by Kitty Thomas
“What are your plans for today?” he asked.
“What do you mean?”
“I have to go to the city. I have patients. Are you going to be okay here by yourself?”
“I'm not by myself.”
They both knew that wasn't true. She might be in a house surrounded by people, but Shannon was always by herself. She'd been by herself until the night before when Lindsay had decided for better or worse to insert himself into her world again.
“Can I trust you here?” he asked.
Shannon looked offended, which was a massive improvement from the haunted expression she'd woken with.
“I won't do anything,” she said finally.
Still, he felt like he should make a list of sharp objects to lock up, or make sure someone watched her constantly in his absence.
“I'll be home by nine. I want you waiting for me here in my room.”
“Lindsay, what is this really? I don't understand.”
“Sir. Don't make me start the day with punishment. And yes you do. You know exactly what this is.” He got out of bed and went to the bathroom to turn on the shower.
He knew she wanted him to say it. But if he said it would she believe it? Would he? Twenty-four hours ago he'd been following a several years' pattern of avoidance where she was concerned. He'd even managed to stop fantasizing about her... to forget the things he'd wanted.
And now he'd never get her face out of his mind again. He shut his eyes against the shower spray, trying hard not to think about finding her nearly lifeless body in the spa the night before. But it was useless. It was the only thought that would form in his mind now that he was alone.
When he'd realized she'd taken pills and wasn't just sleeping, everything felt like it had stopped—just like that day when he'd found her in the dungeon after Brian had finished destroying her. After that day, he'd decided he had to stay away from her. But after last night he'd decided the opposite. He could never be away from her again.
A part of him wished she'd join him in the shower, but they were a long way from casual shower sharing. She still thought this was a game—that he didn't or couldn't want her.
He'd played his disinterest far too convincingly for far too long. Not only had he nearly convinced himself, but he'd convinced her as well.
The scars bothered him, but not for the reasons she might imagine. They bothered him because they were a glaring flashing neon sign of his incompetence. It was the condemning evidence that he'd ruined her life by bringing her here. She was still beautiful to him. Scars could never change that. But how could he convince her when she hadn't known he'd found her beautiful even before the damage Brian had done?
Whether it was the soothing warmth of the shower spray and steam or something else entirely, eventually Lindsay's thoughts moved to more recent events. The previous night.
Having her bound helpless on that table. Even as the guilt ate away at him, worrying he would break her even more, the crisp sharp snap of the cane against her flesh, the way the bamboo vibrated into his hand after the strike, the way she cried out, the tears. It had taken all his willpower not to just fuck her right there.
But he couldn't yet. He needed something more from her. He didn't want to be her consolation prize. He knew what she must be thinking, that he was her last chance. Even if she hated him, she might still... Lindsay had noticed the way the other trainers had become preoccupied with the newer girls—each fresh batch more enticing than the group before.
They'd become addicted to the novelty of it all. By that point, Shannon was no longer a novelty. It wasn't as much about the scars as she thought it was.
Lindsay shut off the shower, got out, and finished getting ready. He spent far too much time in his head. For as much as he psychoanalyzed everyone else around him, he analyzed himself even more. Always too much in his head.
When he re-entered the bedroom, he was disappointed to find Shannon had gone, but why would she stay? There were a lot of other girls' rooms on this floor. They would be getting up soon, and he had no doubt the last thing she wanted was for them to know she'd spent the night with the doctor.
***
As soon as she heard the shower start, Shannon tossed on some clothes and raced down the hall and down the stairs to her room. She rushed through a shower and put on a little more makeup than usual. There was no reason there should be any visible signs on her face of anything that had happened the previous night—at least nothing that could be covered with concealer. Still, she tried, as if this fresh mask could cover and hide her secret from everyone.
She lingered in the hallway near the main entry until she saw Lindsay go out the door, then she made her way to the kitchen for some breakfast. There was only one other person in the cafeteria so early. Julie. Gabe's girl.
Shannon liked Julie. She was sweet and damaged in the way that made Shannon feel less like a freak for being in her company. Though the girl's relationship with Gabe had done a lot to heal the psychic wounds of her brief time of forced prostitution, there was something that lingered behind, like a faint perfume. If it was bottled and sold it might be called Wounded Doe.
Julie had a sweet face and gently curling auburn hair. She smiled when she saw Shannon and nodded toward the empty seat beside her. Shannon smiled and nodded back and went through the line to grab breakfast. It was waffle day at the house which was a bigger deal than it seems in casual mention because Phyllis didn't just make waffles. She made every kind of waffle and waffle topping you could think of, all from homemade batters. She used long-held secret recipes which she refused to share with anyone. Not that anyone else really cooked much at the house.
The whole event was so momentous that waffle day only occurred once a month.
Shannon got a chocolate chip waffle and a blueberry waffle, loaded up with butter and Phyllis's special secret waffle syrup, grabbed a glass of milk, and joined Julie at the table.
“Waffle day!” Julie exclaimed, as if it were a national holiday.
“I can't believe the girls are sleeping in on waffle day,” Shannon said.
“They probably don't track it like we do.”
