Page 44 of Eye Candy

My thoughts were on Kieran, mostly, but they were also on me. What if Kieran hadn’t seen it in time? Would I be the one in the hospital bed… or would I be in the morgue, dead? And then I wondered something I should’ve wondered from the beginning.

Was it my Devil? Was this punishment for me getting close to Kieran? Would he try to hurt me, or was this about hurting Kieran?

“The man,” I spoke, breaking my silence. Mike was still working on cleaning me up. He had to grab more paper towels. “Who was he?”

“I don’t know,” Mike said, frowning slightly. “Just a man with a gun from what I saw. There are a lot of those in this city.”

A man with a gun. That didn’t sound like my Devil. There was no way my Devil was just a man with a damned gun. And, besides, after keeping me for two years, would he really put me in danger like that? The gunman had been pretty damn far from the stage; unless you were a perfect shot, there was always thepossibility that you’d hit me instead of Kieran, if he was the real target.

No. It couldn’t have been my Devil. He wouldn’t keep me safe for two years just to do this. It didn’t make sense.

“The police have him in custody. I’m sure they’re asking him questions. Your father will find out who he is, if he works for anyone…” Mike paused. “If he’s the man who took you.” His wiping of my hand slowed, his hazel stare moving to study my face.

“No,” I whispered. “It wasn’t him.”

Mike watched me, and then grabbed another paper towel, letting the water run on it for a moment before bringing it to my face, where Kieran had touched me before he’d fallen unconscious. He wiped along my jaw, not saying a word for the longest time. The way he gazed at me so intently made me want to squirm, almost like he could see through me.

The wet paper towel moved down along my jaw, near the corner of my mouth. Mike’s voice came out quiet, but firm at the same time: “Why do I have the feeling there’s more you’re not telling anybody?”

I wanted him to drop it, but I also… I also wanted to come clean.

Mike must’ve sensed the inner turmoil within me, because he tossed the paper towels into the small trash can near the sink and went to shut the door to the bathroom. It was a small space; not really big enough for someone of Mike’s stature and another person. Suddenly it felt so stifling, almost claustrophobic.

He hit the other switch, turning the fan on. With the water running and the fan going, it would be a lot harder for someone out there to overhear what was said in here.

Mike stood a foot in front of me, his thick chest at eye-level. “Why are you so sure it’s not him?” He spoke the question so calmly, and if you added the calmness of his demeanor to the equation, you’d think he was asking about the weather.

I found myself telling Mike what I’d never told anyone else: “He’d never hurt me.”

He gently grabbed my left arm, holding me at the wrist. “What about this?”

Yanking myself away from him, I glared up at him. “That’s not—it’s not what you think.” My Devil would never hurt me. He wouldn’t. He opened my eyes to the truth about my dad, made me see that my dad didn’t really give a shit about me, that all this time, he’d been using me to further himself along.

“Really?” Mike’s voice was low. “So you’re not making excuses for the man who kidnapped and kept you for two years? Because that’s what it sounds like to me.”

I shut my eyes. “It’s not like that.”

“You’re so sure he’d never hurt you, so sure that man who tried to shoot you isn’t him…” Mike paused, breathing in deeply before saying something that nearly knocked me off my feet, “It sounds like you’re in love with him.”

My eyes opened. All I could do was blink at him and mutter, “No. That’s not it.”

He cocked an eyebrow at me. “You wouldn’t be the first to fall for their captor. Get close to the person who’s holding you, and maybe he’ll let you go. It doesn’t look like he wanted to let you go, though.”

Of course Mike had to choose now to be so damned talkative. It was kind of aggravating, honestly. I took a steptoward him, lifting up my left hand as I whispered angrily, “He didn’t do this.” My voice cracked, “I did.”

That was clearly not what Mike was expecting, because his eyebrows came together. All he said to that was, “Explain.”

“He never touched me. He never hurt me, never tried to… you know. One day I managed to get out of the shackle, and I ran up the steps. I was in a house. A regular-looking house. He’d kept me in a basement that whole time. The front door was right there. It was right there, I could see it, but I didn’t go for it. How would it look if I suddenly come back after two years with not a single scratch on me?”

It wasn’t the full truth. I was lying, but Mike didn’t need to know. No, he didn’t need to know my Devil had let me out.

I woke up from a dreamless sleep, and I yawned and stretched. Eventually I sat up and swung my legs off the bed, the chain tying me to the bed clanging with the movement. I shuffled my feet toward the toilet and sat down to pee. Peeing first thing was always a priority, then brushing my teeth and washing up—as good as I could wash up given the chain.

It’d become my routine. After so long, it came natural to me.

I opened my eyes when I got up to flush the toilet. I went to the small sink and grabbed my toothbrush and the toothpaste, but before I could start brushing, something out of the corner of my eye caught my attention.

Eyebrows coming together, I turned to stare at the small card table that was near my bed, where I could sit and eat if Iwanted, a change of pace from being trapped on the bed most hours of the day.

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