Page 66 of Roulette Rodeo
Not for the cozy spicy works she’d loved to enjoy like any other free Omega who got to enjoy the high of Booktok and girlie book clubs.
The kitchen makes me stop and stare.
It's enormous, centered around a range that looks like it could cook for an army. Copper pots hang from a wrought-iron rack, and herbs grow in pots along the windowsill. There's a knife block with handles worn smooth from use, cutting boards with the scars of a thousand meals, and a refrigerator that hums with contentment.
This is a kitchen where people cook because they want to, not because they have to.
It leaves me to wonder if I’ll get to cook? It doesn’t frighten her, the idea of being able to cook for the Alphas. I mean, it’s probably expected of her, like a bought Omega slave of sorts, but the idea of cooking for them makes her a tad excited.
Oddly enough.
A shame she doesn’t actually know how to cook, having been unable to even walk in the kitchen when her Dad was present. She relied on the scraps she could get on the streets, food tossed or discarded. The rare times her Father pretended her existence mattered was when he was trying to please some new slut and wanted to appear like a “family man.
My stomach reminds me that I haven't eaten in...I actually don't know how long. The last thing I remember eating was crackers before the performance, trying to settle my nerves.
But I'm not ready to help myself to food that isn't mine, in a house that most definitely isn’t mine, wearing pajamas that are most certainly not mine.
God, I own nothing when you truly think about it…even the money I’ve revolved my life around saving is going to go to this hundred million debt when you think about it…
The habits of captivity die hard—don't take what isn't given, don't assume welcome, don't act like you belong until someone tells you that you do.
I need air…
Thinking of my predicament makes it feel as if I’m about to suffocate within these beautiful cabin wood walls.
I need to see where I am, orient myself in space beyond these grand walls, no matter how beautiful they are.
The front door isn't locked.
That stops me for a moment, hand on the doorknob.
In Vegas, everything was locked. Doors, windows, hearts. But here, I could just...walk out.
The boots by the door are comically large—men's size 12 at least—but they're the only option unless I want to go barefoot. I shove my feet into them, having to shuffle more than walk, probably looking ridiculous in silk pajamas and cowboy boots that could fit two of me.
The air outside hits like a revelation.
Clean.
Not the artificial clean of filtered air, but real clean. The kind that comes from being nowhere near a city, far away from the exhaust fumes and particular cocktail of pollutants that makes Vegas smell like broken dreams and cigarette smoke.
This air tastes like pine and earth and something crisp I can't identify.Fall, maybe.The turning of seasons that doesn't really happen in the desert.
And the colors, wow…true various shades of colors I’ve never witnessed.
I'd glimpsed it from the window, but standing here, surrounded by it, is different.
The trees are showing off, dressed in reds and golds and oranges that look edited, too saturated to be real. Leaves drift down in lazy spirals, carpeting the ground in a patchwork quilt that crunches under the too-big boots.
Mountains rise in the distance, not the bare rock of Nevada but green-black with evergreens, their peaks already dusted with snow. The sky is a blue that hurts to look at, so clear I can see birds—eagles?—circling on thermals I can't feel.
"Where the hell am I?" I whisper to no one.
Not Nevada. Definitely not Nevada.
The trees alone tell me that, but it's more than vegetation. The quality of the light is different, softer somehow, filtered through moisture in the air that Nevada never has.
Pacific Northwest, maybe. Washington, Oregon, Northern California.
