“Then what is it?” She sniffed, her eyes going harsh.
“I had to see for myself what damage you’ve caused.”
“That damage kept you alive.”
“Did you have to pick so much?”
“Forgive me if I wanted to feed you as much as possible. Healing requires energy!”
“You’re a menace. And a goddamn fool.”
Her chest rose sharply. “If I’m a fool, then you’re an idiot.”
“An idiot who knows the struggles of blizzards and snow and knows you can’t just pluck food from the damn sky.”
She’d never suffered hunger. Never panicked over rations. Never learned the hard way on how to survive.
But I have.
I knew what starvation made a human become.
I know—
“So just plant more.” She huffed, crossing her arms.
“Oh, I’m sorry. How stupid of me.” I shook away the wash of sickness and vertigo. “Maybe tell the sun to stick around for another season then because whatever seeds you plant now won’t have time to hit maturity before the frosts arrive.”
“Well...I’m sure something can be done.”
I winced as I surveyed the mess she’d made. She’d used at least a month more than she should’ve. My head screamed in agony at all the work, the labor, and the tending that went into this. Not to mention the rationing on my dwindling seed packets. In my current condition, no fucking way could I replant.
“You’ll help me,” I snarled. “You’ll repay me for every crop you stole.”
“I didn’t steal them. I was providing for you!”
“Enough!” Reaching for the ivy-covered wall, sickly sweat ran down my spine. My other hand held the leash, jerking her to me for good measure.
“Oomph.” She tripped, landing on her ass as the pressure around her ankle swiped her clean off her feet.
“Stay down there.” I breathed hard, closing my eyes as the world continued to spin. “You’re going to help me. You don’t have a choice. Let me just...figure this shit out. We need to start today. Right now. Before it’s too late.”
“I’m not going to argue with you because that will never happen. We both know you’re in no condition to garden.”
“Shut it.”
“I know this isn’t you, by the way,” she muttered from the dirt. “I didn’t trick information out of you while you were sleeping, but you were more talkative than usual. You were nice to me—when you weren’t trying to kill me, of course. You were...kind.”
Nausea continued to squeeze my throat. I opened my eyes and looked down. She sat almost elegantly, with her hands looped around her knees and bare feet planted on the earth. She still wore the maroon leggings I’d dressed her in back at her car along with a black shirt I’m guessing she’d stolen from a wardrobe.
Her eyes flashed green and brown, earthy and honest, open and true. “You kissed me.” Her hand danced to her lips, touching them gently. “It was one of the best kisses I’ve ever had.”
I froze, all thoughts of gardening vanished as insane jealousy poured through me. She spoke of that kisser as someone she missed, someone she preferred. It didn’t matter that kisser was me. I had no memory of it. No recollection of whatever desire she’d manipulated in her favor.
Anger made me spiteful. “So, for all your persuasions that I can trust you, it turns out you’re just like them, after all.”
“What?” She blanched. “How could you—”
“You used me against my will. Against my knowledge. Did you fuck me, too? Did you strip me, touch me, ride me, all while telling yourself that I was awake; therefore, I must want it?”
An explosive cough shot from her mouth. I’d never witnessed a face switch from willing conversation to black with loathing. “Wow, you truly are a bastard.”
I shrugged. “Only to those who have no respect for people’s boundaries.”
“I do respect your boundaries!”
“No.” I pinched the bridge of my nose, cursing the ache, the pulse, the pain. “You don’t. Case in point.” I waved at my raided crops.
“How can you say that? After all the time I spent nursing you?” She spluttered and added, “And don’t forget that you’re the one who fucked me after chasing after me! You could’ve just let me go and returned to your perfect little life.” Her cheeks blazed with temper. “But you didn’t, did you? You ran after me, you attacked me, you threw me to the ground, and took everything from me—”
“I took everything?” I punched myself in the chest with my good arm, gobsmacked at her faulty memory. “I seem to remember you grabbed me first. Your hands were wrapped so tight around my cock and balls, it seemed as if they already belonged to you.”
