It went against every instinct, but I let her go. I moved back. I gave her space.
Slowly, her coughing subsided, giving her enough strength to sit up and wrap her arms around her knees. She did her best to hide between her legs, revealing her lower body was naked, her skirt and boots still somewhere in the river. I supposed, just like she couldn’t wear leggings with the cuff, she couldn’t put underwear on either.
I didn’t know why that killed me, but it did.
Such a simple piece of fabric protection. Yet another piece of her modesty and sanity that I’d stolen.
Fuck.
I ran a hand through my dripping hair, crushed beneath the ever-growing boulder in my heart. I hadn’t seen her this bare since that night in the storm. I wanted to see more. I hated that it made me both sick with desire and distraught with regret.
She had bruises down her arms from whatever tasks she’d completed while nursing me back to health. She had scrapes on her legs and shadows on her chest from things she wouldn’t share with me, yet the worst thing? Her body was different from when she first found my valley, and I stole her.
The power that’d attracted me to her. The raw strength in honed muscles she’d crafted from years of discipline and climbing had faded.
She’d lost weight.
Lost enough to see the outline of her ribs as she heaved for breath and watched me with terrified eyes. Enough to turn her already flat stomach concave as she hugged herself and fought the urge to rock with panic.
Yet another mark I’d put on her. Another flaw of her captivity. I’d laid my hands on her and caused her pain, yet even on the days I kept my distance, I caused her untold misery.
I wasn’t feeding her enough. I wasn’t giving her the sustenance she needed to survive.
I was used to living on nothing. My body was lean and capable of existing on the low end of nutritional requirements. Hers, on the other hand, wasn’t used to such poverty.
Our eyes caught, and my heart squeezed into a bleeding pile of excrement.
I wanted to say sorry.
I wanted to explain it wasn’t her who I’d tried to hurt. It wasn’t her fault. It was mine. Entirely, insanely mine. I should tell her that my mind was broken. That she should stay away from the loner in the valley who suspected he had schizophrenia on top of a whole mansion worth of issues.
But...my throat closed up.
I couldn’t be there anymore.
I couldn’t witness the betrayal in her stare.
With a grunt, I climbed to my feet, grabbed the key from my jeans pocket, undid the chain between us, and dove into the river.
I couldn’t fix her or myself.
But I could fix that fucking generator, even if it was the last thing I’d ever do.
CHAPTER TWENTY
HE UNDID IT.
I blinked at the splash where Kas had vanished underwater, my gaze flicking back and forth between the river and my ankle. The chain curled from my leg, still padlocked to me but not to him. The links were weighty and solid, but they coiled to nowhere...
How?
He’d said he’d never unlock us, ever.
So what...what the hell happened?
I touched my painful throat with shaking hands.
One second, he’d been explaining the hydro thing, and the next, he’d gone stone cold and white. Absolutely ghostly white with eyes wide, seeing something I couldn’t. I’d popped back up from being underwater and tried to get his attention with a soft tap on his shoulder, but he’d merely hunched into himself.
I’d deliberated leaving him to sort through whatever memories had attacked—after all, it was all the suppressing he’d done that caused such misery—but then he’d groaned exactly like a haunted, hunted animal, and I couldn’t leave him to his mind’s mercy. I couldn’t stand there and not do my best to snap him out of it.
It turned out, that’d been the wrong decision.
Swallowing, I winced as familiar soreness throbbed around my throat. At this point, I’d almost lost track of how many times he’d strangled me. I was past berating myself or feeling furious or even guilty for being silly enough to keep letting it happen.
This time, he hadn’t been strangling me. I’d known that. Anyone would’ve been able to see that if they looked into his hollow, hurting eyes.
What did he see?
What the hell has he lived through?
Kas popped up by the rapids, climbing from the deeper pool and wading through the shallower parts to the concrete structure in the middle of babbling white water. His naked back glittered with droplets as well as scars, complete with the leather belt that once bound us together. His long hair lay plastered over his shoulders, looking as if he’d just appeared from the jungle for a swim while his bare legs looked almost part of the river as he climbed over rocks and grew closer to his task. He wasn’t self-conscious as his cock bobbed between his thighs. He didn’t glance back at me to ensure I hadn’t run away. He acted as if he couldn’t stand to face me and hurled himself into distraction.
I bit my lip as he slipped on an algae-coated rock, falling to one knee. With his head bowed and both hands digging in the water up to his elbows, he looked as if he prayed to a river god.
He still wasn’t well. Doing this would tax him of whatever energy he’d been able to gain back. He’d brought me here to help, yet...I couldn’t seem to move.
Something called to me.
Something that had once been so strong I’d cried myself to sleep with longing, now whispered on the breeze.
Home.
I shivered as I turned and looked at the cliff surrounding us. The crisscross tree branch canopy shivered in the light wind, dropping the occasional orange and brown, crinkly and dead leaf.
The urge to run whispered louder.
Light-headedness from being strangled answered back.
Half of me swayed toward the rock face, gathering up strength to climb while the other half of me already knew how that story would go.
I would leave.
Kas would follow.
I would climb.
Kas would probably fall.
And I’d return because...
Why?
Because you’re worried about him? Because you care about him?
I winced.
I’d return because I was sick of going around in circles. Sick of fighting and arguing and going against all the nurturing and understanding parts of my nature.
This man was not at all well. Not just because of his concussion but something deeper than that. A rot had begun in his soul, and I didn’t know how much longer he had left. I cared because I cared about all life. It didn’t mean I wanted him for my own or had any delusions of why we were so drawn to one another.
After the last week of chained captivity and wallowing in my anger, I could never go back to that. He’d very successfully ensured that no matter how long I remained here, no matter what happened in the course of surviving together, I would never be stupid enough to fall in love. Whatever emotion I’d felt for him was no longer relevant—not because of strict pep talks in the dead of night, but because it just wasn’t possible to love something so damaged.
I could help, sure.
I could forgive, possibly.
But trust? Adore? Have faith that he was whole enough to love me back? To even understand the meaning of love?
That was where I had to draw the line.
After what he’d endured, I couldn’t blame him that pieces of himself were missing. I could understand that. I could respect that. But expecting a miracle where he suddenly grew a heart and let me go and actually willingly came with me back into society where help could possibly heal him...well, I no longer believed in fairy tales.