Page 63 of Ravaged
CHAPTER 19
Teagen
The door banged open. Ethan grit his teeth and gave a sharp gesture towards me.
“Get up,” he said. “You’re coming with me.”
“A field trip?” I joked, but he didn’t laugh. He pointed to the closet.
“Shoes are in there.”
A small box contained new tennis shoes, tissue paper still stuffed in the toes, a pair of socks next to them. Somehow, all of it was my size. I glanced up at Ethan. He was eyeing the chain between my legs. He bent down and pulled the key out from his pocket, then put the code into the keypad, and turned the key to unlock them. I rubbed the flesh where the cuffs had been. I had worn them for so long, it felt like they were still there.
“You need to be able to walk,” he explained. I raised a brow, but he offered no explanation. He flipped a hand towards the door.
We went through the kitchen to the backyard, then walked through the trees to what looked like another thick grove, but Ethan lifted some ivy and found a door handle. “Stay here,” he said, then slipped inside. I waited, leaning against the camouflaged structure. It was eerily quiet. The clouds were forming above the trees, making the woods darker than usual. A stillness floated in the air. Rain was coming.
The door flew open. Ethan carried a man in his arms, limp, with a hood tied over his head, making him look like a scarecrow, except there was nothing straw about his arms and legs. He was small, but he looked heavy.
He was dead, whoever he was.
It was hard to consider what that meant. Ethan emerged from the building with a dead man, carrying him as if death meant nothing to him.
“Legs or hands?” he asked.
“I don’t think he’s using his legsorhis hands,” I said.
“Damn it, Teagen. Just pick a side.”
Blood leaked through the back of the hood over his head, staining the ground. I looked up, watching Ethan instead. I ran through what I knew: Ethan had probably killed this person. We were now carrying this dead person through the woods. The person was heavy. Ethan was a murderer, but one thing remained—
He hadn’t killed me.
That didn’t mean I was free from violence, but that as long as Ethan was around, there was a good chance I would be okay.
Because Ethan wanted to protect me.
He caught my grin and scowled. “What are you smiling about?”
The trees around us smelled earthy, moisture thick in the air. “It’s nice to get some fresh air,” I tried.
He closed his eyes slowly, then opened them. “You could open a window.”
“You locked those, remember?” I asked, giving a side-smile. He shook his head, irritated at me once again. “And in the Dahlia District, none of our bedrooms had windows. We even drew a windowpane on top of this flower field poster in the kitchen. Pretending like we could see outside.”
He didn’t respond. I knew it was strange to be grateful for fresh air when we were about to carry a corpse through the woods, but all my life, I had learned to look for the beauty in the world, because otherwise, it was all hopeless. But fresh air? The hint of coolness? The fact that Ethan continued to be kind to me, even when he didn’t have to be.
The first tap of a raindrop sounded on the treetops, then it grew to a patter. I looked up, crossing my fingers that a drop would fall, winding through the branches, all the way down to me. I wanted the touch of something real, something uncontained, uncontrollable. The weather seemed mystical. Magical, even. It was a symbol to me. I might have been locked in a cage, at the Dahlia District or in Ethan’s bedroom, but I was still part of this world.
Ethan was too.
“Damn it, Teagen.” I looked back at Ethan, confused. He picked up the man and threw him over his shoulder in one fell swoop. “I don’t care if I have to carry him myself, but would you please, for the love of all living things,stopsmiling like that?”
“No,” I said.
“No?”
“No.” I threw out my hands, my face towards the sky, and the rain hit me in small tiny bursts. “We’re here, Ethan. Out in the world.” I met his gaze. I wasn’t afraid. Even if Ethan had abducted me, even if he had spanked and beaten and fucked me, even if he had murdered people, I knew there was good inside of him. He could have killed me. Could have killed Dad. Could have killed Iris. But instead, he protected us.
