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She moved around in the kitchen behind me. As usual, I was hyperaware of her presence.
“Here,” she said, suddenly behind me.
I jerked up and spun around. She held out a plate with slices of cold meat and cheese, cut-up fruit, and bread that she’d somehow toasted and browned.
“What did you do?” I asked.
“I made a plan,” she said, and shrugged. “I know the cabin is all about living off the land or whatever… I mean, I like the rustic thing you have going here, but it’s very medieval.”
I watched her as she sat down on the floor, exactly like in the dream I’d given her. I sat down on the floor, too. She broke off a piece of bread and put it in her mouth, chewing.
“The lack of plumbing is a challenge,” she said. “But you don’t live here, do you?”
“No,” I said.
“I guess if it’s not a permanent arrangement, it changes things. My sister would die out here.” She giggled before her smile faded, and her face fell. Her sadness smelled like the forest after the rain.
“You must miss her,” I said.
Lorraine nodded. “I do. Cat and I are really close. But it’s not just that—I don’t know if she’s safe. I don’t know if they went back to get her after I escaped.” She glanced up at me, her eyes shimmering with unshed tears. “I keep thinking that since I got away, they might have gone back to get her, to make up for what they lost. I won’t be able to forgive myself if she got hurt because of me.”
“She’s safe,” I said.
Lorraine pinned me with a hard stare and narrowed her eyes. “How do you know?”
“Because they’re still out there, staking out the forest, hoping they’ll get their hands on you. If they’d gone back for her, they wouldn’t be here.”
Lorraine considered it and nodded slowly. “Okay, I guess that makes sense.” She let out a shuddering breath that was laced with relief. “That makes a lot of sense, actually. It will be good for her to just keep going. She can’t afford to miss any classes or tests. I’ll be fired by now, but I can get a new job.”
“Have you always taken care of her?” I asked.
“Since the accident, yeah,” she said. “Someone had to step up and be a parent. I had Oscar, too—” She cut herself off, and the shift in her emotions was erratic.
Oscar.
It didn’t take a genius to decipher her emotions and know he was the reason she was here.
Oscar. I didn’t know who he was, but I knew what he’d done to her. He must have delivered her into the hands of those men who wanted to use her as their personal fuck toy and then pass her on to be someone else’s.
Oscar.
A low growl bubbled up my throat. I was suddenly so pissed off I couldn’t think straight.
Mine.
He’d wanted to hurt her, and he would pay for that. I flashed on the pure terror that had riddled Lorraine when I’d first found her, the emotional torment she’d been going through. Someone had done that to her, knowing what it meant.
The anger inside me grew into a dangerous monster.
“Are you okay?” she asked, her gentle words pushing through the waves of hot rage that filled me.
I blinked at her. “I’m fine.” I stuffed the whole piece of bread into my mouth and chewed.
Lorraine nodded, and we ate in silence for a while.
What the hell was going on with me? Why did I want to protect her so badly? Why did the injustice in her life affect me like this?
I didn’t care about her. It didn’t matter what happened to her.
