Taken by Lies (Truth or Lies 1)

What are they going to do with me now? Are they finally going to kill me?

No.

They won’t. Otherwise, Jarod wouldn’t risk his life to keep me from killing myself.

Men start filing out of the room, and for once the heavy rock of the boat begins to return to a gentle sway as mother nature agrees that she has broken me, and there is no reason left to keep tormenting us with her wrath.

I feel a blanket go over my skin.

I want to fight it. I don’t like it touching me. I’ve yearned to be touched, to be comforted, to feel a soft, warm blanket for years. But now that I feel it, I hate it. I want it gone.

But I don’t have the strength to say anything or even remove the blanket from my body. I’m a frozen corpse.

Jarod looks down at me grimly. “You’re broken,” he says almost like he’s trying to convince me I am.

I’m not, comes the tiniest of voice. I’m not broken.

I know Jarod sees the defiance in my eyes. It’s the only thing I can give him to show how wrong he is. Any other time it would be enough for him to fight me and try again to break me. He knows he didn’t truly break me, so why is he saying it.

So they can go home.

The men had one job: to break me. For years they failed in their task. None of them thought the task would last this long. The storm shook up more than just me. They all thought they were going to die. They want to go home. I just don’t know what they are going to do with me.

Jarod leans down and whispers in my ear, “You’re broken, now you’re free.”

12

Kai

Home.

I never thought I’d be returning home.

I thought I would die at sea.

But here I am, lying on a park bench in baggy shorts and a T-shirt.

I look homeless.

That’s because I am.

Miami isn’t my home anymore.

It hasn’t been my home for over three years.

I’m not sure it was ever really my home, even when I was living in Miami. The trailer I inhabited with my father barely ensured I had a bed to sleep in and a roof to protect me from the rain. Most of the clothes I owned had holes in them. And my belly was never fully fed. Although, I would go back to that time in a heartbeat.

Back then I wasn’t really starving. Back then I’d never experienced pain or understood loneliness. Back then I wasn’t completely alone. Sure I only had my father and Mason, my best and only friend. I felt lonely, but I wasn’t really. I didn’t understand the word until recently.

Loneliness isn’t about being alone. It’s about realizing you have no one. No one who loves you. No one who misses you. No one who even cares to talk to you.

It’s what leads you to be so desperate as to talk to the spider in the corner of your room like they are your best friend. Then you talk to your shadow. Then you start talking to yourself like the little voice inside you is another person and not yourself.

It’s when you realize no one will ever talk back; no one will bury or mourn you if you die. That’s when you understand what true loneliness feels like.

I slowly sit up, as the sun burns my now pale skin. I haven’t seen the sun in years. I used to wear a tan year round, but after spending three years locked in a dark cave, the hint of sunlight scares me. I will blister immediately if I don’t find shelter.

I don’t remember coming back. My last memory is falling asleep on the lumpy bed on the yacht. It should have felt like a luxury; instead, it felt too soft to fall asleep on. But the pull of exhaustion made me sleep, despite the lack of comfort I felt lying in the five hundred count sheets.