Cautiously, she took another step. It wasn’t too bad. Hobbling to the door, she opened it and peered out. Nobody was around. Surprising.
Moving into the passage, she realized she had no idea where she was going. She walked past the door to the playroom and paused.
Perhaps this was her chance to do some exploring. Biting her lip, she opened the door and limped inside, shutting the door behind her. What to look at first? Should she even touch anything? What if they’d met someone else? Stolen her and brought her here? Then this would be some other girl’s room.
She growled at the thought.
Okay, so not only was she possessive of the guys, she was feeling possessive of a playroom?
You’re being silly. She moved further into the room and carefully sat on a bean bag next to a bookshelf filled with children’s books. It would be nice to sit here and read.
Or have someone read to her.
On the bottom shelf were some coloring books and pens. She picked up one of the books and a box of pens.
Lots of adults enjoyed doing this sort of thing, right? So it wasn’t weird for her to color. Was it? She opened up the book, flicking through the pages until she found one of a puppy licking an ice cream.
This looked like fun.
She’d never have dreamed of doing this while she lived with William or her father. She’d never known when one of them would walk in. And they’d have been horrified. Image was everything.
She started coloring in the dog’s face. She was concentrating so hard she didn’t hear the door open.
“Ahh, here you are,” Caleb said.
She glanced up in shock, the pen going straight across the page, through the ice-cream. “Oh no, I ruined it.”
He walked in quietly. “Ruined what?”
“The picture. Look. There’s brown marker through the ice cream. Now I have to start a new picture!”
“Why?” he asked calmly, kneeling next to her.
She held up the picture. “Because it’s not perfect.”
His face softened. “It doesn’t have to be perfect, jelly bean.”
“But . . . but . . . it doesn’t?” she asked.
“Of course not. It can be whatever you want it to be. If you want to color outside the lines, you can. Or make the ice-cream brown and the puppy blue. That’s up to you.”
“But puppies can’t be blue.”
“They can if you want them to be. It’s your picture. Do what you like.”
She rubbed at her eye with her hand. “I’m so tired of being perfect. Of having to look perfect. Act perfect. I was a doll who they molded into the perfect puppet, stuck in a fortress built on lies.”
“Hey. Look at me.” He waited until her gaze hit his. “I don’t think you’re perfect.”
“You don’t?”
A grin twitched at his lips. “Nope. In fact, I know you’re not perfect.”
“I might be perfect,” she told him haughtily. “You don’t know how I’ve changed in the last eight years.”
“Sing ‘Mary had a Little Lamb’,” he said to her bizarrely.
She started singing and he shook his head with a wince.