Chapter 27
twenty-seven
They shove me to my knees hard enough to rattle my fucking teeth.
My wrists are tied behind my back, the rope biting deeper with every breath.
God damn cowards. There’s still a slight sting at my neck where their needle went in.
Lindy had me distracted, and even then these fucks need luck and drugs to knock me out cold.
The room smells like damp cement and rust.
And her. She’s here.
I find her instantly. My body knows the exact angle, the exact distance, without looking.
She’s on the floor at first, wrists and ankles bound.
There’s a cut on her cheekbone, swelling along her jaw, a bruise curling dark and angry up her thigh.
And still, she’s devastating. My Lindy girl with hair tangled and dripping with sweat, lips parted on shallow breaths, eyes half-lidded floating between exhaustion and defiance.
It’s the first time I’ve seen her since she stood in that hotel room and told me she needed space. The first time since I let her leave. Even beaten, she’s fucking breathtaking. She lifts her lashes and my chest forgets how to work, but bruises are proof-of-life. My heart starts again.
I breathe her name and try not to come apart.
My fixation with her has always had my body reacting.
Gravity pulling me into her orbit. But this isn’t pull; it’s oxygen.
I taught her to survive without me. I won’t survive without her.
I need her more than the air in my lungs.
She may believe her survival depends on me, but the truth of it is, without her, the air won’t come.
They haul me up and dump me into the chair facing hers.
When they first tossed me in here, they’d had her hung from the ceiling chain.
Now they’re strapping us into chairs, six feet apart.
The chain run between the chair frames is short, teasing short.
I lean until my knees almost touch hers.
Almost. I count the bruises forming under her skin.
I watch the tremor in her fingers and know it’s not fear.
It’s from holding herself together for me.
Her smell cuts through the stench of mildew and metal—vanilla and coffee and that strawberry shampoo.
It hits me harder than the blood in my own mouth.
The room’s a concrete box, wet in the corners, rust bleeding down the walls.
One flickering bulb sways overhead, swinging our shadows huge against the wall.
There’s a drain in the center of the floor.
She’s barefoot. Ankles zip-tied to the chair legs.
Wrists bound in front of her, rope digging angry red into her skin.
My gaze catches on every mark. My body catalogs each one the way I memorize a kill.
“Lindy,” I whisper. It tastes like vomit when I say it. Her head comes up. Those eyes. That blue. I could drown there. There’s a tightness in my throat I didn’t have when I walked in here, and it’s not from the chokehold they dragged me in with.
Two men lean against the wall. One with a knife, one with a length of chain wrapped around his fist. Their eyes slide between us.
“You two look like a picture,” Knife says, stepping forward. “Real touching. Like you’d die for each other.”
He’s wrong. I won’t just die for her. I’ll wipe out the world first and grin doing it.
The knife’s spine scrapes the curve of her shoulder. Every muscle in me locks tight enough to snap bone.
“You see that, sweetheart?” Knife murmurs, still looking at me. “You make him soft.”
“No,” I growl. “She makes me unhinged. That’s worse for you.”
“I disagree, Machine. I think that she controls you, so now we do. She stays breathing and you heel on our command.”
“Cassius,” she says, not loud, but enough to pull my eyes back to hers. “I can take it.” Her pulse pounds at her throat.
I shake my head. “Not for me. Not ever for me.”
The punch snaps her head to the side; her hair spills forward. She straightens, never breaking eye contact with me. Something fractures in me.
“I’m going to chop off a fucking body part for every time you touch her,” I tell him, my voice a blade, “You will beg for death.”
Chain Man moves in, breath hot and rotten at my cheek.
“Well then, I better make it worth it, you watching her scream.” I yank against the rope until it bites deep, skin tearing.
Blood slicks my palms. I don’t care. She’s looking at me like we’re the only two people in the universe, and I hold onto that like it’s air.
Knife drags the flat across her collarbone. The world narrows to her odd numbered breaths. “Pretty skin. Will be even prettier with scars.” I grind my heel into the instep of the man behind me. I twist my right wrist until bone gives and something pops. Pain flares hot, but the rope loosens.
My hand slips free.
