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CALLISTA
Heavy-booted feet pace up and down the hallway outside the door to my room.
Moving away…
Drawing closer…
Moving away again…
His steps seem loud from where I stand with my ear pressed to the wooden slab, even on the plush runner that covers most of the floors. Or maybe I’m just highly attuned to his every movement and noise because it’s been so eerily still and quiet for the last two days.
Since he dragged me out to that cliff, everything has changed, yet it’s also stayed the same. Meals continue to be laid out immaculately. The Beast avoids me, storming away from the house at first light with his ever-present axe in hand. He returns only a few times during the day, then disappears into the trees again, his body tense.
He never looks to my window.
Never checks to see if I’m watching him.
Maybe he assumes I am, the same way he was watching me.
I glance toward the corner of the room, where a small mantle clock sits on the shelf. Its face has always captivated me. The way it almost appeared alive, and now, I know why—because it holds the hidden camera The Beast used to spy on me.
Which is why I have it turned backward, facing the wall.
He hasn’t said a word about it, and two days have done little to cool my ire over the whole situation. The Beast’s little “Field Trip of Terror” hasn’t cleared up my seemingly endless questions, either.
If anything, I only have more. And given the way the man has been incessantly pacing for the last half an hour, he has something to say. About what is anyone’s guess. But each pass he makes in front of the door only seems to coil me tighter, waiting for something—anything—to happen.
I never thought I would miss my captor’s moody, more-often-than-not gruff presence, but as soon as he returned me to the house that night and walked away from me without a look back, it felt like I was losing something I hadn’t known I had possessed.
Not a friendship, but an understanding of sorts.
Now, one day has rolled into two, and this itch to see him and try to further delve into what he told me at the gorge eats away at me.
The footsteps finally stop, and I freeze, backing away from the door slowly—finally able to put my full weight on my foot, at least somewhat comfortably without the shooting pain or tug at the stitches—until my knees hit the mattress behind me and I sink down onto the bed.
My fingers curl into the comforter as I wait.
Five seconds tick by.
Ten.
Twenty.
Sixty.
What are you doing out there?
The door handle turns, and I hold my breath as it eases open slowly.
I’m not sure how I expected him to look.
The same?
But he doesn’t.
Dark bags under his gray eyes suggest he hasn’t slept. Deep lines in his forehead and around his mouth look like he’s spent the last few days with a permanently furrowed brow and frown.
I shouldn’t feel the little flutter of excitement at the knowledge that he’s been suffering as much as I have, but it’s there all the same as he steps through the jamb, back stiff, jaw tight under his beard.
