Page 43 of Cruel Cravings

It’s the second time I’ve told him this, yet the tone couldn’t be more different. Last night I’d been taunting, a twisted sense of glee dripping from every word.

This morning I’m somber, worn down.

I scoop up some oatmeal and lean over, bringing the spoon to his lips.

He doesn’t part them to take it.

He merely stares, hardly blinking.

The tension has returned, as charged and confusing as ever.

I sigh and try to ignore how sickly he looks. The blood staining his skin has dried, though the gashes still gleam, far from healed. He’s huge and formidable and as intimidating as he’s always been, but human limitations are taking over.

He hasn’t eaten in who knows how long. Something tells me he probably didn’t sleep either. How could he when he’s been chained to a chair?

“Just eat, okay?” I say, pressing the spoon against his lips. “No catch this time. No punishment. Just take the olive branch.”

He finally relents as I push the spoon past his lips.

I scoop up more oatmeal, collecting a blueberry this time, and repeat the motion. The oatmeal disappears from the spoon, his thick throat working to swallow.

It’s how the next couple minutes pass, me feeding him and him swallowing what I give. We sit in silence as I scrape the last spoonful from the bowl and funnel it to his mouth.

He probably needs more.

“Still hungry?” I ask, rising from the chair with the empty bowl. “I saw some frozen breakfast sandwiches. I’ll heat one up.”

Minutes later, I return with the sausage biscuit offering. He digests that too, barely hiding how ravenous he is.

I sit back in the chair across from him and heave a sigh. “I wouldn’t be doing this if you didn’t follow me. If you’d just left me alone…”

I don’t expect an answer from him. He never gives them. He probably never will.

But I keep talking anyway, the thoughts that have been trapped in my head suddenly pouring out.

“All I want is to start over. I spent years locked up there. Years I’ll never get back. And you didn’t help—you made them think I was crazy. Every time you lurked and then disappeared and when they went to look, you weren’t there. A part of me hates you for what you did,” I say, my throat going sore. I rub at my temples and shake my head. “But I’m not crazy. I’ve never been crazy… until things made me that way. What was I supposed to do? What did they expect?

“I was a kid. I didn’t know any better. My mother should’ve been there to… she was supposed to stop it…” The soreness in my throat intensifies, every word becoming an effort. I sigh again and start over. “All she cared about was my sister. Making sure she was perfect at the piano. That, and that man. That horrible piece of shit. He destroyed us.”

I get up from the chair to pace back and forth, suddenly desperate to purge what’s bottled up inside me.

“I blamed my sister,” I confess in a hushed whisper. “I was so angry at her when she returned but our mother was gone. She was dead and I knew my sister did it. So I tried to hurt her. I tried to burn it all down.”

The memories fade in and out before my eyes, the crackle of the flames feeling so real as they climb the walls.

I cover my head with my arms and shake the memories away. I beg for them to leave me alone. The last thing I need are reminders of why my sister never wrote me back. The reason she’s probably hiding from me this very moment.

Letting out a shaky breath, I glance over my shoulder at the man who has watched me unravel.

“I bet you think I’m a mess. Well… I am.”

I give off a dark laugh as if finding humor in a confession so pathetic. But it seems like the only thing I can do as I struggle to figure out what the hell I even want to do. I had thought I was so sure, setting this trap and luring him here, taping newspaper clippings to the wall, vowing to find my sister…

Suddenly, all of it feels like a waste of time. It takes so much energy when I have so little left to give.

“Brontë.”

I turn around at the guttural sound. It’s deep and hoarse, almost primitive, like someone who’s learning to speak.

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