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“Okay.”
“Kamden—”
“No, it’s okay.” The lie lodges in my throat, choking me. Heat pools in my chest, and I pull my knees tighter under the blanket.
“I guess you did forget.”
“I told you, I didn’t.”
“Then you chose not to remember.” My voice is barely more than a whisper. “You knew I existed somewhere, and you knew what Dad asked of you, but you didn’t look until I saw something I shouldn’t have. That’s what happened, isn’t it?”
Adrien doesn’t answer, his eyes soft with guilt.
A bitter laugh escapes me, shuddering into a sob. I press my rabbit’s head to my face, wanting only his soft warmth for comfort, and not wanting my captor to see my pain.
Of all the ways someone could come back into my life, he waited until he was faced with killing me.
“I don’t understand,” I whisper, voice muffled.
“I know.”
“No, I mean…” I lift my head to peek at him; my tears blur his features. “Why did it have to be like this? Why couldn’t you just come find me?”
A ghost of regret flickers across his eyes. “I should have.”
“Before—”
“Yeah.”
“Why couldn’t Dad’s friend just knock on my door and say he knew him? Why did my dad’s friend have to be the one sent to murder me?” My voice cracks on that last word, raw as paper tearing.
He closes his eyes, the lines on his forehead deepening. “I don’t have an answer that makes that fair.”
“I don’t want fair,” I snap.
“What do you want?” he asks.
“I don’t know!” The shout echoes off the bare walls. “I don’t know what I want because none of this makes sense!” I gesture helplessly between us. “You kidnapped me, and you tie me up, and you have a gun, and—and your friends kill people, and you were supposed to kill me too, but then you make me breakfast and give me Tylenol and tell me stories about Dad like—like…” I choke on the words.
“Like what?”
“Like you care,” I whisper brokenly.
He goes impossibly still, his gaze dark and raw.
“Do you?” I murmur, the question I didn’t even know I wanted to ask.
Not “Did Dad care?”
That one I understand now.
But does Adrien? Or is this all just penance, a dead man’s favor finally being repaid?
Adrien looks at me for so long that my stomach begins folding in on itself. After a while, he breathes out, “Yes.”
I can’t look away. “Because Dad asked you to?”
“At first.” His voice is low, clipped.
