I realize I have my back pressed up against the glass, my hands still behind me on the handle.
He steps inside and looks me over and I look down too.
I’m barefoot. Still wearing the same dress. There’s a big stain on the front of it. I don’t remember spilling anything. I guess I did, though.
I watch him as he walks around the furniture toward me. My heart is hammering against my chest and my throat has closed up and left me mute.
Why don’t I rage? Why don’t I fly at him? Hurt him like he hurt me. Scratch out his eyes or tear out skin. The scratches I managed to get in have mostly healed.
“Have you bathed?” he asks once he’s standing just a few feet from me.
I’m still glued to the same spot. Maybe I’ve backed up some more, even, because the heels of my feet are pressing against the cool glass.
“Have you bathed, Melissa?” he asks again.
He reaches out and I flinch. He stops, then moves slowly to touch my hair.
I touch it too. I don’t know what I look like. I haven’t looked in a mirror since he locked me up here.
And no, I haven’t bathed. Not since that first day when I stood under the water.
“They said the trays are mostly untouched,” he says.
I don’t know what he’s talking about.
“Melissa?” He peers down at me. “We had an agreement. Eating was part of that.”
The agreement.
His rules.
His to change at will.
“You said you wouldn’t hurt me.” Tears again. My words are jumbled, my closed throat suddenly too full of them. Too filled with words. “You said,” my shoulders wrack, sobs now. No soft tears.
Some women cry pretty. Not me. I’ve never been one of those women.
“You said,” I start again, having to suck in a breath. “You asked didn’t I know that? That you won’t hurt me?”
I see his face for one second. For one split second through the tears and humiliation and shame, I see his face and I think he’s sorry. I think he’s sad. Sad when he looks at me.
And then I feel his big hand at the back of my head. He’s so strong when he pulls me into his chest and wraps his other arm around my shoulders while he holds me like that and lets me sob. I’m ruining his shirt with tears and snot but I can’t seem to stop.
In the middle of this sobbing, I feel a hunger so deep it hurts.
A void so empty, it’s a black hole.
And when he lifts me up in his arms and carries me to the sofa, I let him. I don’t fight. Not when he sits down and cradles me on his lap and I just sob and sob and sob.
It feels good, him holding me like this. It feels good to be in his arms. Against his chest. He’s so strong. And when he’s gentle, he’s so gentle.
Then after all the sleeping of the last few days, somehow, I sleep again. When I’m spent and dried out, I sleep again and it’s dreamless. I’m weightless yet I feel him lift me and carry me and when he lays me down in his bed, I feel him lie behind me, and I sleep.
20
Hawk
I tracked down the asshole from the other night. I had to fly across the country to fucking Dover, New Hampshire, but I found him.
I look down at Melissa. She’s a mess. Her hair is a giant tangle around her head, she’s wearing the same dress she had on the day I left. When I put my hand against her belly, it’s concave. Empty.
She hasn’t eaten more than a few bites from a few trays. The maid said she wouldn’t let her into the bedroom. I could tell when I brought her in here. The bed was unmade, the comforter a heap at the center of it. The glass walls blacked out.
And here she lies, sleeping. Peaceful when I look at her face with her eyes closed, slightly sunken now. Her thick lashes flutter and she mumbles something, then settles back into sleep.
Her color is paler than usual, but it makes her lips look almost redder for it. Snow White in her glass coffin. Cursed. Sleeping until true love’s kiss wakes her. Or is that the other one? Sleeping Beauty? I don’t fucking know.
I lay on my back and look up at the ceiling.
The door isn’t closed so it’s not pitch-black in here. I’m still fully dressed, haven’t even taken off my shoes.
I still haven’t fully processed what I learned.
What I saw.
I know men. I know we’re sick—all of us. But I understand now why she said there were worse men than me out there.
Fuck, she’s met them. Known them intimately.
Senator Boyd was part of it. He’s lucky he’s already dead.