23. Luna
LUNA
I’ve never been an anxious person.
Not once have I been in front of a crowd and lost my poise, gotten tongue-tied, or fumbled over my own legs. I’ve watched people clam up, sweat through their shirts, forget their own names—then wear that humiliation like a scar for the rest of their lives.
I thought I was good under pressure. Yesterday, I would have sworn it.
But now, perched on a stool in the permanently filthy bathroom while Sawyer dusts glitter across my eyelids, my heart trips over itself. My hands won’t hold steady. My body hums like a live wire.
It’s over.
No more training room. No more bargaining. No more pretending there’s time.
I tried.
I failed.
It is done.
Time for plan B. My mind swims, mapping out all the possibilities of what’s next. I wish I could say these last three weeks were the hardest, but I’m afraid the worst is yet to come.
After pulling the tiny brush away, Sawyer tells me I can open my eyes. He places the brush back in the pouch and pulls out a tube with yet another tiny brush. It never ends. When he brings it to my eyelashes, I look up and try not to blink.
He’s precise in his movements. When I told him I wouldn’t be putting on makeup, he didn’t hesitate to say that he’d do it himself. He’s done this before, I can tell. And I know he can tell that I haven’t.
“You have gorgeous eyelashes,” he says like he’s stating a fact versus flattering me. I don’t respond. We’ve hardly spoken since the hike yesterday. Nothing more than a few necessary words here and there.
“But I won’t lie, you do look good with a bit of color.” He pulls the brush back while he examines his handiwork on the one eye. He nods his approval before moving to the other.
“You know this is sick, right?”
He pops the brush into the tube to pick up more black goop.
“We aren’t dolls for you to dress up.”
He pauses halfway to my eye with his brow furrowed, and I know it’s because he’s confused at the word we. No matter how many times I bring up his victims, he needs to be reminded.
“I’m assuming you did this to the others?”
His lips curve, but his brow stays furrowed. I look up when he goes to work on my eyelashes.
“It’s just makeup,” he says, coating each strand of thin hair with the precision of a craftsman.
“It’s paint meant to convince women their faces are insufficient. It’s misogynistic, probably invented by a man just like you.”
“Actually, it was the Egyptians.” Sawyer pulls the brush back and inserts it into the tube with a smirk. “They believed the gods favored it… Both men and women of all social classes wore makeup, so…” He shrugs and opens a circular container.
He dabs a brush along the red powder surface before bringing it to my cheeks. I stare at his chest.
“I used to do this for my mother,” he says, his tone more serious than before.
I move my eyes to his face, but I can’t tell what he’s feeling from his expression alone. It’s blank.
“When she was having a hard time getting out of bed, a shower, a nice dress, and a brighter face usually helped.” He meets my eyes for a moment, the sky blue piercing me so hard that I hold my breath.
“Maybe it’s a misogynistic ploy to make women feel inferior.
Or maybe it’s a tool that allows women to feel confident. I suppose it depends on who you ask.”
He studies both of my cheeks before gently smoothing his thumb beneath my right eye.
It gives me an excuse to close them, which I’m grateful for.
Most of the time, Sawyer is either playful or distant.
It’s hard to look at him when he’s fully here in the present with me, his eyes like spotlights to the soul.
I squirm on the stool while he packs up the makeup.
“Was she sick?” I ask when I can’t help it. I feel I know a lot about Sawyer’s recent past, but it’s hard to imagine him as a child, carefully helping his mother into the shower, picking out a dress, applying powder to her face with fumbling, youthful hands.
“Sometimes,” he says without the remorse I search for.
It’s just a fact for him. He rests the pouch on the sink then turns back to me, the lines of his face smoothed.
“All done… I need to go talk to a friend about something, so I’m going to leave you, but a Keeper will come get you in about an hour. ”
He stands up straight, towering over me while I stay perched on the stool. I just stare at him while he takes both of my bare shoulders. His palm grazes the very top of the white, strapless dress that shows my breasts as if I was wearing nothing at all.
“You’re gonna be fine, Luna. Don’t be nervous… I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?”
I blink, my eyelashes feeling heavier than usual, but words don’t exit my mouth. We both know he’s lying. He won’t be at the ceremony. He doesn’t have the energy to insist, and I don’t have the energy to argue.
