I hadn’t seen Lucas for three full days.
In all the time I’d been here, whether we’d spoken or I’d avoided looking at him, he’d still been there at least three times a day. And now he wasn’t.
It was unsettling, and more often than not I’d retreated back to my room as panic had consumed me and a song had poured from me—terrified that this would be the new normal. That I would go days or weeks without seeing him.
That whatever had happened the other night had pushed him to avoid me altogether.
I didn’t know what it was, what had forced him to suddenly stop and leave. I was thankful for it, but I was confused and alone and terrified. I wanted answers, I wanted the sweet side of Lucas I’d
caught a glimpse of, and I just wanted to go home . . .
I flew to a sitting position on the bed when someone knocked on the wall outside my room, but my racing heart abruptly sank when the man I’d been waiting days for wasn’t the person to step through my open doorway.
The shopper.
“Hello, stupid girl,” she said in that dry tone of hers and snapped her fingers behind her.
Two young women followed her, weighed down by clothes covered in zippered bags.
The shopper’s cold gaze darted over the two girls before she snapped, “I don’t think I need to tell you where those go. Get to it, then go get the rest of the shoes.” Once the girls had disappeared through the bathroom and into the closet, she set her confusing stare on me. “I told you I would tell him.”
And there it was. Blunt, unapologetic.
Despite the fear of the lesson that had turned into a confusing mass of emotions that night, I didn’t hate this woman for her betrayal, and I wasn’t sure I blamed her.
My voice was steady even though my chest ached with the need to see Kyle. “You and I both know that when I begged you to tell him, the man who owns this house and hired you and bought those clothes was not the him I was referring to.”
She shrugged, once again unapologetically. “I did what was best for you because you were too stupid to know what that was, and I did not lie to you.”
“Best for me?” I asked with a laugh. “You don’t know me; how can you determine what’s best for me?”
The shopper pursed her lips as the young women hurried through my room to get what I assumed would be the shoes and waited a few more seconds before saying, “I saved your life, that is how I know it was best for you.”
“My—saved my life?” I asked incredulously, and shook my head quickly. “I knew in asking you to help that it could have meant horrible things for you, and I’m sorry that I put you in that position, but I had to try. But saving my life? No. If it was anyone’s life you were worried about saving, it was your own.”
She tsked in that way she liked to and murmured, “Stupid girl. One day you will realize that I saved your life by not doing what you asked.”
I stared at her blankly for long moments when I realized she truly believed what she was saying. “I don’t know what kind of women in my position you’ve encountered, or what lives they had before they were taken, but I’m not like those women. I was taken by mistake.”
“Were you?” she asked with a challenging grin, but she didn’t say anything else when her helpers came scurrying back in.
And I was getting too frustrated with this strange woman to try to respond.
Once they were finished in my closet and leaving my room, the shopper walked up to me and cradled my face in her hands. “Hundreds. I have encountered hundreds of women in your position, just as I have had the displeasure of working with dozens of men in his position. When you have seen all that I’ve seen, you cannot tell me that you were taken by mistake.”
“But—”
“Stupid girl,” she said softly then placed a motherly kiss on my forehead. “You, above all, I will look forward to seeing again.” Without another word, she turned to go.
And though I didn’t know her, and though I didn’t understand her or her confusing nature or why she always called me stupid, I wanted to cry as I watched her walk away.
Once she was out of the room, I took a hesitant step in the direction she’d gone, and then another and another, intent on begging her not to leave, but came to an abrupt halt when I rounded the doorway into the hall and found Lucas standing in the living room with his arms folded across his chest, a solemn look on his devastatingly handsome face as he watched the women leave.
My heart faltered before taking off in a too-fast sprint I wasn’t sure I could survive. And I hated him—I hated him for being there after being gone for so many days. I hated him for the way my body betrayed me and ached to go to him. I hated the intense relief I felt just knowing he hadn’t abandoned me. Hadn’t left me. And I hated that, after craving his presence, he only entered this level of the house because of the shopper’s presence.
His head slowly lifted, and those dark eyes burned and begged and screamed a thousand silent things.
And despite the way my body rebelled against it, I let my anger and hatred for him show and forced myself into my bedroom, shutting the door behind me.