“I was trying to defend myself from you strangling me! Which seems to be a favorite pastime of yours, by the way!”
“I was trying to stop you from doing anything reckless!”
“Reckless? Like run away from a madman, you mean?”
I swallowed back the bile trying to claw up my throat. “Are you saying you didn’t fuck me back that night?”
Her mouth opened and closed. She made a noise in the back of her throat, denial followed by shame. Finally, she tipped up her chin and stared me dead in the eyes. “I won’t because that would be a lie. We both wanted it. We both admitted things happened outside our control. And not just...physical things.” She held up her hand when I went to interrupt. “If I can be honest about that, then you can. We both felt something. I can’t believe I’m about to admit this after what you’ve just done to me...” She stared pointedly at the leash around her ankle, then back to my eyes. “But I still feel it. I stayed because I feel it. I waited until you were awake so I could go and get help.” Shifting from her ass to her knees, she didn’t pray at my feet, but she did implore, allowing urgency and vulnerability to etch her beautiful face, kneeling in the sunshine, hair glittering like gold, eyes full of understanding that I couldn’t tolerate. “You’re awake now. You can move without falling, which means you can feed yourself. Let me go. Untie me, and I give you a vow on my brother’s life, on my life, that I will run as fast as I can and return with transport to take you to the hospital.”
“Hospital?” I reared back, bashing into the wall behind me. “Why the hell would I go to a hospital?”
Her forehead furrowed. “Because you’re hurt. You...” She coughed delicately. “There’s no easy way to say this, Ka—” She pursed her lips, cutting off my name before she could finish.
Wise girl.
How did she get that out of me, anyhow?
What sort of delusion was I in when she’d pulled a fundamental piece out of my control?
At least, she’d learned quickly that she hadn’t earned the right to use it. Until she did, that name was off-limits to her. Perhaps my previous outburst had scared her, or she’d learned other things about me from my nightmares. Either way, she didn’t need to know I didn’t actually care about that name at all.
Yes, it came with suitcases of fucking baggage, and yes, it’d been screamed at me, yelled at me, whispered and moaned at me. It’d been murmured with tears and groaned with grotesque pleasure.
But in the end, it was just a name.
It didn’t define me because, after eleven years of solitude, I’d evolved past three little letters that’d done their best to label me as a Fable slave.
Kas was dead.
He’d died on the floor of the pantry after the asshole with the white beard kicked me in the skull so many times, he’d erased my memory for five eternal years—or at least, I thought it was five years. The calendars had run out by the time I did the math.
Regardless, for five fucking years, I was a nameless amnesiac man living off rapidly dwindling rations, facing starvation if he didn’t learn how to survive, and then drowning himself in the bottom of a bourbon bottle for a year straight because he couldn’t goddamn cope.
That was Kas.
Kas was a sex slave who’
d died a hundred deaths.
I was above a name now. But...if she needed something to call me by, then fine. She’d have to earn the right to use anything. Even if she chose to call me after a damn broccoli, she would pay for that privilege.
Slouching over her knees, she sucked in a breath and said quietly, “You need a hospital because I’m not a doctor. You suffered a significant head injury. I’m worried about long-term damage. The fact that you were in and out of consciousness for days hints something serious is going on. I’m relieved you’re awake, I truly am. I even understand why you leashed me again. But...you have to let me go. Not for my sake, but for yours.”
“Right.” I braced against the wall, still waiting for the world to stop swirling. “Pity you won’t be going anywhere.”
“Why? Haven’t I proven to you that I’m willing to be your friend? That I’ve put up with shit no one else would—”
“And I haven’t?”
