Chapter 14
Three years later.
The date has lasted twenty-seven minutes.
I know because I check.
Not obviously. I’m not a monster. I glance at my watch while pretending to consider whether I want another drink. I do not. I want to go home and sit in the dark with my cat like a normal, well-adjusted adult.
Across from me, Jenna—I repeated the name over and over in my head so I wouldn’t forget this time—smiles like she’s reading from a pamphlet titled How To Date Someone Who Looks Like He Has Emotional Baggage But You’re Hoping It’s Just Aesthetic.
Jenna seems cool. She’s pansexual like me and attractive as hell. Her masc vibes, pixie cut, and black combat boots are totally doing it for me.
I just wish I was better at this whole dating thing.
I’ve spent the past five minutes debating whether I can fake a sudden illness without karmic consequences to save us both the trouble when I inevitably fuck this up.
“So what do you do again?” she asks.
“I work in IT.”
“Like cybersecurity?”
“Like fixing printers,” I deadpan.
She laughs like she thinks I’m joking.
I am. Kind of.
“Mostly I just convince machines not to embarrass me in front of executives.”
A couple years ago, I went back to work at the Institute, just part time again, still deliberately underachieving.
Malcolm offered me the same supervisory position he did before, but after everything that happened with the press and the whispers and the way people looked at me like I was both a victim and a cautionary tale, I didn’t want more.
I still do the odd freelance job here and there—nothing empire-toppling, nothing twelve-minute-blackout-level catastrophic—but I needed something else.
I needed an excuse to leave my apartment more than once a week for food, like I was a hideous monster coming out of my cave.
I was beginning to forget what human connection looked like.
Because I also stopped logging on for my virtual therapy sessions almost three years ago. After realizing that no amount of therapy or revenge would fix me, it all seemed pointless.
Twenty-five days seven years ago permanently broke me.
Which is probably the reason for my dumpster fire of a dating life.
But Jenna doesn’t know the story. Most people don’t anymore. The news cycle moved on, and my kidnapping became an old tragedy, then trivia. The man who took me died in a police shootout. Heroic officers, terrible criminal. End of narrative.
“So,” my date says, “what do you do for fun?”
“Well, keep in mind fun is subjective.” I grin, but the doubt on her face doesn’t inspire confidence. “I do some freelancing. Short contracts. Security. Fixing other people’s messes.”
“You like it?”
“It distracts me from my own messes,” I tell her honestly. “Keeps me busy. Busy is good.”
She nods, but I can tell she senses it now—that whatever emotional ceiling I have, she’s nowhere near it. No one is.
Reese is the emotional ceiling of my life.
It’s not romantic. It’s not poetic. It’s just fact. When someone kidnaps you, holds you captive, and then dies in front of you, it does something irreversible to your wiring. It fuses fear and intimacy into something undefinable. It rewrites your idea of connection.
This isn’t the first time I’ve tried dating. But everyone feels…dimmer. Quieter. Safer.
By minute thirty-four, Jenna excuses herself to the restroom, and I use the opportunity to pay the bill for the coffees and leave before she gets back. She won’t see the chivalry in it, but the truth is I’m saving her.
Outside, the air is cool. I shove my hands into my jacket pockets and start walking home since the cafe we met at is just a few blocks away.
Three years.
It’s been three years since I’ve felt like I had purpose, since revenge didn’t taste as sweet as I’d hoped. The promise of vengeance was the last thing I had of him, and now I have nothing left.
My therapist tried to help, she really did. She was the only one I ever told about how attached I got to my abductor. But, apparently, sometimes Stockholm syndrome never goes away. Her idea of helping was to try to convince me that’s all it was.
It’s been seven years, and I still don’t believe that.
If only I could believe it, then maybe I would’ve moved on by now. I don’t know why the fuck I can’t. He’s dead. I watched him die. His blood was on my hands.
By the time I get home, Felix is stationed at the door like a tiny, judgmental gargoyle. He weaves between my legs, meowing in protest at my early return.
“It’s not my fault,” I tell him, kicking off my shoes. “Apparently ‘existential dread’ isn’t a love language.”
He meows, unimpressed.
The apartment is cleaner now. Fewer wires, fewer empty mugs plotting insurrections. It smells faintly like laundry detergent and cat food.
I shrug out of my jacket and head to the kitchen to grab a soda before answering the text from my mom that’s been sitting unread for the past hour.
She sent me pictures of her garden in North Carolina.
There’s a caption about tomatoes. I text her back and tell her she better make some of her famous salsa with them and overnight it to me.
Normal.
Everything is aggressively, suspiciously normal.
I even have a 9 a.m. tomorrow fixing a server rack on the third floor of the Institute because someone spilled coffee on something worth more than my car.
I sit down at my desk, and Felix hops into my lap.
“I’m doing great,” I mutter, trying to convince myself as much as the cat. “Thriving, actually. Dating. Gainfully employed. Only mildly haunted.”
Felix stretches and digs his claws into my thigh.
“Yeah, yeah. You’re the only commitment I can handle.”
I don’t hear the footsteps until they’re already too close.
I start to swivel the chair around, but there’s a sharp sting at my neck before I get far.
I try to twist, to throw elbows, but my limbs go heavy almost instantly.
Felix hisses and leaps off my lap. The room tilts, and my body slumps before falling out of the chair.
Someone steadies me before I hit the floor.
Rude.
If you’re going to kidnap me, at least let me collapse with dignity.
The last thing I see before the world tilts sideways is Felix bolting under the couch.
And my last coherent thought is…
You have got to be kidding.