Page 30 of Desert Loyalties
SKYE
No one told me how boring this would be.
Like sure, I expected an isolation tactic to wear you down, keep you guessing, let your own thoughts chew you alive but I didn’t expectthis. No clock. No window. Not even a flickering light to pretend the world’s still moving out there. Just these four beige-ass walls and the slow drip of time melting into nothing.
I don’t know how long it’s been. Hours? A day? Two? I can’t tell. The only markers are the rounds of exercises I’ve done: jumping jacks, push ups, squats until my legs burned, then again, and again, just to feel something. Probably not a good idea considering I don’t have food or water, I’m not about to drink toilet water.
And I’ve told myself both my stories already. Twice.
The first one’s my classic: the fantasy. A woman wins the lottery. She buys land in the mountains. Not just a plot,the whole mountain. Builds a mansion with glass walls, infinity pools, a rooftop observatory. She learns to swim in a private lap pool carved out of stone. It’s peaceful there. The air is quiet and clean. No sirens. No shouting. No fear.
The second story’s trickier. It’s the "what if." What if my mom didn’t die? What if I got to grow up normal, whatever that means? Parents who made pancakes on Sundays. In that version, I work in a hospital, like some fresh-faced intern fromGrey’s Anatomyseason one. Blood and adrenaline and drama, sure but also safety. Camaraderie.
But I don’t get to live there. I live here. On this lumpy-ass cot. In this room in the basement of my boyfriend’s club.
Suddenly I hear a click from the other side of the door. The metal handle turns slowly, like in a horror movie, and thenhewalks in. Locke. He’s a few years older than Drake.
He’s holding a bottle of water and a sandwich wrapped in plastic wrap. He says nothing, just nods as he steps inside. Placing them on the cot beside me he takes a seat on the chair. Its bolted facing the door, so he twists his body to face me.
I don’t say anything.
Not because I’m trying to look tough. I just… don’t trust it. The food. Him. Any of it.
“Aren’t you hungry?” he asks, finally.
His voice is lower than usual. Calmer. Like he’s trying not to spook me. I meet his eyes.
“Betrayal killed my appetite,” I say.
Dramatic? Maybe. But Imeanit.
He stares at me for a second, trying to decide whether I’m mocking him or just broken.
“There’s proof,” he says.
“Someone set me up,” I tell him, purposefully looking down, letting him think I’m lying.
He sighs. Not annoyed. Just… tired.
“Did you know my wife died?” he asks, casually as if he doesn’t care, but his eyes tell the opposite
“I heard.”
“Did you know she OD’d in the bathroom upstairs? Two years ago?”
I swallow hard. “I’m sorry.”
He nods, but it’s not acknowledgment, it’s habit.
“She bought something off the street,” he says. “It was laced with fentanyl. Killed her instantly.” Then he looks away, taking a deep breath before continuing. “When the club went legit, we dropped everything. Guns, drugs, smuggling. Cold turkey. That was the deal. That was the point. We cleaned house.”
His fists curl slowly on his knees, like he’s trying to keep his hands from shaking.
“But someone,someone, didn’t stop. Someone kept dealing. Quietly. On the side. And they got to her.” He looks at the floor. “I didn’t know. I swear to God, I didn’t know. We were trying to get pregnant. She was on hormones; I thought the mood swings were just part of that.”
His voice cracks, just a little. Enough to show me there’s still a human being under all that ice.
“She got hooked, and they abandoned her. Left her twisting in the wind. So, she went looking. And when you go looking for poison…” He trails off, eyes distant.
