Chapter 9

Chapter 9

Glory

MY ENERGY IS depleted.

I’m physically exhausted.

I’m hungry.

Emotionally, I’m detached for my own mental safety. If I think about where we are and what might happen to us for too long, the thin threads of my sanity threaten to unravel.

At least there was hot water so we could take turns getting warm and clean in the creepy bathroom. I took a sort-of shower—half-in and half-out of the stall since I couldn’t pull my jeans all the way off my chained leg.

Huxley opens the door to the bathroom, coming back out to join me in the cage after his turn in the shower. He steps over my outstretched legs, then lowers to sit beside me, both of us with our backs to the wall.

I lean my head onto his shoulder and take a deep breath. The odd scent of his sweat-soaked, soil-stained shirt mixed with the bare freshness of his clean skin makes for a strangely comforting aroma.

I flip up my palm, my knuckles resting against my thigh, and offer my hand to him. He slips his palm across mine and our fingers curl at the same time—like every other time we’ve held hands, though it’s not the same at all. This feels distinctly different. We crossed a boundary line when we kissed, and regardless of our urgent circumstances which pushed us so quickly across it, I can’t go back to seeing him the way I did before.

I suddenly see him for the man he is and my skin itches for friction with his. My thumb moves across his skin, caressing him, calming him, testing sensation with him.

The sparking remnants of tension from our kiss hours ago builds through the light touch, sending a slow burning ripple up my arm. The warmth spreads to my chest and sparks tiny fires among the scattered ashes of my heart. I expect the warmth from his closeness, his tender touch, his care, but what I don’t expect is the way the heat falls inside me, as if the sparking ashes float from my rib cage and light a new blaze through my belly, gathering low and deep.

I let out an unintentional whimper as the memory of his lips on mine makes my stomach clench in a pleasant way, in a strange way. His thumb slips with mine, rubbing my skin, adding more heat with his friction that rips through me again to cause that clench, that need.

What is this feeling?

I lift my head and look at him, finding his deep brown eyes have already fallen upon me. His lips are parted, his eyes narrowed, and curiosity flickers through his twitching jaw.

What’s happening here?

What is this place?

What is this beautiful desire ripping through me?

My eyes dart down to his lips, and I think he knows…I think he knows I’m thinking about kissing him again. He leans closer and another clench takes me by surprise, forcing me to gasp with my lips only an inch away from his. His eyes flash with hunger and I feel every cell in my body come alive with anticipation.

Then, the rumble of an engine filters into the space, breaking Huxley from the moment in his hypervigilance. He snaps his head away to look toward the door.

Come back to me, Hux.

I shake my head.

Something’s wrong with me.

I should be as aware as he is. We’re trapped here, in danger here, and I should be focused on the doom we’re facing. I pull my hand from his grip and rub my palms against my jeans.

With the moment broken, we silently wait as the engine cuts out, as the front door swings open, letting in a whoosh of howling winter wind. It slams shut and I hear the stomping of boots. After a long, anxious minute passes, he appears in the doorway…Ambrose Bishop.

He stops and stands there, watching us with his dark brown eyes—eyes that are jarringly similar to Huxley’s.

After what seems like an unusually long moment of stillness and quietness, he speaks. “I know who you are.”

Huxley clenches his fists and tension tears through us both. If Ambrose really does know who we are—who I am—he could hold me for ransom.

But maybe that’s good.

I’m only worth something to him alive, then…right?

He steps forward and tosses something small into the cage. It lands on the hardwood floor with a metallic clang and when it settles, I can see that it’s a small key.

“Take the cuff off her ankle and put it on yours,” he says to Huxley.

Huxley gets on his knees and reaches across the floor to grab the key, then turns toward me and places his hand on my ankle above the cuff. He slides the key into the padlock, working to unlock it and remove the cuff entirely. I sigh in relief at having the heavy thing off my foot, reaching down to rub my ankle with both hands. But Huxley doesn’t put it on his ankle. Instead, he stands and charges to the bars.

“I’m not putting it on,” he says, his determination palpable.

Something shifts.

Something crackles.

Something slithers between the bars, coils around Huxley and Ambrose, and hisses.

I don’t know what I’m sensing, but I can taste it, heady and thick in the air around us.

Ambrose steps away, disappearing into the front part of the house, but when he returns a moment later, the heady air erupts into sizzling, sparking chaos. The barrel of a shotgun swings into view as he marches into the room, stopping with the gun an inch away from the cage…aimed directly at me.

