Page 12 of To Have and to Hold

Adrenaline was a funny beast. It seeped through my veins while I stood naked in front of a masked stranger, my blood vessels desperate to flee or fight but having nowhere to go. Just as they were trapped beneath my skin, so was I caught within four walls. And when he left me, untouched but permanently exposed for him, the second phase of stress came quickly: Playing dead.

As I lay there, energy pooling out of my pores, this man could have a camera on me, hidden somewhere, a pinhole in a corner, though my finger-combing of this place turned up nothing suspicious. But I was no sleuth.

He could be staring at my backside right now, studying the tattoo of thorns and roses that twined around my left side.

The mattress sagged around my body, offering me what meager comfort it could. It was freezing in this basement, and I’d curled up on the stained, lumpy fabric, facing the wall. As much as I was determined to remain crouched in a corner and ready to leap, my joints had other ideas, begging for rest. Once I gave in and crawled over to the one object that passed as a soft surface in that room, my eyes wouldn’t close.

Or did they? Those two second blackouts where I’d suddenly jerk awake and remembered where I was, did I sleep?

Time didn’t have the urgency it did before. In my Old Life—that was what it was now, capitalized and remembered coldly, because anything else would cause a keening wail—keeping an eye on the clock was never required, my brain often cataloguing each day automatically: wake up, gym, breakfast with my fiancé, work, meetings, lunch, meetings, site visits, home, dinner, sex, bed. Hours were so routine that unpredicted blips were usually met with dedication and given only enough time to coincide with my internal clock.

Boring? Never. Routine was in my bone marrow, ever since college ended and the real world came toppling down. Nothing like this, of course. Two years ago, I thought breaking up with my then fiancé was as bad as it could get. We were each other’s sources of laughter, love, teasing, affection, sparring. I met him and suddenly I knew clarity. My life made sense, because everything I’d done up to that point was a necessary step to colliding with him: Spencer Rolfe, initially the bane of my existence and by the end, crucial to my soul. Thinking about him brought a kind of ache that I—even in this empty, stench-ridden place, naked and unwilling to think about what could be coming next—even in this, I thought of him.

The room went dark.

I flew awake, only to realize that with my traveling thoughts I’d sunk into slumber, seconds only. The lightbulb still branded this room with its harsh illumination. I was still here.

I fell onto my back, covering my breasts, controlling my breaths. Counting. Singing softly, a lullaby my mother used to soothe when I was colicky—something she sang well into my pre-teens.

Eventually, uncontrollably, the room faded and my head lolled to the side.

And I dreamed in memories.

Of him.

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