Chapter 41 Aurora
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
Aurora
Time feels wrong in this place. It stretches and folds in on itself, measured in breaths and footsteps and the moments when the door opens, and I remember what fresh air feels like.
Right now, it’s quiet.
Too quiet.
The kind of quiet that settles into your bones and makes every small sound feel too loud. My own breathing. The faint shift of fabric when I move. The distant, hollow echo of something outside… metal, maybe. A door somewhere else. Or just the building settling.
I sit with my back against the wall, knees pulled in slightly, wrists still bound tight behind me.
The zip ties have left grooves in my skin.
I’ve tested them enough times to know they’re not going to snap with brute force. Not like this. Not with my hands numb and shaking and already starting to swell where the plastic bites too deep.
So I stop trying to break them and start trying to outthink them.
Slowly, carefully, I shift my weight forward and twist my wrists, feeling for any give, any angle that changes the pressure even slightly.
It hurts.
Everything hurts.
My shoulder from when he shoved me into the car. My head from where I hit something on the way down. My wrists most of all, the constant, biting reminder that I am exactly where he wants me.
Still, I keep moving.
I drag the edge of the plastic against the rough seam of the concrete behind me, searching for something sharp enough to catch. A ridge. A crack. Anything that might wear it down, even a little.
I test the angle again. Slower this time.
Not brute force. Friction. Repetition.
Wear it down. Millimeter by millimeter if I have to.
My hands are trembling, I don’t stop, because the alternative is sitting here and letting the fear swallow me whole, and I refuse to give it that.
The concrete scrapes against the plastic. A faint, useless sound. No immediate give.
Doesn’t matter.
I keep going.
Because this is something I can do, even if it doesn’t work, it keeps me from drifting too far into my own head, into the places where everything spirals and nothing feels solid anymore.
After a while, minutes, maybe longer, my arms start to ache in a deeper way, muscles burning from the angle. My fingers have gone numb at the tips.
I ease the pressure just enough to keep circulation, then start again.
Try a different angle.
Shift.
Scrape.
Breathe.
I think about Zane’s voice while I do it. Make it hard for them. Make yourself difficult.
I swallow.
“I’m trying,” I whisper into the empty space.
The words sound small in here. I hate that. So I try something else, I close my eyes.
“You always said I was stronger than I think I am, Evie,” I murmur. “So I’m going to need that to be true right now.”
Nothing answers back.
Of course nothing answers back.
But the act of saying it, of reaching for a softness instead of letting the fear harden me into a person I don’t recognize, keeps me anchored.
I breathe again.
But the sharp sound of the door opening stops any calm from overcoming me.
I freeze.
The scrape of metal is louder this time, sharper in the silence. Light spills in, cutting across the floor, and I squint against it before my eyes adjust.
Cole steps inside like nothing has changed.
Like I’ve been waiting for him.
Like this is normal.
“Well,” he says, glancing at my hands behind me, then back at my face. “Still working on that?”
I don’t answer.
He takes a few steps in, then stops, studying me in that same quiet, assessing way.
“You’re persistent,” he adds. “I respect that.”
“I don’t care,” I say.
His mouth curves faintly. “No. You wouldn’t.”
He moves to the side, out of the direct line of the light, and pulls something from his pocket.
A phone.
My stomach drops.
He turns it over once in his hand, then looks at me. “We’re going to send a message.”
I go very still.
“No,” I say.
He ignores that.
“Not a panic-stricken meltdown,” he continues, almost conversational. “I don’t need tears. I don’t need hysteria. That doesn’t help me.”
My pulse is picking up again, fast and sharp.
“What do you need?” I ask, because information matters, even now. Especially now.
“The message, of course,” he says.
He crouches in front of me, holding the phone loosely.
“You’re going to talk to him,” he says. “And you’re going to sound like yourself. Calm. Steady. Someone he recognizes.”
My throat tightens. “I’m not helping you.”
“You already are,” he replies.
My jaw clenches.
He watches me, then tilts his head slightly. “Or I can make this harder.”
The threat sits there, quiet and obvious.
He doesn’t have to explain it, to raise his voice, to touch me, he already knows exactly how to make me understand.
I swallow, because this is part of it.
If I can get a message out, if I can say something that reaches them, anything, even if it’s just my voice, even if it’s just proof that I’m still here…
“Fine,” I say.
The word tastes like defeat.
I force myself to breathe through it.
It isn’t.
Not if I use it right.
Cole studies me, then unlocks the phone and holds it up, angling it toward my face.
“Try again if you sound like you’re about to break,” he says lightly. “I want him thinking, not reacting.”
Of course he does.
I straighten as much as I can, ignoring the way my wrists throb, the way my heart is trying to climb out of my chest.
I fix my gaze on the screen. On the small reflection of my own face staring back at me. I look… different. Paler. Eyes too bright. Hair a mess around my shoulders.
But I’m still me, I have to be.
“Go on,” Cole says.
I take a breath.
Then another.
“Ryder.”
It comes out softer than I expect.
And my chest locks into place around it, like saying his name gives me a solidness to hold onto.
I picture him standing like the world is something he can hold in place if he just refuses to move.
“Hey,” I continue. “I’m okay.”
Lie.
But necessary.
“I’m…” I swallow, adjust. “I’m still here.” My throat tightens, but I push through it. “You don’t need to…”
I stop, because that’s exactly what Cole wants.
Me telling Ryder what to do.
Me steering him into whatever trap he’s set.
So I shift. “Don’t do anything stupid.”
My voice cracks on the last word.
I hate that.
“Please.”
The word slips out before I can stop it.
And maybe I shouldn’t have said it, maybe it gives too much, but it’s real, and part of me hopes, stupidly, desperately, that he hears what I mean underneath it.
Be careful.
Don’t walk into this blind.
Come back to me.
“Good,” Cole says softly.
The phone lowers, the recording stops, the silence rushes back in.
My chest is tight, breath shallow, the aftermath of holding myself together pressing in all at once.
I feel it.
The crack.
The fear pushing back in, bigger now, louder, because I just handed him exactly what he wanted.
Because that message will reach them.
Because Ryder will hear my voice.
Because he will come, and that is both the best and worst thing in the world.
Cole watches me, like he’s waiting for me to fall apart now that the performance is over.
I don’t.
Slowly, I lift my chin in defiance so he knows I still have some inner strength left.
Cole studies me for another second, fire flickering in his expression.
Then he stands. “See? That wasn’t so hard.”
I don’t answer.
He turns, heading back toward the door. The light cuts in again as it lifts, then disappears just as quickly when it slams shut behind him.
Darkness settles back in.
I let my head tip back against the wall, closing my eyes.
Then I inhale.
Exhale.
Surely, it won’t be long now.