Page 116 of Trapped: Until The Darkest Of Night

Lou doesn’t notice anything and wraps her arms around my neck like nothing happened. “I’m sure I know more about you than you realize. You once said you couldn’t talk about that time, but that’s what you do when you’re stuck in your memories.”

My racing heart wants to stop beating. Her words whip like a whirlwind through my mind. She knows everything! She knows my fear, my weakness, and my powerlessness. She knows what I am. A loser, a coward, a nothing. And she never let on.

Watch out!

Anger and shame boil up in me. I feel naked, exposed to the core. Why was she silent? What exactly does she know? Was she trying to take advantage of these things or does she see me simply as a merciless creature that needs to be pitied? Bitter bile rises in me. I can hardly think straight. I notice she is stroking my hair.

“You need to talk about it,” she says quietly. “Maybe then the flashbacks will stop.”

I don’t heed her words. “Is that why you did it?” I ask her somberly, feeling my good intentions slipping away like a school of slippery fish.

“Did what?” Lou moves away from me. She looks caught.

“Love me. Was it out of pity?” That is why you didn’t push that pitiful creature away? Suddenly, I feel disgusted with myself. Without realizing what I’m doing, I jump up and Lou slides off my lap, but quickly catches herself.

She shakes her head and lets out a strange laugh. “What makes you…”

“Was it out of pity, yes or no?” My tone is as cold as the icy fear in my soul. It freezes all the tears in me.

Lou looks terrified. Her eyes shimmer on her pale face. “No! No, of course not…” The words come out haltingly. She shakes her head defensively. “You think I didn’t call out to the men because I felt sorry for the man who kidnapped me? Do you really think that would be enough to make me give up my life…pity?” There is bewilderment in the last word.

I stand by the fire with my arms crossed. I almost want to believe her and the desperate tone in her voice when I remember how well she hid the truth of my flashes from me—and how skillfully she managed to escape. She stole my lighter and set off the alarm to distract me. She’s cunning.

“Maybe you would have screamed after all? Who knows?” Bitterness darkens my words. Our time together at the river was probably all a lie! Suddenly, everything is wrong. Just everything. My expression is severe as I look at her.

She stares back. “Stop it,” she whispers to me.

But I can’t. My old self pushes everything else away. “Maybe I caught you just in time and you took advantage of the situation. Slept with me to make me believe you love me.” Is Lou that cunning? My Lou?

“I didn’t have to prove anything to you!” she hisses, anger in her voice. “I didn’t have to prove anything to you because I truly love you! But if you keep talking like this, I’m probably going to regret it.”

“Oh, yes, I have a lot of regrets too,” I blurt out breathlessly. I can’t believe I almost fell for her a second time. “How could I have believed for a second that you meant it? What did you want to achieve with this whole performance? Were you trying to appeal to my conscience?” I narrow my eyes, not caring if she’s scared or not. “That I can’t keep you a prisoner if we’re so close? That I have to set you free if I truly love you?”

Eerie wolf howls erupt from the forest. I take a step toward Lou, but she doesn’t back down and stands still. Tears glisten in her eyes, but I won’t fall for it.

“I… I can’t believe you really think that of me,” she stammers. “Do you really think I would have gone as far as sleeping with you…just to make you think I love you?"

I shrug, emphatically indifferent. “Maybe you thought you could heal me by pretending. In truth, it was never about me, it was always about your freedom.”

“You have to…you have to really, really hate me to say something like that…” Lou whispers, reaching for the pendants for support. “I don’t understand you. I just said I know more about you than you realize. You’ve already had a fit during a thunderstorm. During which you said more than you probably would have ever revealed to me. And yet I still hated you afterward. One has nothing to do with the other.”

She approaches me with a wry smile. It looks so fake, like I beat it out of her. Tentatively, she grabs my shoulder, but it seems to me that her fingers are tearing deep wounds.

I shake her hand off with a jerk. “Stop it, Louisa!” I back away.

Lou looks like I slapped her. “Brendan…listen to me! This is crazy.” She gasps for breath, shaky. “I didn’t fall in love with you because your father kept you prisoner somewhere underground.”

The directness of her statement is like a cold dagger to the heart. So dark… I gasp reflexively. Tightness constricts my throat as everything inside me convulses.

“Stop it right now!” I say in a stony voice. How dare she talk about that. A red mist races through my thoughts.

“Bren, I love you!” Lou takes a step toward me, wringing her hands. “And of course I’m terribly sorry about what happened to you. And yes, I would really like to be the one who heals you. Unfortunately, love is not enough for that.”

Her words get stuck in the fog inside me. When she reaches out to touch me again, I back away.

With a despondent expression on her face, she drops her arm. “No love in the world can heal what happened to you…” she says softly. “I saw one of your pictures when you left the closet open that one time.” She hesitates as if afraid of giving too much away. “I told you this before, but you had a fit and you probably don’t remember. Let’s go to a psychologist and start fresh…”

Something inside me is going crazy. Anger grips me like a beast. “You just want to drag me to a psychiatrist so you’ll have a chance to escape!” I yell at her, feeling the bolt relentlessly snapping into place inside me. “You don’t want me at all! You just want to run away.”

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