Total pages in book: 135
Estimated words: 127484 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 637(@200wpm)___ 510(@250wpm)___ 425(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 127484 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 637(@200wpm)___ 510(@250wpm)___ 425(@300wpm)
Before the list, I didn’t think he was capable of softening. That whatever happened to him had calcified any neurons capable of producing feelings. Empathy. Kindness.
Except…
The flowers.
The flowers that weren’t on the list. Irises. The space needed something to brighten it up, life, but I’d decided against putting any kind of flowers on the list, thinking Knox would refuse to get them.
Which was actually the saner of the two options.
What was I thinking, decorating my cage?
Trying to turn it into something lovely?
And irises. I doubted he learned deeper meanings behind flowers and their roots in Greek mythology, but the iris denoted hope. And new beginnings.
I fought against my body’s desperation to find meaning where maybe there wasn’t any.
“They’re perfect,” I told him, holding the flowers, my soft voice conveying how taken aback I was.
He ignored me, his gestures stiff and expression cold. Why buy the flowers, then, if he was going to act as if he hated me? Maybe it was because he wasn’t capable of using any other mode of communication?
Maybe the flowers were a sign of something.
Maybe they were a sign of nothing.
Maybe they were just merely a tool to have me twisting myself up inside, trying to figure him out, another tactic used to unnerve me.
I pondered over this as I worked the soil, planted those flowers.
And I watched him. Whenever I could. Whenever his intense gaze wasn’t zeroed in on me, which wasn’t often.
He’d watched me closely since the beginning. But something in the energy of his gaze had changed. It wasn’t as absent or cold like it had been before. And I felt him, cataloguing how many bites of food I ate, assessing my gait when I returned from my run. He was ensuring my health only so that he could deliver me in good condition—is what I told myself.
Nothing more than that.
Yet I watched him back. In the small snatches of time when he wasn’t looking. Watched him inhale those poisonous cigarettes. I’d long since thought they’d lost their allure and coolness, since it had been established that they caused a cancerous, undignified death.
Death. That’s what I was watching Knox doing as he sucked them down, one after the other. He was courting his death, sitting there pulling it into his lungs.
And yet he looked majestic doing it.
The king of death.
His.
Mine.
The garden was a good distraction. The only distraction, really. The books I’d brought could not hold my interest. It didn’t help that every one of them were peppered with excellently written sex scenes that only served to further rile my unpredictable and inappropriate urges toward Knox.
He sat and chain-smoked while watching me garden for days. He didn’t offer to help, not once. Didn’t utter a word. Just watched me.
I did my best to pretend he wasn’t there. Mostly I did my best to pretend I was able to pretend he wasn’t there. In truth, there wasn’t a moment when I wasn’t conscious of his eyes on me. And it wasn’t like it was particularly glamorous work. The warming of the days sent sweat spreading across my brow, dirt caking my hands, seeping under my fingernails. Not that I should’ve cared how glamorous or dirty I did or didn’t look in front of Knox.
Every day when the sun set, Knox would stub out his hundredth cigarette of the day into a makeshift ashtray that had just appeared since I’d commented on the littering the first time we spoke about butts.
I’d started up a small collection of them.
His cigarette butts.
I hid them, and then I’d just hold them in the bathroom, looking at them.
Why, I didn’t know.
Because I was slowly unraveling into a strange version of myself that scared me a lot but also felt more real than anything or anyone I’ve ever been.
Although we didn’t speak much, this transformation was because of Knox. Because of the way he was terrifying me. The way he’d torn me from everything familiar and safe and put me back here, in the mountains, the only place I’d ever felt happy and at home.
When he looked at me, he wasn’t just looking. It was as if he was cataloging every square inch of my skin so he could recreate me from scratch in his memory. All of my imperfections, blemishes, every inch of me was becoming his.
This was without him touching me, with us barely speaking.
It was a slow descent into madness that I could feel but couldn’t stop. And I wasn’t sure if I wanted to.
The reality of the situation rocked through me during every shower I took, washing off the dirt and grime from the wild area beside the cabin I’d somehow tamed into a garden.
The ground was freshly turned over, seeds planted. Weeds were cut back, tamed from taking over completely but not pulled at the root. They had just as much right to be there as anything else.