Page 45 of Never Broken

I didn’t wait for more than a few seconds before throwing open the door to the pantry and immediately upending the bag of potatoes, scattering them across the floor. They rolled out in all directions, their pale flesh exposed to the air—but no phone or aloe bottle rolled out beside them.

Don’t panic. It had to be here. But my hands were cold and clammy in the temperature-controlled room, my fingers slipping on the skins as I tried to gather them up, praying they’d be hidden under this or that one. Nothing. I scanned the shelves frantically, trying to spot any sign of them in the jumbled mess I’d made. In a panic now, I began tearing the whole thing apart, throwing all the carefully-replaced boxes and jars aside all over again. What if the gardener had discovered them first? What if they were already on their way to Master Wainwright-Phillips’s brand-new desk, all laid out like a charcuterie platter?

My fear was tangible now, a dull tightness in my chest. My eyes darted from shelf to shelf to shelf, but it was too late. All I could do now was pace back and forth in terror.

In my life so far, I’d been lucky and good more often than not. But I had nothing left in my arsenal that could fix this, and now here was Maeve, the purest and most beautiful spirit I’d ever known—a girl only just learning her own name—ripped apart and destroyed because I’d failed,again,to save her. Like my mother. Like before. Like always.

And now here was the door opening again, as if the world hadn’t fucked me over enough already justtoday.

“I thought you might have left it in here, so I went inside the pantry and dialed your number,” Louisa said, staring at the cereal shelf instead of at me. “I heard it vibrate from behind the potatoes,” she added softly.

Well, shit, this girl. There hadn’t been very many times in my life when I wanted to sink to my knees without someone ordering me to, but this was one.

Honestly, there wasn’t a single part of her I couldn’t stare at for hours, and secretly—or maybe not so secretly—I had. In an endless series of stolen moments, I had cataloged and memorized—in a highly orderly and scientific way, of course—her endlessly soft spirals of hair, rose-kissed porcelain skin, pillowy lips, breasts and hips flowing like sand in some gilded medieval hourglass. But now, all haloed by the dusky swirls of light in the room, it wasn’t any of those features that I saw. It was somehow, now, the soul of her; though it was crazy to think that was something I could ever believe in.

I hoped the panic from moments ago didn’t show as I held out my hand, and she placed the phone and the bottle in it. A very proper, contactless exchange.

“I won’t do this again,” she said.

It wasn’t a warning. It wasn’t a threat. It was a promise. One to follow the directive I had given her. One responsible, I was pretty sure, for the shimmer of a tear in her eye behind those cute, clunky glasses, one she wasn’t fast enough to hide before she turned.

Instead of inmyhand, the phone could have been in her father’s. Itshouldbe in her father’s, after the way I’d treated her. What was any of it to her, now? I, just like the phone, should no longer be anything more to her than a throwaway thing. It was what I’ddemandedto be. It was, I feared, all Iknewhow to be.

But this girl wasn’t having it. This girl knew nothing, had been taught all the wrong things, had been spoiled beyond measure. And yet she was trying. And she gottearsfor her efforts?

Well, there went the lollipops and rainbows melting into nothing. Realistically, the most a slave could ever expect was a matter of degree: the bigger portion of food, the not-so-backbreaking duties, the less-sadistic owner. A short message every now and then from the only family you were fortunateenough to still know. You could have all of that if you were both lucky and good. And in reality, since you rarely got lucky, you had to bereallygood.

Up till now, I had been.

But this—this, now—was one of Maeve’s fairy tales; her bedtime stories. It was beautiful to believe in, but I knew better. The unicorns didn’t charge forward; the shackle key didn’t magically appear; the hand didn’t reach out through the iron bars. And yet now, after twenty years, I was seeing it all happen.

And maybe Maeve was right. Maybe it really was as simple as that.

“Louisa, wait.”

1 Oh no.

2 Goddammit.

3 Are you crazy?

4 Stubborn person.

5 Oh, shit.

9

HER

“Ididn’t look at anything on it,” I blurted without turning around. “When I gave it to you, I gave it toyou.”

“That’s not—I just want to talk to you, yeah?” The statement was haltingly phrased, almost tentative, like he actually thought there was a chance I’d say no.

I had resolved not to look at him, even though looking at him was literally the only thing I’d wanted to do for weeks. But why look at someone who didn’t want to see me and didn’t want to be seen?

But he was here. He wasn’t leaving, wasn’t hiding. Wasn’t accusing. Wasn’t demanding,why are you still in my business when I literally just told you to stay the hell away from me?

He was just standing there, his long, sculpted arm with its scarred fingers still curled loosely around the phone and aloe bottle. But he wasn’t looking at them. He was seeing me, through the eyes of a boy who had long ago learned the slim odds of any given roll of the dice turning out in his favor, but who keptplaying because it was all he’d ever known how to do. And now he’d just bet his life, lost it, and seen it placed back in his hand.

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