“Put it on your ankle or I kill her right now. I only need one of you to talk.”

My eyes are wide, fixed on Ambrose over the barrel of his gun. His eyes narrow and shift from Huxley to me. He blinks and his head shakes slightly, almost as if he were confused by something.

I can feel his confusion.

I can feel Huxley’s, too, as he turns his head to glance back at me still sitting on the floor. I catch his eyes and give him a small nod.

“Put it on, Hux,” I whisper. “It’s okay.”

Shouldn’t I be shaking, trembling with fear?

Huxley turns to face me and crouches in front of me, putting his hands on my cheeks and sending that perplexing heat dripping down my insides.

He speaks so quietly that I could hardly hear him if I weren’t so intently watching his lips move. “If you get a chance, you run, you leave me behind.” I start to protest, but he stops me with a quick kiss that somehow steals my breath and leaves me speechless. “I mean it.”

He slowly pushes to his feet. My eyes stay fixed on him, intently watching his form as he moves to grab the chain, sits down on the floor, and locks the cuff around his ankle. He slams the small metal key down on the floor and shoves it across the hardwood, pushing it between two of the cage bars.

Ambrose steps forward and the toe of his black combat boot comes down on top of the key. He drags his foot back, bringing the key with it, and out of our reach. He bends, shotgun still in hand, and picks up the key, placing it in his jeans pocket.

My eyes follow the motion and they get stuck on the curve of his hip, tracing across the line of his belt, and landing on the slight bulge at the front of his jeans. My eyebrows lift as I try to make sense of that, as I try to make sense of the fact that the sight stirs some sickness inside me.

My mind drifts, floating away and dissociating from what’s happening. My eyes are fixed in place, and I can’t think clearly. Moments or minutes later, I snap back into awareness at the touch of cool metal tapping the side of my arm.

My eyes dart down to see what touched me and widen in horror to see it’s the barrel of his gun. I hadn’t even been aware of the cage door opening. My head whips and I look up at Ambrose, his eyes locked on my face.

“Move, little bird,” he commands, his tone harsh but forced. “Out.”

I glance over at Huxley, brooding and seething and fighting so hard against himself to dampen his urge to fight for me, to save me. But even Huxley can’t save me if this man is intent on pulling the trigger. That bullet will rip me apart if he fires, and the vision of it invades my mind. It’s a vision of horror—the shotgun firing on me at point-blank range, my sinew and flesh exploding from my body, my blood washing over Huxley while painting the room in gore.

God, no.

Nausea rolls through my stomach and it prompts me to jump to my feet, both for self-preservation and to avoid my gory vision coming to life as that scene would haunt Huxley forever.

Ambrose takes a step back and I take a careful step forward. I expect it to be difficult to walk toward the stranger and his gun, but it’s not. He moves back and I move forward, and our eyes remain locked.

God, his eyes are so dark and deep, like Huxley’s. He could hide a million secrets behind those shadowed orbs, and I fearfully think that I could get lost searching for them. I know his secrets must be more sinister than any Huxley could ever hide. Part of me wants to look away, afraid to find the truth, but a more desperate part of me wants to plunge deep and find out this man’s evil truth.

Evil?

Do I see evil in him?

I don’t think I do…

Ambrose rushes to slam the door shut and lock it the moment I step foot outside the cage, trapping Huxley inside alone. I swallow hard, steeling myself against whatever is to come next, wanting to give Huxley a comforting glance but afraid to look back at him. If I see fear in his eyes, it might make me crumble.

It’s easier to hold onto the darkness of Ambrose because every moment that passes staring into his eyes takes me deeper into a trance, further from reality. Yet I feel like I can handle the darkness in his stare. It’s unsettling and it makes me feel uneasy, but it doesn’t strike me with outright fear.

Perhaps that’s what makes him dangerous to me.

Perhaps I’m naively unafraid.

Perhaps there’s something deeply, darkly wrong with me.

Ambrose backs into the hallway and I step out after him. He points his gun toward the front of the cabin, guiding me to turn in that direction, but I pause just outside the doorway. “That way. Sit your ass down in that chair.” He indicates a plain wooden chair that’s pulled out from his plain wooden table beside his modest kitchen space.

