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“About being a librarian? Amazing? Seriously? Okay. The day I managed to pull a whole bookshelf over on my head. Talk about embarrassing.”
The flatness in the telling made me wonder if that was true. How many questions had she answered that had made me go, was that really the truth?
Who was this woman?
I hated lying, but the more she did it, the more intense my curiosity.
“You might want to stop crossing your legs. You’re flashing me every so often.”
“Oh.” She brought her legs together. That bright red blush was part of why I wanted to know who she really was. That she could still blush after all that had happened, it spoke of a naivety around men and that just...appealed. Might be my kinky imagination but I could roll with it.
That night I sat down on the bed, in the faint moonlight, and attempted to write a message with coffee on a paper plate. If she just threw this away we were fucked. I had no idea where else to go from here.
Gregor ran this place like a clock. A nasty, malevolent fucked-up clock.
Chapter 20
There were days I wanted to be so close with Pieter that our skin would merge. He was big, powerful, a rock of serenity in the middle of this mad place. Then there were days I’d look at him and remember what he’d done, how good he was at killing, and I’d recognize my previous foolishness.
He didn’t understand how most every little thing he told me about himself was reinforcing my fear of him.
I didn’t understand why he could nevertheless make me catch my breath when he stripped off for a shower. Or like now, when he’d looked at me through those dangling untidy dark locks while doing push-ups. With his... fucking shirt off. Swallow thy tongue. The little octopus on the back of his shoulder gleamed and writhed as his muscles slid.
Yep. He affected me not at all. Trying not to look hot and flushed, I shifted my legs and stared at the paintwork instead.
Pieter was my own private tiger and I was locked in the cage with him.
Drooling at men wasn’t new. Having a thrill run through me at the potential for a man to grab me and do something unexpected to me – that was new.
Yet even when he told me about his ex-wife my throat closed in. Why? Who the fuck knew. Perhaps because all these details made him real, like someone I could date, and that was terrifying. Not in a million years would I ever date him. Silly reaction, though. My mind needed to catch up on the news. I might die tomorrow.
My teensy window up high was acting all cheerful again, letting in an actual visible shaft of late sun along with golden, whirling particles of dust.
“Wish I was Tinkerbell so I could fly on a sunbeam.”
He grunted, pausing at the top of a push-up. “Yeah?”
“Must be windy out there.” A breeze was getting in past the seals. The glass rattled. My sunlight faded, vanished.
Despite doing more push-ups, Pieter replied. “The weather is pretty dirty. A storm might be coming.”
There were places out there where people were free. “Last night, I heard a woman crying. The poor thing.”
“Ja. It was bad. You have a kind heart, Jaz.”
“I do?” Guess I was soft at times.
“You think of others. Even when you are worse off.”
Funny but I’d always thought myself self-centered. Anyone could empathize though. I was bad at really doing anything that changed things. Maybe thoughts counted?
I put my hand on my heart and wished us all home, every single one of us captives. Zoe. I remembered her. I prayed she’d escaped.
Even those many lonely nights when I’d eaten takeaway in my apartment by myself or walked past restaurants and cafés and looked in at loving couples, I’d pay almost anything to have those in my reach. I wanted to be ordinary again.
Please, please, if there’s a god up there. One of us deserves to have our lives back.
Tears filled my eyes and threatened to spill. I wiped them away with my forefinger.
