Total pages in book: 139
Estimated words: 128488 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 642(@200wpm)___ 514(@250wpm)___ 428(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 128488 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 642(@200wpm)___ 514(@250wpm)___ 428(@300wpm)
“It was the first thing that was threatened,” she said quietly. “I saved your fingers in exchange for my virginity.”
He turned away, but not before she saw the deep pain in his eyes.
“It hurts you, even now,” she said.
“Jesus, of course it does.”
“Someone saw that. They gambled on you crushing the bones in your hand. And they were right.”
“Okay.” His voice was choked. “Okay.” He was quiet for several moments, as though weighing that possibility, letting it sink in. “A part of me relished it,” he finally said. An admittance. One she could tell was difficult for him to utter. “I felt so damn guilty for what you’d paid with for my fingers. I almost enjoyed each blow.” Unconsciously, he extended his fingers and then curled them in a fist.
Oh God. “Evan—” she said, her voice breathy.
“I know. I know I didn’t need to feel that way, but I did. Sometimes I still do.” He turned back toward her, uncapping the water and taking a long swig. “So what you’re saying is someone bet on me breaking my own hand?”
She watched him for a moment but took his cue to keep going. Keep looking at this. “Yes, but I don’t think it was a singular bet. I think it was one link in a . . . string.” She paused as she looked down for a moment, her mind zipping through each stage of their escape, and then she raised her head. “Maybe that was it, one of the bets was whether we’d escape. Whether or not we’d manage to get free.”
He was quiet for a moment as he appeared to think that over. “So us getting free was always a possibility?”
“Probably a very remote one. The only reason we did is that we were sent an array of the exact things we needed to get past one barrier and move on to the next.”
“Damn.” He gave his head a small shake and raised his brows. She could see by his expression just what he thought, and she agreed—it was a lot, and her brain hurt too. “I mean, there would have to be rules, right? Like you couldn’t just send a gun on our food tray? Whoever helped us—whoever made that bet—would have to strategize and plan and then hope we’d get it without being told.”
“Yes. Which would mean our entire escape was choreographed, in a way.”
“Who, though? What type of person could do that? But wouldn’t call for help for us?”
He crossed his arms over his chest, leaning his shoulder on the cabinet that held the television. She chewed at the inside of her cheek for a moment, trying to see the entire picture of what they were discussing. It was difficult, though. They were assuming quite a lot, and the rest of it sounded too unbelievable to be true. But they had to brainstorm. What else did they have?
“Evan,” she said after a moment. “I have to tell you about this man.”
“What man?”
“One of the men who rented me.”
She saw him tense, but he took his time answering, taking a long drink of water and using the back of his index finger to wipe his bottom lip slowly. “We said we were never going to talk about that.”
“We never said that.”
“It was understood, Noelle.”
She tipped her head, conceding the point. “It was. Yes. But now?”
He pushed off the armoire, pacing toward the wall. “Now what?” he asked when he’d turned back to where she sat.
“Why honor that understanding? We kept secrets then out of self-preservation. But now . . . don’t you think it will help to talk about some of what happened in that second-floor room? Maybe not all of it but . . . we don’t have anything to be ashamed of, Evan. We were victims, you know that.”
He didn’t say anything. She saw the churning emotion in his expression, and she wanted to go to him, but she didn’t. She sensed by his stance that he’d push her away. “One stands out,” she said. “One man stands out. And I think there’s a possibility that he’s the one who sent the items we needed. He’s the one who requested that I write him a note or draw him a picture with the pencil that I broke to extract the graphite. He led me toward that conclusion even before I was given the tool.” Break . . . You’re so hot. “I picked up on his clues because he used a form of the language we’d been speaking, very subtly murmuring some words and emphasizing others. The blindfold helped because it made my sense of hearing that much more sensitive, but mostly I was primed to listen in a specific way because of our secret language.”
“Do you think he knew what we’d been doing?”
“Maybe. But if he did, he didn’t use it to expose us. He used it to help us.” She took in a deep breath. “But it wasn’t only that. It’s like . . . he knew me. He played me like a fiddle. And thank God, but how?” Her eyes were cast to the side now, and she stared behind Evan, unseeing, thinking aloud as much for herself as for him. “I think he sent the rose petals and the fingernail trimmers and probably the mallet too.”