The chair is facing outward toward the living room, facing the back of an old couch that floats in the small space on the other side of a long, narrow rug that I remember tripping over when I first came in. But there’s something more obvious than couches and rugs and chairs that takes hold of my attention…it grabs me by the throat and squeezes me breathless.

The fear finally hits me.

Brown rope dangles from the rafters, two ends coming to a stop just above the chair where he wants me to sit. I whirl around to face him as panic grips me.

What does he plan to do with that?

Hang me with it?

“No,” I tell him. “No, please.”

“Glory?” Huxley’s voice comes from behind me, and I glance over my shoulder to see his face etched in worry as he wraps his hands around the cage bars.

Ambrose moves toward me so quickly that I can’t back away fast enough to avoid the touch of the gun to the center of my chest. “Move.” He forces me to turn and walk backward down the hall.

He walks me backward until I feel the chair hit the back of my knees and my body falls to sit. The dangling ends of rope hit the back of my head and run over my hair before landing in front of my face. They sway menacingly from the movement before they settle.

I can’t breathe.

I can’t speak.

My fingers curl around the seat of the chair at my sides, gripping the wood so tightly that I imagine my knuckles are white.

Ambrose sets the gun down, letting it lean against a wooden armoire not even ten feet in front of me. I look at it, think about running to grab it and turn it on him, but in a flash, he’s in front of me, standing so close it would be impossible.

So close.

I can smell him.

He smells like cigarette smoke and the sweet, earthy aroma of maple trees. It’s faintly reminiscent of the scent of our family’s maple candies, of the factory floor at Tolliver’s Treats. It’s an oddly comforting smell because it reminds me of my mother.

I only ever went to visit the factory with her—before she died, before my father remarried, before Huxley came into my life. I couldn’t bring myself to visit again after she died because it just felt wrong. It felt sad without her, though the memories of visiting with her were so joyful. We would walk through, hand in hand, thanking the workers on the floor for doing good work, sampling treats, laughing, and being happy.

I haven’t really known joy since she died.

Tears well at the reminder, a sudden sadness coming over me, so overwhelming that it washes away my fear entirely. My head falls forward and I start to cry, sobbing lightly in my seat. My grip on the chair loosens naturally as he bends over me, grabbing hold of both of my wrists and lifting them above my head.

I don’t fight him. I feel the resignation of emotional detachment slither around my mind, threatening to protect me with my ultimate submission. The flow of my tears stop, and I submit to him to protect my sanity. I even hold my arms up as he wraps the coarse rope around my hands, binding my wrists together.

My eyes become unfocused, shifting away from reality. All I can see through the sheen of remaining tears is the black softness of his hoodie, just inches from my face. He finishes securing my wrists together and then reaches high above me. His hoodie lifts away from his jeans, exposing porcelain skin stretched tight across chiseled ab muscles.

Then he pulls and my hands jerk high above me, my shoulders stretching painfully as I’m pulled up from my seat. I let out a shriek of surprise and I hear Huxley call my name.

I blink and when I open my eyes, they meet his dark ones.

Ambrose.

He sucks in a breath as he looks down at me, our four arms stretched above us, his working to do something above our heads as I breathe and stare. Then he moves, circling behind me, the sound of his heavy boots landing on the wooden chair. I can feel him move to step up on the seat and tower over me from behind.

I breathe in slowly and as I exhale, my chest sinks heavily—I feel as though my ribs crush the intensity of fear and sadness, crumbling it to pieces that fall like heavy rocks into my belly—and my stomach clenches.

Again…what is that pleasant ache?

Why did I feel it with Huxley?

Why do I feel it with Ambrose?

It’s like need, but it’s desperate and overwhelming.

I whimper as he gives a final tug on the ropes, effectively stringing me up so taut and high that my feet barely graze the hardwood beneath, not really touching, not really floating.

Wood screeches as he shoves the chair away and I feel the pulse of him as he circles me, like sonar waves that alert me to his presence as it passes every inch of my skin.

He comes to a stop in front of me and looms, towering above me with his height and lean muscle against my small, fragile frame. If he wants to hurt me, he can…he’ll have no problem doing it.

My breaths quicken and I press my lips shut, swallowing the strange sensation he gives me and let it drop low inside me.

His voice is harsh, but deeply sinful. “Glory Tolliver. There’s just one thing I need to know before I kill you and your stepbrother.”

My jaw tightens.

He really does know who we are.

One breath passes, then another, and finally he asks, “Where is your father?”