Avery leads me to one of the empty chairs before taking one opposite me.
I stare at the teacup in front of me, only distantly curious. It may as well be a flying saucer. Something to be poked and prodded. Examined. Nothing that could provide comfort.
The whole world seems foreign now.
“Did you find anything?” the other man says. I remember Avery talking to him. Gabriel.
There could be a thousand meanings, but I know which one it is. The same way I could count cards and calculate statistics—without really wanting to. Did he find anything in that abandoned mental hospital?
“Nothing useful,” Damon answers, his voice low and flat.
Gabriel presses forward. “You know him best. What’s his next move?”
“He thinks he’s teaching me a lesson. What does any teacher do?”
Reinforce the lesson. Give homework. My mind flashes to Damon in the old trailer, holding that damned book of trigonometry. My stomach turns over, threatening to spill over the nice shiny china.
“Does that mean Avery is safe?”
A cold smile crosses Damon’s handsome face. “The opposite.”
Gabriel makes a low growling sound. “Then we can’t wait.”
“No,” Damon says agreeably.
The men will go looking for Jonathan Scott. Will they find him? That seems doubtful. This is an elaborate game. I haven’t seen enough of the cards to count them. And I’m only a chip in the pile, moved around on the velvet without a thought.
“So I’ll bring Avery back,” the other man says.
Damon nods. “We can meet this afternoon.”
Avery seems to perk up. “Can you maybe talk to me instead of about me?”
“I’ll bring you back to my house,” Gabriel says to her, his expression a strange mix of possession and deference. “And then meet with Damon this afternoon.”
“What about Penny?”
Everyone in the room looks at me, the heat from the gazes searing. Look away, look away.
“What about her?” Gabriel finally asks.
“Who will take care of her?” Avery demands.
Damon doesn’t move a muscle but I feel his fury as if it flickers, his own flame. “I’ll find someone,” he says, nothing in his voice giving away his anger.
“I’ll stay with her,” Avery says, though I can hear the uncertainty in her voice.
“Absolutely not,” Gabriel says. “My house is the safest place for you, especially when both Damon and I aren’t there. The security team is already installed there.”
“Then she can come with me.” Avery kicks me softly under the table. She wants me to say that I agree with her, but I don’t really. I like Avery, but she’s probably safer without me. “If it’s safer there, then she’ll be safer, too.”
The force of Damon’s discontent takes the air from the room. In the tense silence I imagine a million things he could say. I’ll take care of you, Penny. The fantasy gets stronger.
“Take her,” he says, his voice cold as he stands and tosses down his napkin.
Then he leaves the room, as if he decided on his dinner order instead of my fate.
Avery struggles to meet my eyes, but I can’t deal with that. Can’t deal with the empathy I would find. Can’t deal with the questions she would ask.
“What happened to her?” she asks Gabriel instead, a sweet relief. Someone else to answer her questions. Someone else to field the useless empathy.
“You don’t want to know,” he says, his voice hard.
“I should know if I’m going to help her.”
“I’m not sure there’s any help for someone who’s been through that.”
That almost makes me laugh. Maybe if the ice were a little thinner, I would have. But every second that Damon is away from me, the ice hardens. Every time he pushes me away it gets thicker.
It should be a relief that he doesn’t seem to be claiming the debt. That he’s giving me time to heal. But he’s the only person who really understands what I’ve been through. Because he went through his own hell, with the very same devil.
“Are you speaking from experience?” Avery says, her innocence heartbreaking.
“I saw a lot of fucked-up shit at the whorehouse growing up. Women raped, hurt. Beaten until they weren’t recognizable. And still I never saw anything like this.”
She makes a sound of sympathy. For me. For him. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t apologize, little virgin. I could have freed you. Never forget that. I could have paid a million dollars and then walked away, never fucking that pretty little cunt.” A pause, as if to let the words set in. “He fucked her. And then he drowned her.”
A sharp breath. “How did she—”
“Survive? She left a trail of breadcrumbs for him to find. He didn’t know if he’d make it in time. He had no idea if he’d find a dead body at the bottom of the pool.”
Didn’t he? Like that day on the river I don’t quite remember being pulled from the pool. I don’t remember much of last night except the hard currents, the sharp rocks. The metallic taste of blood in the water. That must have been horrible for Damon, but it’s hard to feel sympathy.
Hard to feel anything at all.
“Thank God he didn’t.” Avery sounds painfully earnest.
“What Jonathan Scott did to her… Most people would rather have died.”
I know I should feel something about that. Shame, probably.
But all I keep thinking is, what if I did die last night? What if the only parts of me worth saving sank to the bottom of that cold pool? I can be dressed up and fed like a doll, but I’m not a person. I can walk around, my body controlled by the people around me.
What makes me human? What makes me want to be human?
It seems like a horrible thing to be, so weak and unwilling.
Chapter Fifteen
Avery tucks me in at night, murmuring things about Gabriel’s huge house.
“It’s very comfortable,” she assures me. “And very safe.”
That last part seems to be the sticking point. Not only because of the threat of Jonathan Scott looming over us all. There must be something less than shiny, something not quite gilded in her past. Because she keeps glancing at the walls, as if something terrifying might jump out of the plaster.
She leaves the bathroom light on for me, the door cracked open an inch.
Then she closes the door, probably going to sleep with Gabriel. She doesn’t say, but I saw the way he looked at her. The way she looked at him. The lion to the gazelle. Only this gazelle wants to be eaten.
I hear the footsteps first. My heart is a muscle overworked in the last twenty-four hours, already sore and weak from beating so fast. Now it strains against my ribs, making weak protest.
The doorknob turns, a polished silver handle reflecting the light.
Most likely it’s Avery checking on me.
Possibly it’s someone out of my nightmares.
Damon Scott slips into the room, as casual as if he were visiting for tea. He’s still wearing his shirt and vest. Only his shoes are missing, the sole nod to being in his own home. I suppose that counts for casual with him, those black socks on the plush carpet.