Page 68 of The Captive Missing

“Why, Charlie?” She asked finally. “Why’d you stop?”

“Because I’m just like you.”

Eyes opening to appraise her, he wiggled his left ring finger as it rested against the edge of the tub. She frowned at the implication and he motioned for her to come closer. Leaning over the side of the tub, she held her ear just in front of his lips.

“I’m married,” he confessed. “It happened when I was on the outside, that year we were all free.”

“Oh, Charlie.”

“You know, all these years back here and I’ve never felt like I cheated on her. Not until last night. Not until I kissed you.”

Sucking in a breath, Val tipped back and landed heavily on the floor. She pressed the heels of her hands against her closed eyes. The ache and pain, the desire and guilt, it all mixed to create an agonizing cocktail that permeated her blood.

“I think it would’ve been fine,” Charlie continued quietly. “If I thought I was the only one, but-”

Tears leaked from her eyes, dripping down beneath her hands and tracing salty pathways over her cheeks. Charlie reached out, his hand tugging at her wrists, but she resisted his effort to unmask her. She loved her husband. She loved him so much. But she couldn’t deny what had passed between her and Charlie. It hurt so bad. She hated herself.

“We didn’t do anything,” Charlie persuaded. “We stopped it before it really started. We didn’t do anything.”

“But now what?” Val sniffed. Dropping her hands, she stared at him. “We let them run you into nothing? Starve you? Beat you? What’s the cost Charlie?”

“You have to promise you won’t try to convince me.”

“Don’t say that.”

“You have to promise me.”

“At what cost?”

“If I ever make it out of here, if I ever make it back to her, then I want to say I’ve been as faithful to her as a D2 possibly could. And you get to say that to Jason, right?”

“Charlie-”

“If you tell me that you want me, if you ask me to be with you, I’m not going to be able to say no.”

“What will it matter if you’re dead?!” She hissed, voice on the verge of shrieking. “What happens if you’re the next one that gets hauled out and doesn’t come back?”

Shoulders lifting in a casual shrug, he dismissed her. Like he didn’t care if he lived or died. Like he didn’t care if they came and took him away in the middle of the night, never to return.

The rage that filled her had her rising to her feet. Val paced angrily away from him, then back. The feeling shot out impulses that jerked to her extremities. Whirling on him, she stared at his pitiful form sunk in the water.

“You’re trying to make me angry,” she announced. “You’re trying to make me mad at you. Well it’s not going work. If it was me being tortured and you had to watch, then you’d already be kissing me.”

His eyes flashed with the truth of what she said, and the memory from the night before lingered a moment too long. Turning his head away, he shifted uncomfortably in the tub.

“And maybe the awful truth is that I do care about you,” she continued. “And I don’t want to force you into being with me. But maybe I can even things out.”

“What are you talking about?” His eyes snapped to hers.

“I’m not eating unless you eat. Whenever they take you out to run you, I won’t have anything to drink. They want the process sped up, well let’s see how long we both last like that.”

Chapter 21

Three more days. They were able to last another three days with each getting progressively worse. Cambric ran Charlie at all hours. Whenever he was gone, the guards delivered Val a tray of food. Staunchly, she refused to eat. While he was away from their apartment, she refused to drink.

On Charlie’s end, the exercise sped up his deterioration considerably. When they returned him to her, he was in turns delirious and non-responsive. His lips were dry and cracked, his joints achy and he was unsteady on his feet. More than once Val swore he simply passed out altogether, but she couldn’t be sure because he would come back around so fast.

Val herself was dizzy and often times irritable. The pangs of hunger in her stomach were relentless. Each day that passed it became more of a challenge not to eat. After all, the meals were placed so easily before her. But she wouldn’t do it. She wouldn’t cave this time, not with Charlie suffering for her the way he was.

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