Julie seemed suddenly lost in thought. Shannon only had to follow her line of sight to see what had caught her attention: Gabe crossing the expansive cafeteria space and heading their way. Gabe was the most laid back trainer at the house. Shannon had more than a few amazing nights with him in the years before Julie had arrived. He had always been Shannon's favorite. Out of all the men there, he somehow always came off as the least criminal.
Sun-bleached surfer-blond hair, well-muscled, tall, beautiful with an easy way about him that you could trust.
He sauntered over to their table. “Waffle day!” he said, as excited about it as Julie had been—or else teasing her because he'd probably heard her nearly shout it moments before he'd entered the room. He pulled her out of her chair and swept her into a romance-novel embrace, dipped her, and kissed her dramatically.
“Have breakfast with us?” she asked shyly.
It didn't matter how long Julie had been with Gabe, she still got giggly and shy around him. It was cute. But it always made Shannon long for what she knew she would never have. She hated how jealous it made her feel of Julie. She didn't want to resent someone she genuinely liked so much.
“Can't,” he said. “I'll have to take mine to go. I've been tasked with the errands for the house today.”
“Can I come?” she asked.
Gabe got an evil glint in his eye. “Oh yes, you can come, but it will have to wait until I get back.”
She blushed. “You know what I mean!”
“Sorry. Can't. Top secret house stuff. I'll bring you back a toy surprise if you're a good girl while I'm gone. Will you be a good girl?”
“Yes, Master.”
He kissed her again, then went to grab some food. “Hey Phyllis! I need one of those Styrofoam to-go thingies!” he shouted over the bar. “And coffee, black!”
Julie
sat back down, a sort of dazed starstruck look in her eyes. She sighed in a dreamy way, and then dug into her waffles. Shannon took that as her cue to dig in as well.
“Oh. My. God!” Julie said.
“What?”
Julie lowered her voice. “Who are you playing with?”
“Huh?”
She pointed. “The rope burns.”
Oh shit. Shannon had spent a good twenty minutes putting on makeup to cover something that wasn't coverable and hadn't even noticed the damn rope marks on her wrists.
“No one,” she said.
“Oh come on. I promise I won't tell. Is it Jake? He's hot. And he looks at you sometimes.”
“He looks at me because he thinks I'm a freak,” Shannon said.
“You're not a freak.”
Mina seemed to appear out of nowhere then, like a vampire reforming out of mist. She put her tray down on the other side of Julie. “I swear, I woke up this morning to my period and I just knew it was waffle day.”
Both Shannon and Julie looked at Mina like she'd grown a second head.
Mina plopped down in the chair. “Judge all you want. I swear to you I am cycling with waffle day, which works for me.”
Shannon tensed when she noticed what Mina was wearing. Black leather pants. Black corset. Boots. It was what Shannon thought of as Mina's murder-wear: The Sadistic Sophisticate Collection. She always wore it when she and Brian went out on a job—supposedly getting rid of dangerous people who compromised the house or had broken the house's rules and contracts.
How could there be this many people for them to kill? Shannon thought the guys were careful with everything. She suspected Brian and Mina had developed their own projects that were independent from the house though she couldn't begin to guess how they compiled their kill lists.
Brian had some serious issues that went well beyond what he'd done to Shannon so many years ago. He seemed to have a need or just a deep enjoyment not just of hurting people, but taking life. And apparently Mina had a growing taste for it as well.
Mina was a strange one. When she'd first come to the house, Shannon had some insane idea that somehow they would bond and be best friends. After all, Mina had awful scars on her back, too. She'd seemed to be just as wounded as Shannon in many of the same ways. So of course they'd be the closest of friends, right?
At the time, Shannon had been enraged Lindsay had brought somebody already scarred—both physically and emotionally—to the house to sell. If Mina was still good enough to sell, why had that option been taken off the table for Shannon? Why had she become the property of the house? An indentured spa worker? This wasn't exactly the type of enslavement she'd fantasized about. It was her own personal elevator music hell.
When Brian first bought Mina, Shannon had felt scared for her. But when he didn't hurt her, and instead seemed to love her, Shannon was once again back to What the hell is so wrong with me?
Shannon wasn't good enough to sell, but Mina was. She wasn't worth enough to be spared torture from Brian, but Mina was. And now Mina was just like him. Some switch had flipped inside her. There had been some interpersonal drama Shannon hadn't been privy to, whereupon Brian had released Mina. While free and presumably getting her life back, she'd been kidnapped by a guy in Japan named Matsumoto—a repeat customer of the house who had been very interested in buying Mina and hadn't taken it well when he'd been outbid by Brian.
Whatever had happened to her in his care... she'd changed. When she returned to the house, she'd gone—seemingly overnight—from a wardrobe of sweet and normal to Queen of the Damned.
“Looks like somebody played rough last night,” Mina said, pulling Shannon from her thoughts.
Shannon put her hands in her lap. It was hard to eat waffles that way, but it seemed like her wrists had become a neon sign of nosy inquiry.
“It's nothing,” she said, again.
“She won't say who,” Julie said.
