I breathed out a smile. “Tonight?”
“Yeah, tonight. Right now. Do you already have plans?”
“No. I don’t have any plans.”
“Great. Neither do I. Feels like kismet to me.” He winked and started transferring my items to his cart.
Thirty minutes later, after dropping my few groceries at my place, I accompanied Cody on the subway to his modest apartment building. We carted the groceries up to his floor and he kicked the door open as I walked through.
How strange to be walking into Cody Rutland’s apartment, to know that he lived in this place and had flown across an ocean to rescue Zakai and me and others like us. And here I was now. It felt like a mixed-up dream where you were with the right people in all the wrong places. Nothing lined up. It made little sense.
“Just put that there,” he said, indicating the one bag he’d let me carry and nodding toward his island, littered with mail and paperwork. He set the bags he was holding on another counter and then stepped to the island, picking up a few folders and piling them up as he attempted to straighten. “Sorry for the mess,” he said. “I didn’t know I’d be lucky enough to have company tonight. Some years my apartment serves as more of a transition pad between jobs. An old lady downstairs checks on it for me and collects my mail.”
I didn’t like to think about the jobs Cody referred to, even if the purpose of his work was valiant and good. The fact that he and his team had to do the job at all spoke of untold human misery and exploitation, things that were happening at this very moment. Something that had happened to me, and yet . . . my feelings were still so tangled and . . . distant somehow. The focus of my grief had been on losing Zakai, not on the fact that I’d been used, victimized. I’d been protected from the harshest understanding of that reality by my family on Sundara. Did that mean I’d never connect with the same anguish they’d felt? Or did it mean it lay in wait for me? Somewhere just out of reach. And if so, when might it make itself known?
I managed a smile as I turned my attention back to Cody. “It’s okay. Your apartment is nice.” And it was. Not as fancy as Braxton’s, nor as stylish, but it was homey and safe and filled with the light of the setting sun. I went and stood at the window, looking at the building across from Cody’s, watching people within each tiny box move through their lives. People who worked and loved and perhaps had broken hearts like mine. People who dreamed and hoped and had stories of their own. How completely my story had changed since that first night I’d laid eyes on Cody.
“What are you thinking over there?” Cody asked with a smile. I watched as he filled a pot with water and set it on a burner.
“Just how different life is here.”
“In mostly good ways, I hope,” he said, pulling a cork from a bottle of wine.
“Mostly,” I murmured. I turned to him as he walked up to me, handing me a half glass of red wine. I took it. “I’m not twenty-one yet, you know.” I gave my head a slight shake. “But on Sundara, there was no age limit . . . for anything.”
He watched me for a moment before his lips tipped gently. “I know. You grew up faster than most, Karys. Faster than you should have. But I figure one glass of wine won’t hurt as long as you don’t report me.”
I laughed, lifting a brow. “I probably won’t.”
I helped Cody make dinner and we ate sitting at the small, two-person island in his kitchen, his mail pushed to the side, the evidence of his nomadic life everywhere I looked: a duffel bag half unpacked by the door, a withered plant on his windowsill, a calendar dated the previous year hanging on the wall.
After dinner I helped him clean up and we went into his living room. He lit a fire in the fireplace and I sat on his couch, pulling my legs beneath me.
Cody sat across from me, swirling his second glass of wine. “Can I ask you if there’s a reason you moved out of your uncle’s house?”
I gazed into the fire. “It was just time for me to be independent,” I lied. “Braxton had ideas for my life I didn’t share.” I looked down, picking at my fingernails. I felt Cody’s assessing gaze on me, but didn’t look up. What reason would there have been to tell Cody about Braxton’s kiss? It would have only made him feel bad for placing me with him in the first place. That was what I told myself anyway. Another small part shook with fear over the possibility he’d look at me the way Claire had. With disbelief and disgust. I had survived it from her, but not from Cody, this man who I looked upon as a hero.
When I glanced up at Cody, he was swirling the glass of wine thoughtfully, his eyes held to the fire as mine had been moments before. He met my gaze. “What happened to Zakai?”
I let out a stuttered breath. This topic was harder, and one I couldn’t manage to lie about. I was still so deeply raw. “I don’t know exactly,” I whispered, an edge of pain clear in my voice. “He . . . he didn’t like school, or where he lived. We . . . began drifting apart.” I shook my head. “He began modeling. I see him in ads sometimes. He’s doing well, I suppose.” I looked down, willing myself not to tear up. Not now. I didn’t want to appear a child in front of this man I respected.
Cody stood, moving closer to where I sat. “I’m so sorry, Karys.”
“It still hurts. All the time.”
Cody set his wine down, taking a deep breath and letting it out slowly. He set his elbows on his knees and laced his hands. They were so much larger than mine. Strong and tanned, golden compared to my olive tone. Hands that grasped those trapped in darkness and pulled them into the light. “Did Zakai tell you I found his mother?”
My breath stalled. “What? When?”
He sat back and scratched the back of his neck. “Shortly after you arrived here, when he was still at the group home.”
Confusion gripped me, confusion and hurt. “No,” I admitted. “He never said a word.”
Cody’s brow furrowed and he looked hesitant. But then his eyes moved to something on the wall behind me and he seemed to come to a decision. He took a deep breath. “His father had died when Zakai was a baby. His mother was very poor and unable to feed him. She sold him to ‘work’ in fields. It’s not uncommon for families in poverty-stricken areas who can barely care for their children to make these deals. They’re lied to. They think they’re sending their child somewhere better. I told him that too. Often, they simply have no choice and traffickers take advantage of their desperation.”
My heart hurt. I had no way of knowing if Zakai had any memories of his mother but he knew he’d been given away when we’d spent time at the café together. The first time, when he promised to go back to school. He hadn’t told me. I’d felt our growing separation even then, but I’d had no idea of the extent, much less the reason why.
“How old was he?” I asked softly. “When he was given up?”
“He was six.” He paused. “He has few memories of his mother, but he does remember the mistreatment—the beatings—by the men he went to work for. He eventually escaped. He’d been living on the streets for quite some time when Haziq found him, starving and alone. Haziq was going to sell him again, but instead, decided to use him as a means of luring others. He was very young, innocent-looking, naturally trustworthy. Haziq used both manipulation and Zakai’s presence to convince those Haziq deemed useful to capitulate easily and accompany him to Sundara where they . . . well, you know what happened there.”