Only then, do I feel a little better. It’s not the worst pain I’ll cause her, but it’ll suffice for now.
Chapter 9
Sawyer
I hate him.
I loathe him.
If I could physically rip out every word that defines him as an asshole from the dictionary and shove it down his throat, I would.
But I’m also scared.
I’m trapped in a creepy lighthouse with a strange caretaker and a man who looks at me as if he'd prefer to see me between a shark’s teeth.
There’s no escaping this place—no escaping him. I’ve always been able to run. It’s what I’ve done my entire life. And now that I can’t, it feels like my body has been invaded by tiny needle-like parasites. I’m tempted to put my nails to my own flesh and start clawing my way out, but it wouldn’t get me any farther away from this place.
It's late at night, and there's as little artificial light as there is natural.
Shadows dance across Enzo’s and Sylvester’s faces, their features only visible beneath the orange glow emanating from the fireplace. There's a lamp on the end table, but Sylvester doesn't seem inclined to flip it on.
I yelp when Enzo suddenly grabs my other foot. He gives me a look, probably because I hurt his precious ears, then continues with cleaning my injuries, reigniting the flares of pain.
I’d rather stick my foot in the ocean and call it a day, but going outside in the dark sounds even more terrifying than the prospect of Enzo taking care of me. Just barely, though.
“When yer done with ’er, I’ll show you two to yer room,” Sylvester announces. My heart drops, the implication in his words sending ants crawling down my spine.
“We’ll have our own rooms, right?” I ask. Enzo stops cleaning, looking up at the old man, also waiting for a response.
“’Fraid not. Only one other room here.”
Oh, no. This day couldn’t have gotten any worse, yet somehow, it did.
“I can sleep on the couch,” Enzo offers.
“That ain’t gonna work for me, son. This is my home, and I don’t like nobody sleepin’ in my living space. Sometimes I like to stay up late and watch some television.” His tone is stern and brokering no room for argument.
“There’s only one bed?” I ask sullenly, already knowing the answer and hating it.
“That’s right,” he affirms. I must've been clinging onto some shred of hope because my heart withers into dust right then and there.
Either I'll have to share a bed with a man who hates me, or one of us will sleep on the floor with the bugs.
I work to swallow. Knowing him, Enzo will force me to sleep on the floor while he takes the bed. He’s no gentleman, that’s for damn sure.
Enzo pushes my feet off his lap angrily and stands. The tension in the air thickens, and unsurprisingly, Sylvester doesn't shy away from his glare. Awkwardly, I shuffle to my feet, the pain flaring in them again while I clear my throat.
“We’ll make it work, Syl. Thank you.”
Enzo turns his eyes to me, but I’m not as brave. Not that I ever plan to let the asshole know that. So despite the need for my spine to bend, I force it straight. It’s ingrained into the very marrow of my bones to shrink beneath the weight of a stare. If I allow them to look too long, they might see beneath the brittle mirage I’ve built around myself. They’ll see the cracks and the imperfections, and with one poke, they’ll find that it was nothing more than a clever illusion.
The man before me has already seen the ugly beneath the glimmering rainbow. Turns out, he was only looking into his own reflection.
I may carry ugliness inside of me, but he’s no fucking beauty queen, either.
Sylvester waves us toward the spiral staircase.
“I’d like fer you two to be in your room by nine o’clock every night, if ya don’t mind,” Sylvester says as he leads us toward the metal steps. “It’s about ten o’clock now, so I’ll get ya settled in quick.”
My brows plunge. I can’t remember the last time I’ve been given a bedtime. Certainly never when I was a grown adult. But despite Sylvester posing the request as polite, it goes without saying he wouldn’t care even if I did mind. Which I do.
Clearing my throat, I say, “Okay.”
I suppose a bedtime isn’t the worst thing to be bestowed upon me in the last twenty-four hours. I’m just grateful that I’m no longer submerged in the middle of the ocean, where ninety-five percent of it is left undiscovered—something I learned after my night with Enzo. That’s all I could think of as the wave wiped us out. It’s all that ran through my brain as the riptide sucked me under and then spat me out like spoiled food.