“Fine.” Temper flared, sparking gold in her stare. “You want me to repeat myself? No problem. I shouldn’t have tried to ambush you at the top of the cliff. I didn’t take in the risk of you falling into account, and whether you believe me or not, I’ll never forgive myself for that. I’m not going to point out that I was fully within my right to try to escape you. You took my freedom. You’ve done it again—”
“You’re getting off track,” I murmured warningly.
She inhaled and exhaled deliberately. Nodding once, she sniffed and said simply, “I’m sorry.”
“Go on.” I crossed my arms awkwardly, avoiding the splint on my broken one and doing my best to seem like I was fine and not seconds away from vomiting over the cucumbers.
“I think, if we stand any chance of moving on, you need to accept my apology.”
“And what exactly are you apologizing for?”
She rolled her eyes.
I cocked my head, waiting to see if she was smart enough to know just how much her initial trespass pissed me off. No, not just pissed me off. Hurt me. Her very first step into my sanctum had been the first of many hurts she’d delivered. Her very presence was more pain than I could endure. Every stare, every smile, every attempt at being nice clawed over my skin and left me bleeding.
Everything I’d survived in my past was nothing, fucking nothing, to what I’d have to survive with her. Which meant my only weapon was brutality.
And I will wield it with as much precision as I can.
Her eyes glossed with something I dare not analyze. Pity definitely, but also those damn feelings she’d mentioned. Feelings that were like an infection, making me feverish and sick, a wound that needed to be cauterized or cut out if I had any chance at reversing the damage she’d already caused my heart.
“I’m sorry for entering your valley and your home.” She blinked, delivering a single sentence that threatened to soften me. “Truly.”
The world lurched.
My head pounded.
But I nodded in her direction with all the respect she’d just given me. “Thank you.”
Our eyes locked, caught, once again knotted and tangled, ensuring we weren’t two people but one. My back pricked. My pulse skipped. I grew wobbly for other reasons.
She was the one who looked away first, gasping as if she’d drowned in my stare. Dropping her gaze to the dirt, she murmured, “You have to let me go.”
I gripped the stem-and-leaf-covered wall behind me, keeping upright even as my bruised brain tried to make me fall. “That’s an impossibility.”
Her head snapped up, eyes flashing. “Why?”
It was my turn to drown. She was my new oblivion, and I wanted to tumble. “Because, Gemma Ashford, unfortunately for you, when you entered my valley, I didn’t want you. I hated everything you represented. You forced me to remember how to be human. You woke me up from the comforting monotony I’d found. You reminded me that loneliness isn’t just a word but a disease that I’ve suffered from for eleven unbearable years.”
I swallowed hard as bile lashed up my throat. “You stomped into my life and ripped away my forgetfulness. You showed me that if you could find my valley—a complete stranger with no business being here, then my family...” My voice cracked. My vision went black, then gray, then a kaleidoscope of reds.
Pinching the bridge of my nose again, I spat, “The fact that they never came back... It means they left me, and I can live with that. It’s what I wanted. My entire existence in this place was sacrificed so one day we could all be free. I’m grateful. I’m glad they’re out there, living lives away from here. Safe, hopefully. But the thing is—” I looked down at the girl by my feet, at the leash tethering us together, at the holes in my vegetable patches and the blatant lack of regard for winter prep, and I felt ancient.
I felt like the bear who had to gather and feast, a ticking clock in its soul, pushing it to eat more, forage and harvest, because if it didn’t, it wouldn’t survive hibernation. It would die in the dark, hungry and alone and in pain.
I was that bear.
And this naïve, belligerent girl had raided my pantry.
“The thing is...” The world flickered in and out. My grip on sanity slipping. “You owe me my life. I didn’t want it anymore. But you...you’ve gone and claimed it.”
My knees buckled, sending me crashing before her.
She gasped and tried to catch me, succeeding only in tangling our bodies together as we kneeled in earth as if we were about to be executed. And who knew, perhaps that was exactly what would happen.
Thanks to her, we would go hungry. We would be in pain. But the difference between me and that lonely bear was...I had her.
