That got me an icy glare. “I don’t like… your tone of voice.”
I really got way too much of a kick out of this. “I don’t really like yours either, if I’m going to be honest.” I paused. “You probably think Halloween is a comedy.”
There went another glare. “I watch comedies.”
I looked at him.
“When I have time.”
I kept looking at him.
His jaw worked. “It’s not often… what with saving you idiots from yourselves five times a day.”
It took everything in me not to scoff at his still-perfect Portuguese. “You should really look into a job change with that kind of attitude.”
He shot another burning look my way. “Do you… know what I am? Who I am?”
“I know. I’ve fed you by hand while making airplane noises. Almost broke my back helping move you. I almost went bankrupt feeding you. Do I need to keep going or…？”
I got the longest side-eye in the history of side-eyes.
Then, then, The Defender tore his gaze away, going back to being grouchy. “I’m going to rest. Leave me one of the bars and eat the rest.”
And before I could open my mouth to argue with him more, he was out.
Again.
Leaving me with my thoughts. And all my fears. And with my assumptions about why he was finally talking to me.
Then I took a long look around the empty, quiet room, and I sighed.
CHAPTER
TEN
I was bored out of my fucking mind.
And hungry.
I would have thought I’d be prepared to be locked into a smallish room with another person because I had experience being at home, alone, but I was so wrong. At home, I could still go outside. I had the internet. Television. Work. Chores. Projects. Arts and crafts. Books.
I had something to do, even if I was bored there too. But this was a different kind of boredom.
This one felt straight from hell.
But in those hours of staring blankly at the walls and wishing I could sleep more to make the time go by faster, I thought about stuff.
Some of those thoughts revolved around how I was jealous the superbeing across the room managed to sleep so much. Or at least pretended to. Most of my thoughts were mean, ugly ones that had me questioning what kind of parents would put their children at risk like mine had; it wouldn’t be the first time I’d pondered that. A few centered around the choices my grandparents had made too.
When I got tired of that, I stared at The Defender a lot because it wasn’t like there was much else to do. There weren’t tiles on the walls to count. Or ants. There wasn’t anything to focus on.
And it was so, so cold.
I spent a lot of time focusing on my hands, counting the fine lines on each of my fingers. Wondering if that freckle had always been there. Trying to bite off the small callus I had on my palm from the garden spade. I’d hummed quietly under my breath. I had made up a lot of scenarios in my head about how we could get out of here. I thought about what I would have to do if we ever did get out of here.
I cried a couple times too.
For the most part, they were tiny tears that had me holding my breath to keep from making a sound. Tears for the home I no longer had, for the things I’d lost, and especially for the possibility that this place would be the end of me.
And a few times, I cried like a fucking drama queen, these big, hiccupping gasps into my palms.
Then I got pissed off over being upset and started thinking about other ways to hopefully one day bring down the fucking cartel.
That was the only way I was ever going to have a normal life—if they were gone.
I’d been content just getting by, trying to do everything possible to not catch their attention. For so long, they were the bogeyman living under so many of the beds I’d slept in, the monster in every closet my clothes had been in.
Was I totally unprepared to bring down a multimillion-dollar operation that had withstood other cartels and whole government interventions? Absolutely. But it wasn’t fair. I hadn’t done anything to them. I’d never done anything to anyone.
And they now knew without a doubt that I was alive.
It was then that I thought about the one idea I’d brought up to my grandma right after my grandpa had passed away. The idea she had shot down immediately because it required too much trust in people who could be paid off and in people we had no reason to believe wouldn’t backstab us to make a point. The idea that was way too risky.
So I stopped thinking about it.
I didn’t know what the cartel’s game was drawing this shit out, but I had to stay on my toes. It wasn’t like they’d brought me here for shits and giggles. For whatever reason, they weren’t jumping straight into pulling out my fingernails, but I wasn’t going to hold out hope that it wouldn’t eventually happen.
The anticipation was the fucking worst.
I drew invisible patterns and designs on the floor. I cracked my knuckles and spent a lot of time doing breathing exercises. Just doing those hurt; my ribs were so achy, but if there was a chance I might need to run in the near future, I had to keep my lungs in shape.
And like I said, I spent a lot of time looking at the man seemingly sleeping like a baby and wondering what in the hell was going on with him and if he was going to get better anytime soon.
Sometimes I went and sat closer to him. I made sure he was still breathing. And maybe once or twice I sat by his head and pictured myself choking him out for showing up and putting me into this situation, even though I knew I should have moved away months ago.
And that was when he woke up.
With me sitting by his head, in the middle of glaring at him.
“What are you doing?” The Defender asked, scaring the shit out of me. “Why are you on top of me?”
For the record, I wasn’t on top of him. I was next to him.
And I’d thought about it, sure, but for heat purposes. It was still freezing, and that was part of the reason why I couldn’t sleep that well. I’d tried tucking my arms into my shirt to stay warm, but it didn’t help enough. Neither did curling into a ball.
“Why are you looking at me so much?” the most beautiful man I’d ever seen asked, somehow still looking amazing even though he’d been asleep for days and hadn’t showered in who knows how long. He didn’t even smell. How unfair was that?
I eyed him, taking in the fact he was still speaking to me. “I don’t look at you that much.”
The expression on his face said he disagreed.
I blinked. “I don’t, and you’ve been sleeping so…”
He yawned, flashing me those bright white teeth. “My eyes are closed, but I’m aware.”
I scoffed. Yeah, all right.
He caught me. “You used the bathroom eight times, hummed the Electro-Man theme song about a hundred times, hummed other songs completely off-key.”
I stopped moving.
“Cried too much,” he had the nerve to add.
I don’t know what it said about me that I wasn’t sure if I would rather him go back to ignoring me again or if I enjoyed him being a shit talker.
“You—” He winced. His gaze flicked toward the wall by the door. “Be quiet. Pretend you’re asleep!”
The hell was that tone for? “What? Why?”
“Shut up and pretend you’re asleep!” he hissed before struggling to roll onto his stomach with a low groan that reminded me he still wasn’t doing well.