took the loss myself. But that boy—he reminded me of someone I used to be. Desperate enough to attack something three times his size because the alternative was worse."
"You kept him caged since," I said, remembering his words from last night.
"The boy I used to be. The one who'd stab first and think later. I locked him away, became controlled, disciplined. Never let him out because I was afraid of what he'd do."
I thought about my own cages, all the parts of myself I'd locked away to survive. The girl who'd loved reading. The one who'd believed in happy endings. The one who'd trusted adults to protect her.
"Maybe cages aren't the answer," I said.
"Maybe not," he agreed, and started walking again.
The trees began to thin as we climbed higher, the trail switching back and forth across the face of the mountain. My legs burned and my lungs ached, but it was good pain. Clean pain. The kind that came from pushing yourself instead of being pushed.
When the trail opened suddenly to a vista that stretched forever, I actually gasped. The blue valley dropped away beneath us like the earth had forgotten to stop. Mountains rolled into the distance, each ridge a different shade of blue and purple, like a painting that couldn't possibly be real.
"Oh," I breathed, and felt tears prick my eyes for no reason I could name.
The wind lifted my hair from my face, gentle as a blessing, and for the first time in years, I felt like I could actually breathe.
"Thank you," I said, not sure if I was talking to Dmitry or the mountain or the universe that had somehow led me here.
"We're not at the top yet," he said, but his voice was soft, understanding that this moment was about more than altitude.
"Doesn't matter," I said, and meant it. Because right here, right now, with the wind blessing my face and Dmitry's warmth at my back and the whole world spread out below us, I felt something I'd thought I'd lost forever.
I felt free.
Near the summit spur, the trail got crowded with day hikers taking selfies and families making noise about the view.
Dmitry touched my elbow, just barely, and nodded toward a faint side path I wouldn't have noticed on my own, screened by mountain laurel and marked only by a small cairn of stacked stones.
We pushed through the laurel, branches catching at our clothes, until we emerged onto a rock shelf that must have been warming in the sun for the past hour.
It was perfect—private but not isolated, beautiful but not distracting, warm stone surrounded by wind-twisted pines that created natural walls.
I knew what I wanted. Had known since the kiss last yesterday.
I bumped his shoulder, deliberately clumsy. "Oops."
He looked down at me, one eyebrow raised, knowing exactly what I was doing. So I planted myself against him, my body lined up with his, and looked directly at his mouth so there could be no mistaking my intention.