For a moment, we might have been friends. At the very least, we weren’t enemies.
“Can I ask you something?” My voice is weaker than I’d like.
He curves his lips, but I see the nervousness plainly on his face. He’s normally so good at hiding. Whatever he thinks I’ll ask must be bad.
“What is the money really for?”
A breath whooshes from his nostrils as he leans on the sink. He looks relieved.
“I told you. I promised it to some people.” He tips his head. “Back when I had it.”
“Is it…” I search my brain. “A gambling debt?” My words come out slowly, like I know that it doesn’t make sense as I’m saying it.
He laughs. “Do you think I’m that bad at cards?”
“You could’ve picked the wrong horse…”
“I don’t owe anyone anything. It isn’t like that.”
“Then what is it like?”
His amusement loosens as he looks into what must be serious eyes. I’m not sure why I want to know this. I’m not sure why it matters to me.
But it does. And for once, I’d like him to tell me the truth. If I mean anything at all, he’ll tell me the truth. Call it a goodbye present.
“I just…” I take in a deep breath. “I just want to know what’s worth more than my life.”
He flinches at that. His head turns away as he rolls his neck and crosses his arms over his chest. For seconds he stares at the wall, his shaggy blond hair ruffled from him running his hand through it.
It looks so boyishly perfect, and I get the strangest urge to touch it.
Comb it with my fingers, inhale its scent even when I know it’d kill me to smell her shampoo.
I wish I could hate him. It would make this so much simpler.
“It’s…” He sighs. “A long time ago, when I was fresh out of college, my business partner and I struck a deal that gave me my first big paycheck—a hundred thousand dollars.” He uncrosses his arms, lightly gripping the sink as he turns his head toward me but doesn’t meet my eyes.
“My mother had passed away a few years before that, and there wasn’t any money for a funeral or burial or anything, so when I got the money, it was very important to me to make up for that.
Or, you know, try. So I donated fifty thousand dollars in her name to a mental health organization. ”
He hikes a shoulder. “It didn’t feel like enough.
It still doesn’t feel like enough. But when I got more money, and eventually, the island happened and I really had it, I started a foundation for schizophrenia in her name.
It funds research. Early intervention. Family housing.
Medications for people with no insurance.
“For the last ten years, I’ve pledged twenty million dollars. I don’t intend to stop.”
I watch him more closely than I need to. I can tell by the hitch in his voice that he’s telling the truth.
When his lips sink as he finishes, I watch him squirm.
That’s what he meant when he said it was bigger than him and me. That twenty million dollars was enough to change people’s lives.
I wonder if he believes his mother would still be alive if only he’d had the money then. As if it could ever be that simple… I wish it could. If it could, maybe I’d do the same.
“It isn’t that it’s worth more than your life. Not to me,” he clarifies, though of course it’s a lie. If it wasn’t worth more to him than my life, we wouldn’t be here talking about this. He would’ve already shown me the way out. He never would’ve chosen to hurt me.
Maybe he never would’ve chosen to hurt all those women on his island… That, I doubt.
Sawyer doesn’t go on with his lie. He leaves it at that, pushes off the sink, and locks me in place with one of his forced smiles. Even forced, it’s gorgeous.
“You’re gonna find a way out… I just know it.” He squeezes my shoulders. I’m amazed that he can look me in the eyes so easily.
A breath rushes from him as he pulls away and turns for the door. I almost let him leave, I want to let him leave, but I give him last words I hope he’ll listen to.
“Sawyer.”
He looks over his shoulder at me.
I roll my unnaturally glossed lips and straighten my spine. “I hope someday you’ll become the man you want to be… I know you’re capable of doing the right thing.”
His face doesn’t scrunch with confusion because he knows exactly what I’m saying, and he doesn’t seem to be in the mood for hiding that fact. He gives me a single nod before leaving the room.
I listen until I can no longer hear his footsteps, then I open the pouch. I’m not one for mirrors, but I noticed one inside the circular case. I open it up and take a look at my glittery, blushed face—not subtle, but not gaudy.
No one besides Sawyer would call me beautiful.
But I’ll agree with him on one thing… I like the color.