“Bet I can guess,” Mina said with a sly smile and a knowing look in her eyes. She couldn't possibly be as confident in her sexual fortune-telling capabilities as she pretended.
“Bet you can't,” Shannon said. Nobody would ever guess.
The next word out of Mina's mouth less than half a second later was, “Lindsay.”
Shannon stared down at her plate, concentrating very intensely on chewing the imaginary food she'd forgotten to put in her mouth.
“Why Lindsay?” Julie asked. “I'm sure it's Jake.”
Shannon chanced a glance up and wished she hadn't. Mina was staring right at her, as though staring through her, or into her. Like she could see shit nobody else in the world could possibly see or know. She was as eerie as Brian these days—except that she would never hurt one of the girls like he did, and definitely none of the permanent residents of the house. If she threw her weight around with the girls, it was to protect them from Brian.
“Nah,” Mina said. Then she smiled again and winked at Shannon. “It's Lindsay.”
Julie looked to Shannon expectantly. “Well? Is it the doctor?” This new possibility intrigued Julie a bit too much for Shannon's taste.
“Of course not,” Shannon said.
“It's Lindsay,” Mina said through a mouthful of waffle.
“Stop saying that!” Shannon said.
“Then stop denying it.”
“Why do you think it's Lindsay?” Shannon asked.
Mina finished the bite of waffle, then dramatically laid her fork down. There was a lengthy pause while she seemed to be putting her words together.
“There is an electricity between the two of you. Sometimes, when he doesn't think anybody notices, I catch him looking at you a little longer than he should with this sort of wistful longing I've never seen on him with anyone else. For a long time I thought the look was regret. Then I knew it was. But it wasn't the regret of something done. It was the regret of something left undone. Also, I saw him earlier this morning and he was whistling. Lindsay never whistles. All that combined with your little temporary rope tattoos didn't leave very much to my imagination.”
“Oh. My. God. This is so romantic,” Julie said. “I think you two are just perfect!”
“I hate him.” The words were out of Shannon's mouth before she could stop them. Then the tears quickly followed. She wiped her face with the back of her hand and tried to pretend she hadn't.
“You love him,” Mina said.
“That's bullshit. It's his fault I'm here. These scars on my back are his fault. My life being completely destroyed and halted is all his fault!”
Several other girls had come down for breakfast. Conversation in the cafeteria stopped as they looked over to Shannon's table. She'd gotten louder and more animated than she'd intended.
Mina noticed this break in the din of noise as well and turned in her chair. “This doesn't concern any of you,” she said to the room at large. Ever since coming back from Japan, Mina had developed this cold regal vibe that she could turn on and off as easily as a faucet. The girls quickly turned back to their food then Mina turned back to their conversation.
“Careful, Shannon. There is a very thin line between love and hate. If some part of you didn't love him, you wouldn't hate him so much. I think you're hurt more than anything.”
“Why would I be hurt?”
Mina rolled her eyes and sighed. “I told you I've seen how he reacts to you. Make no mistake, he brought you to the house for himself. Who knows why he didn't act on that impulse, but it cost you both dearly.”
“Well, now I hate him even more.” The idea that his inability to act on what they both may have wanted had created eight years of pain and angst was enough to cause her to draw the wall back up around herself.
Lindsay had almost gotten through her defenses the night before, almost had her believing him and fantasizing about what could have been and what maybe could still be. But Mina's comment was like a bucket of cold water. So maybe Lindsay really did want her. So what? That didn't mean he should have her
. Definitely not after everything that had happened. Why should he be rewarded for bad behavior?
Chapter Five
Lindsay arrived back at the house later than he'd intended. Still, he'd expected Shannon to be waiting in his room when he arrived. Maybe she'd forgotten? No. And if she had forgotten, if she'd determined somehow that his orders were of so little consequence she need not remember them, then a lesson needed to be taught so this wouldn't become a poor behavioral pattern.
He'd had a late dinner at the office, so he felt sharp and more ready to deal with her than she could possible anticipate. He put his things down in his office and began a systematic search of the house. He was too angry to be fearful she might have done something. And anyway, he'd spoken to Gabe before leaving that morning. He would have called if she'd tried to hurt herself again.
Speak of the devil. Gabe appeared at the end of the hallway carrying a legal pad. He handed it to Lindsay.
“A full report of everything you need to know. I had a few of the trainers keep an eye on her and report back. I made notes for you.”
Lindsay hadn't asked for that much surveillance but couldn't say he was disappointed to have the information.
“Thank you.”
“No problem. I'm headed to bed.”
“Gabe? Do you happen to know where she is now?”
“She was in the pool with Julie and Annette last I checked.”
It took some of the edge off his anger. Maybe she'd just lost track of the time. Was that entirely unforgivable? Lindsay scanned through the notes as Gabe disappeared down the hallway. It looked like a normal day. Nothing jumped out as being off. He locked the legal pad in a drawer in his office and went out to the pool.
When Shannon looked up at him, he found himself moving quickly back to anger. She hadn't just lost track of the time. She wasn't scared or sorry or regretful. And she didn't bother to apologize. The look in her eyes seethed with resentment and distaste.
