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His eyes flick up. He’s still holding the pen an inch above the paper, waiting. “You’re leaving?”
“Yeah. You were supposed to be resting before I interrupted you with dessert.”
“I’m not sleepy anymore.”
“Then draw.”
The word comes out as an instruction, an order.
His fingers tighten a little around the pen. Not white-knuckled. Just enough that I see it happen, see him register being told what to do and accept it without flinching.
That little reaction again.
Fuck.
I turn toward the door, one hand already reaching for the knob.
“Adrien?”
I look back over my shoulder. Kamden is watching me now, pen poised over the blank page, elbow braced on his bent knee.
“Yeah?”
He hesitates. His mouth opens, closes. He looks at the paper, then at me again. Then lifts his cuffed wrist a fraction. “Thanks for switching it.”
The gratitude in his voice is so disproportionate to what I actually did that it pisses me off on his behalf. He says it as if I gave him something rather than took something away—as if being listened to at all is enough to register as kindness from where he stands.
I changed which wrist I had cuffed to a bed. That should not qualify as kindness. That should be baseline human decency, and even that’s a low bar in this situation.
But here he is thanking me for it, his voice soft at the edges, and I have to force the anger down before he mistakes it for being directed at him instead of at everyone who ever taught him gratitude this cheap was what he owed people.
“You asked,” I say. “That’s how this works, sweetheart. You tell me what you need, and if I can give it to you, I will.”
He smiles tentatively, then puts his pen to paper.
I leave before I can study it too closely. Some things a man doesn’t deserve a long look at until he’s earned it.
The door closes behind me. The lock turns with a quiet click that I’m starting to enjoy hearing, simply because it represents keeping Kamden safe.
12
Kamden
By the next morning, I’ve learned three things about Adrien.
The first is that he means it when he tells me to rest, and drawing for three hours while sitting in bed does not count, even when I point out that I am technically sitting still the entire time.
Second, he keeps promises in a way I’m not used to.
And the third is that I have absolutely no idea what to do with him.
Yesterday passed in really strange, soft pieces after he left me with the ice cream and the little notepad, pieces that don’t seem like they should belong inside the same twenty-four hours as being kidnapped, waking up cuffed to a bed, attempting to hit someone over the head with a lamp, and discovering that my father’s best friend had been sent to kill me.
I drew until the pen left an ugly little indentation on the side of my finger, then I fell asleep for a little bit.
When I woke up, Adrien brought me lunch and sat in a wooden chair he’d dragged into the room and next to the head of my bed. He still wouldn’t let me use any utensils, so whenever a fork or spoon was needed, he was right there.
He fed me dinner later too.
