Chapter 20 Daisy
DAISY
The trunk is dark and smells like motor oil and something chemical I can't identify, and I'm counting seconds until they blur into minutes and turns.
My wrists burn where the zip ties dig in, pulled tight behind my back before he shoved me in here.
I remember that much: the alley behind The Margin, the afternoon sun still warm on my face, and then Cole's hand over my mouth and his voice in my ear saying don't scream, Daisy, you know better than that.
The plastic cinched around my wrists before I could even think to fight, and then the trunk lid slamming shut and swallowing the daylight whole.
Left at what feels like ten minutes in. Right at fifteen.
A long stretch of nothing that bounces me against the wheel well every time we hit a pothole, and I curl myself smaller to protect my ribs where they already ache from being thrown in.
My shoulder screams every time we hit a bump.
He wrenched it when he grabbed me, and I can feel the joint swelling hot against my jacket. My jacket. My phone.
The thought cuts through the panic like a blade.
My phone is in the zippered inner pocket of my jacket, the same place I always keep it during inventory days at the store because the skirt pockets are too shallow and I'm always terrified of it falling into the recycling bins.
It's been sharing location with Adam since Thursday.
I turned it back on last night, after the man under the streetlight.
Adam stayed on the phone until the patrol came.
Hope lurches in my chest, violent and desperate.
But my hands are behind my back. The zip ties are tight enough that my fingers are going numb, and when I try to twist, try to reach around toward the inner pocket, I can't. I physically cannot bend that way, not with my arms pinned and my shoulder already injured and the cramped space of the trunk pressing me into a ball.
I strain until my muscles shake, until sweat breaks out across my forehead, and I still can't reach the zipper.
Can't even get close. I am not twenty-four anymore.
That's what I keep telling myself. Over and over, a mantra I almost believe. I am not the girl who stayed for two years because she thought love meant enduring.
I am thirty years old. I have a home above a bookstore and a cat and a husband who ordered dinosaur nuggets last night because he wanted to make me laugh.
And my phone is sharing my location. Adam will see. Adam will know something is wrong when I don't come home, when my little dot on the map stops moving in the middle of nowhere. I just have to survive long enough for him to find me. The car stops.
I hear a door open, footsteps on gravel, and then the trunk opens and Cole Redding is standing over me in the afternoon light. The sun is still up: mid-afternoon, maybe, filtering through the trees behind him and casting his face in shifting shadow.
He looks older. Prison aged him in ways I wasn't expecting: the lines around his eyes, the gray threading through his hair, the new hardness in the set of his jaw. But his eyes are the same. That flat, cold blue that used to make me flinch.
"Hey, Daisy," he says. "Miss me?"
He pulls me out of the trunk by my arm, hard enough that my shoulder screams, and my face hits the ground before I can catch myself. Gravel digs into my cheek. Blood, copper and warm, floods my mouth where I've bitten my tongue.
"Oops." He doesn't sound sorry. "Forgot how clumsy you are."
I make myself breathe. In through the nose, out through the mouth, the way the therapist I saw after I left him taught me. You can panic later. Right now you need to think.
The cabin is small: one story, weathered wood, a single light glowing in the window.
We're surrounded by dense trees that filter the afternoon sun into scattered patches of gold.
Two hours, maybe. Two hours from the city, somewhere with no other lights, no other houses, no one to hear anything. Cole drags me inside.
The cabin has one room with a kitchenette in the corner and a door that probably leads to a bathroom. A couch that's seen better decades. A table with two chairs. A sink full of dishes that tells me he's been here for a while, planning this, waiting.
He shoves me into the chair beside the kitchenette counter, cuts away the plastic restraints, and ties my wrists behind the chair back with rope that feels like it came from a hardware store.
His hands are shaking. I can smell the alcohol on his breath now, bourbon, the same kind he used to drink in the bad times.
"Cole." My voice comes out steadier than I feel. "What are you doing?"
"What does it look like?" He yanks the rope tighter. "I'm having a conversation with my girlfriend."
"I'm not your girlfriend. I haven't been your girlfriend in six years."
"You left." He steps back, studies his handiwork. His face twists. "You just… walked out. While I was passed out. Packed a bag and disappeared like I was nothing."
"You broke my wrist, Cole. You put me in the hospital."
"That was an accident!"
"It wasn't an accident." I keep my voice calm, even though everything in me wants to scream. "It wasn't an accident any of the times. You know that. You know what you did."
He turns away, runs his hands through his hair. Goes to the counter where a bottle of bourbon sits next to a glass that's already half empty. He pours another drink with hands that won't stop shaking.