Knife notices too late. He looks from my hand to my face, and I let him see the promise there. I surge forward—
Something heavy cracks the side of my skull. My knees slam concrete. Shouting. Another hit at my temple. Light bursts behind my eyes. I’m falling. The last thing I see is her bruised, busted, beautiful face.
The sound of her breathing pulls me back.
The way the chair legs scrape as she shifts, the faint click of her teeth.
It’s just us now. I keep my eyes on the corner where they disappeared.
The chain between our chairs is short enough to make it a form of torture.
My body aches to close the gap. To wrap her up until I feel her heart against mine, steady and alive.
“You’re hurt,” she says. Ridiculous. She’s the one bleeding.
“You’re alive,” I tell her. “That’s the only thing that matters.”
Her chin trembles. She swallows it down and leans forward until the chain between us goes taut. “Cassius.” Her voice is a whisper now. “I knew you’d come for me. I did everything you said.”
I could tell her how many ways I’ve already mapped it in my head.
How I’ve counted the screws in the vent above us, how I’ve memorized the rhythm of the footsteps in the hall.
How if I break the chair leg just right, I can get both hands free and wrap them around every throat in this building. But all I say is, “I will get you out.”
Her mouth curves. “I know.”
The door opens and two new men enter. One braces my neck. Another crouches at her, fisting her hair, dragging her face up.
“She is soft,” he grins at me. “I get why she makes you weak.”
I lunge; the rope holds; a knee drives between my shoulder blades. Pain lights my ribs. A blade kisses under her jaw just enough to line her in red. My vision tunnels.
“Look at me,” she says.
God help me, I do.
“I’m okay.”
He hits her. Again. And Again. Every time I jerk forward, the other one yanks me back, forearm grinding my neck. Knife man enters and draws a thin line from her jaw to the hollow of her throat. Her breath hitches and steadies. I twist hard and the cut opens, blood flooding my hands.
“You breathing like a scared little boy,” one taunts in my ear.
I pull until the skin across my shoulder blades splits. Heat runs toward my armpits. I don’t stop. If I don’t get free in sixty seconds, I’m going to watch the only good thing I’ve ever touched get destroyed in front of me.
The phone in the pocket of the one near Lindy chirps. “Get the camera,” he says to Knife. The three of them step back, laugh, and slip out. The door slams.
“Listen to me.” Her voice cuts the dark and aims at the ceiling corner, not at me.
“I know you hate him. I know you follow me because of him. I know you all hope he suffers the same fate. Maybe he will. But not like this.” Her voice climbs, raw around the edges.
“If you ever wanted anything from me, take it. Take my sleep. Take my peace. Take my fucking life if you want it. I’ll trade places with any one of you.
Just—” she breaks, swallows, starts again, louder, “—just keep him breathing. Keep him breathing and I’ll sell my soul, I swear it.
Gideon help him like you help me. Please. ”
“Lind—” I try.
She’s staring into a corner of the room like it’s a face. “Please. Do not let him die in here.”
I don’t say anything for a beat because the hair on my arms lifts, and I don’t believe in God, but I know bargaining when I hear it.
“Gideon?” I rasp to the corner she’s addressing.
Her eyes finally find mine. “I see them,” she whispers.
“I have my whole life, never yours before, but after you it’s like anyone who wasn’t killed by you is terrified of being near me.
So now I see yours. They came after you and never left.
They follow you like a tide, Cassius, and they decided I was shore.
They taunt me. They showed me knots. Angles.
How to make the fear smaller.” Her mouth twists.
“They loathe you, all but Gideon. And for a reason I don’t have, they help me. ”
A normal fucker would flinch. I don’t. She’s dehydrated, beaten, probably hallucinating. Or, maybe she’s telling the truth, has been telling the truth. Either way, I have to get her out of here.
“If you’re here,” I tell the air, “listen the fuck up. You want me? This is it. Keep her alive. Keep me upright long enough to break this room. You can have me after that. I won’t run.” The chain above us gives a metallic tick, weight shifting where there isn’t any.
Her chin trembles. “No.”
Somewhere outside, boots hit the floor. The locks rattle. I straighten. Not away from her—never away from her—but enough that I can spring. Because they’re coming back, and I’ve been sitting here too fucking long.
The men come in grinning. One kneels at her again, runs the blade down her cheek. “All that muscle, all that reputation, and you can’t do a fucking thing to stop me.”