As grayness slithered over my vision, I mumbled the most honest confession of my life. “I can’t let you go because I’d rather die with you at my side than alone.”
Her arms trembled as she lowered me down, down, down.
My head hit dirt and my eyelids closed. Concussed nightmares dragged me deep, but not before I whispered, “I’m not lonely while you’re here. That’s why you can’t go. Why you can never go. You’re mine.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“I’M NOT LONELY WHILE you’re here. That’s why you can’t go. Why you can never go. You’re mine.”
I squeezed my eyes shut. Kas’s voice repeated over and over in my head, distracting me.
He was unconscious and I had a parrot inside my mind.
Focus.
Gritting my teeth, I shoved away his agonizing confession and kept my mind on urgent things. Things like getting him back into the temporary ward where I’d been treating him.
The stretcher.
I’d left the stretcher that I’d hauled Kas from the cliff almost two weeks ago intact. The ropes were still tied into a hammock, the scuffed tree trunks resting around the side of the house. Abandoned but now gratefully back in use.
It was a case of déjà vu as I rolled his unconscious form onto the stretcher, gathered power in my legs to lift, and heaved myself forward to drag him over the threshold.
He didn’t make a sound as I dragged him through the kitchen, past the lobby, and back into the library where he belonged.
Sweat rolled down my temples by the time I tucked him into the blankets, fluffed a pillow behind his head, and hauled the transporter back outside—hopefully not to be used a third time.
During the entire process of bringing him inside, tending to him, and worrying for him, I locked down my thoughts and feelings. I didn’t go over what he’d said, what he’d done, or the numerous emotions I’d read on his face.
I didn’t let myself analyze anything—not a single eyebrow quirk—until he was safe, breathing calmly, and I managed to get two painkillers past his lips when he roused a little.
“I’m not lonely while you’re here. That’s why you can’t go. Why you can never go. You’re mine.”
Gem...stop it.
I sat beside him, brushing back his hair, cursing the way my heart hadn’t figured out how to beat correctly in his company
. How could a man make me livid one moment and then liquid the next? Why had I felt ashamed when he was the one who locked a cuff around my ankle?
The way he looked at his vegetable garden? Ugh, the guilt almost crippled me. I should’ve taken more care. Had more respect about the value of each edible plant.
Dusk fell.
I stayed beside him, contemplating my options. If only my PLB still worked. A convoy of helicopters could arrive to fly him to a doctor.
Seeing as he’s too pig-headed to go to them.
Stars came out, twinkling through the library window. My mind raced with his fury that I’d helped myself to his supplies, the loneliness in his voice when speaking of his family, and the twisted mess left of a boy who’d been stolen so many years ago.
“I’m not lonely while you’re here. That’s why you can’t go. Why you can never go. You’re mine.”
Enough of this.
He showed no signs of waking up, and I had to be wise. While he was asleep, I had to undo the new imprisonment he’d trapped me with. Once that unsatisfactory task was dealt with, I would figure out what to prepare for dinner. Something that wouldn’t earn his wrath.
With a final look at his slumbering face, I pushed off the floor and marched to the desk by the wall. I rifled through every drawer, looking for a key to the leather leash I currently dragged around behind me.
Come on.
It has to be here somewhere.
This room had an authority about it. I didn’t need Kas to tell me that the large throne-like chair once belonged to the man he called Storymaker. His face had screamed that loud and clear when he’d woken the first time and flinched the moment he’d seen it. He didn’t need to verbalize that this wasn’t just a library to him. It’d been the hub of all the darkness in this despicable place.
I’d wondered, on the fifth or sixth day of his unmentionable nightmares, if I should move him to a different room. It seemed the shelves with their innocuous books triggered violent memories. He stared into the past and saw things I couldn’t, witnessing his family lined up before their master, waiting for instruction, praying they wouldn’t be given to a guest that night.
Fable of Happiness Book Two Page 11