I map the room while he's not looking. Front door, dead bolt, chain lock.
Single window, too small to climb through even if I could reach it.
Bathroom door at the back, with a lock I might reach if I can get free.
The chair is angled beside the kitchenette counter, its back almost brushing the low edge.
There, barely visible behind a dish towel, is the handle of a knife.
"I watched you," Cole says, turning back with his drink. "The whole time I was inside. Every post on that stupid bookstore account. Every photo of you smiling like you'd forgotten I existed."
"How did you—"
"Internet access, Daisy. It's not a black hole.
" He takes a long swallow. "I saw you get married.
I saw the announcement. Adam Smith. CEO of Meridian, whatever the hell that is.
Six foot five and built like he's never worked a real day in his life.
" His voice drops, ugly now. "You married that.
While I was rotting in a cell because of you. "
"You were in a cell because you assaulted me. Repeatedly. That was why."
"I loved you!" He slams the glass down hard enough that it cracks. "I loved you more than anyone has ever loved anyone and you just… you moved on like I was nothing, like what we had was nothing—"
"What we had was abuse, Cole. That's all it was. That's all it was ever going to be."
He crosses the room in three steps and hits me.
My head snaps to the side. Stars explode behind my eyes. The taste of blood floods my mouth again, fresh over the copper that was already there.
"Don't." His face is inches from mine, his breath hot and sour. "Don't you tell me what we had. You don't get to decide that. You don't get to just leave and then tell me what it meant."
"What do you want, Cole?" My voice is still calm. "What's the plan here?"
He steps back. Paces to the window, then back. His hands are still shaking.
"I want you to understand what you did to me. I want you to know what it felt like, watching you live your life, watching you fall in love with someone else, while I had nothing. I want—" He stops. Stares at me. "I want you to be sorry."
"I'm not sorry I left you."
"You will be."
He turns back to the counter, pours another drink with trembling hands.
While his back is to me, I shift in the chair, testing the ropes.
Tight, but not perfect. He was drunk when he tied them.
He always was careless when he was drunk.
That's how I got away the first time, that night when he passed out and I grabbed my bag and ran.
I start working my wrists against the bindings. The rope burns. I don't care.
"I have people looking for me," I say. "You know that, right? My husband, my friends—"
"Your husband." Cole laughs, a harsh, ugly sound. "I saw the news about him too. The separation. The contract. You know what I thought when I read that? I thought, 'she traded one prison for another.' At least I was honest about what I wanted."
"You were never honest about anything."
He spins, raises his hand again, and I flinch before I can stop myself. He doesn't hit me. He just watches me flinch, and his expression shifts to satisfaction.
"There she is," he says softly. "There's my Daisy."
I hate him. I hate him with everything I have.
He goes to the sink to pour water into a glass, and I lunge against the ropes.
The motion is tiny, barely perceptible, but it shifts my wrist just enough that I can feel the space.
Just a little more, just a little longer.
I stretch my fingers over the counter lip.
The dish towel shifts. I catch the knife handle and draw it down behind the chair.
Cole is still at the sink, mumbling to himself, and I work the blade against the rope with movements so small they make my arms burn.
Strand by strand, the fibers start to give.
Headlights wash across the wall. Cole freezes.
A car is coming up the drive. No, more than one car.
I can hear the engines now, multiple vehicles, getting closer.
"What the hell—" Cole goes to the window, peering out. His face changes. "How the… how did they—"
"You should've taken my phone, Cole." My voice is steady, even though my heart is trying to break through my ribs. "My husband's had my location since Thursday."
He turns to look at me. His eyes are wild, animal.
"Where is it?" He crosses to me, pats down my pockets with rough hands: the skirt pockets first, then my jacket, methodical and thorough. His fingers find the inner zipper and he yanks it open. "There we go."
My phone. Cracked screen but still lit, still broadcasting my location to anyone who's looking.
Cole stares at it for a long second. Then he throws it against the wall. It shatters, pieces scattering across the floor, but it doesn't matter anymore. The signal already went out. Help is already coming.
"You bitch," he breathes. "You stupid—"
I don't hear the rest.
Because while he's facing the window, watching the tree line like he can see the sirens coming, my fingers tighten around the paring knife I’ve been using against the rope.
The kitchenette counter is right beside my chair.
He didn't notice. He never did pay attention to the details.
I saw through the last strand of rope binding my wrists just as the front door explodes inward.
I don't wait. I don't think.
I drop the knife onto the counter beside the sink and run toward the bathroom door at the back as a voice shouts behind me.