Page 5

What is wrong with me?

I think about the life waiting outside this room. My phone full of carefully posed photographs. My father deciding what I should say and who I should be seen with. The engagement to Hunter, an arrangement we both knew had little to do with love. Ari, whom I kept secret even from my sister.

I was angry with Aurora for lying to me about Hunter while I was lying to her about Ari. We finally told each other the truth in a cell.

Now Aurora has Hunter. Ari has a locked room somewhere in this house. And I have to live with the fact that I woke up missing Jax.

I wonder whether Hunter feels guilty. Whether my father has kept my disappearance quiet to avoid a scandal. Whether Aurora lies awake worrying about me.

I hope she does.

Then I hate myself for hoping my sister is suffering, just so I can believe someone still cares.

I lift my head and look at the door.

For weeks, I imagined it bursting open. Police filling the room. Aurora behind them. Someone telling me it was over.

I still want to leave. I want to open a door without permission, make a call, go somewhere without being watched.

But when I picture someone taking me away, I picture Jax coming back to an empty room.

I wonder what he would do.

I wonder if I’ll ever see him again.

Eight weeks ago, Ari and I still had a world outside these walls.

Now the thought of being rescued frightens me, because I don’t trust myself to go without looking back.

Jax has locked me in this room.

Somewhere along the way, I started waiting for him to come home.

2

JAX

Istand in the doorway of Liv’s suite and watch her sleep.

The first gray light of morning reaches across the bed. She lies on her side, one hand tucked beneath her cheek, blonde hair spread over the pillow. The duvet rises and falls with each slow breath.

She hasn’t heard me unlock the door.

During her first days in this house, the smallest sound woke her. I could barely turn the key before she was sitting upright, clutching the sheets, preparing to scream at me.

Now she sleeps through it.

I should be pleased. Eight weeks since the masquerade, and she is still here. Aurora is gone. Ari is under my roof. I have kept what I wanted.

Still, I stay longer than I need to.

I remember her standing on the other side of this room, gripping a chair in both hands, threatening to throw it through the window. I remember the scratches she left beside the lock. The contempt in her hazel eyes when she told me Hunter and Aurora would come for her.

She has said their names less often as the weeks passed.

Then she stopped saying them at all.

She has shouted at me in more than one room. The cell where she stayed beside Aurora. The cabin where Ari found her. Here, after the journey. I remember each of them. Lately, I let her listen to the quiet corridors and wait for me to come back.