Page 113 of The Freedom in Captivity

She huffs a laugh that doesn’t sound at all amused. Her eyes flick toward the stairs and back. “And I thought you allowed me to go, for a clean break.”

No break between her and me will ever be clean. We’re messy. We’ll alwaysbemessy.

She’s talking of goodbye, but I can’t let her go again. Not even if she repeats her same damn speech from all those years ago…I can’t. I’ll return to the darkness I once waded through; only this time, it’ll be unfathomable, gloomier—worse. Worse because I’ve felt the sun again only to lose it once more. The rays that have been so fucking warm over these most recent days.

I don’t know when I realized this, but I had. Somewhere between scouring the city for her and finding her down here. I had every intention of having this final conversation with her but now the thought of anything being final sickens me.

She’s still waiting on a response so I shake my head and manage, “No. Nico needed help with something and pulled me away. When I returned, you were gone.”

She purses her lips. “Your boss is an ass. When I woke up, he said you left and that my time was up. He drove me to the Greyhound Bus Station.”

“I know. I went there looking for you. I guess we just missed each other.”

“Guess so. When I arrived back here, Nico met me at the door. He allowed me inside.”

He took her away from me but allowed her back in, even urged me down to the basement, knowing where she was. Sometimes his methods confound me.

I manage a step, my heart pounding faster than I’d ever known possible. “Why did you come back?”

She stares for a beat before looking down at her lap. “I’m homeless, Flynn. Family-less. My sister is having who-knows-what happening to her because my father’s claims aren’t much to go on. She’s either living the high life in the Seven’s fancy academy or she’s their prisoner. Either way, I need a way to contact her, and then I need to find her. With my father’s death, everything I’ve been surviving through is over.”

This is her goodbye. My legs threaten to buckle, but I remain firm, unmoving.

“I’ve spent years hiding my emotions.” She lifts two fingers on each hand. “Turning it off, I’d call it. It was my protective barrier from Dad. It was why I was mean to my stepsisters because I didn’t bother getting close to them, knowing they were only pawns in Dad’s ploy for power. I’ve lived in this personality foryears, Flynn, and I’m fucking tired.” Her expression breaks, a slightly deranged smile mingled with a furrowed brow. She repeats herself, this time whispering, “So fucking tired. I feel like I haven’t slept since Mom died. Since I was able to be in your arms, before hell consumed my existence. But the moment I was captured, I slept for the first time in years.”

A metaphor certainly, as I reflect on the exhausted woman kept in chains, but the meaning I understand nonetheless.

“The girl you met in grade twelve was the real me. I think it was the last time I was able to bemeand that was all because of you. Because you approached the new girl on a bench one day.”

Which became the greatest and worst decision of my life.

“I fell for you so fucking hard back then, Flynn.Ma lune.” She smiles sadly, and I can’t comprehend how she’s smiling at all when my heart feels seconds from dropping from my chest. “For years, I convinced myself it was teenage love. Fleeting, childish, but how could it be when it felt like I was never whole again after losing you? And believe me,” she snorts lightly, shaking her head, “after over a decade, if I was going to feel whole again, I had quite a few years to figure it out.”

I felt the same.But the words stick to my throat, unable to interrupt her thoughts.

She stands, and I feel like I’m the one in chains with the hold she has on every part of me as I watch and wait for her next words and actions.

“Now, with my father gone, I’m free. I can find Yasmine and rebuild my family—what’s left of us. But I’m far from whole and the thought of leaving is impossible. I stood outside that bus station with the two-hundred-dollars that Nico had given me for a ticket and couldn’t bring myself to enter the building. By now, I’d probably be leaving Quebec and on my way to Ontario already.”

“Yet, you’re here. While your sister is waiting for you.”

She nods, pressing her lips together. “Or maybe not. I have no idea what’s up with Yasmine, but at this point, I also need to live for me.” She takes a single step, watching my own feet to see if I move away. I don’t. So she takes another. “Forme, Flynn. There was one time I made my own decision, and that was when I begged Mom to get me away from the private school. But even that was controlled. I enrolled under a fake last name, lied to stay with you longer, and was forced away with a single threat. So how much was I truly in control? I need to find my sister, yes, but if I get on that bus, how long will it take? How many more years will be controlled by my father’s insanity, since the only reason she’s in B.C. is because of him. Ican’tdo that to myself, not without one more thing.”

Another step.

“Which is?”

She continues until there’s only inches between us, and despite her nearness, she’s never felt further away. She doesn’t touch me, just tips her head back to catch my gaze, even though it’s never left her since the second I came down here.

“I returned with the intention of saying goodbye.”

“Intention?” I repeat when she doesn’t expand. Intention means something she planned to do but isn’t necessarily happening.

“But then I arrived with two messages. Two that you may choose to leave separate and we’re finished here, or two that contradict each other, and you pick one.”

The noise in my head grows louder and louder, a buzzing that fills my ears and blocks everything else out until she takes her next breath, and with her short inhale, it’s gone. Zapped away—deleted.

Completely silent.

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