I’m not entirely certain how she’ll respond, but I’m taken aback when she simply nods again. Releasing my grip on her, we proceed into the living room, where she’s on the verge of asking about the fireplace.

Before she can, I interject, “I’ll light it, but can we start with that? What’s with your cute obsession with the fireplace?”

She chuckles and settles on the floor. I toss over the pillows and cushions from the couch to her before proceeding to place the wood in the fireplace and igniting it.

“It’s warm, and fire can’t survive when there is no oxygen. I think it reminds me I’m not in a place that will suffocate me.” I stoke it, getting it ablaze while looking down at her. She’s moved the cushions and pillows to create a nice little sitting space for both of us right in front. “I’m not good at this talking stuff. It took me years to tell Syd about what happened to me, and just as long to tell my therapist.”

When I’m satisfied with the flame, I shift to sit beside her. I don’t say anything, nor do I look at her, just at the fire.

“I don’t even know why I’m telling you. Telling my stalker anything about me seems stupid.” I catch the playful tone in her voice and let out a deep chuckle that rumbles from my throat.

“Ugh,” she grumbles, making me turn from the fire to look over at her, and she’s got her head back.

“What?”

“Nothing,” she says, closing her eyes. “Just, that noise, don’t make it.”

A laugh creeps from my lips. “Always telling me what to do, you just enjoy punishment.” She looks at me with a smile. “Keep going, Xera.”

Her lips press into a tight line, but she leans up and nods. “I was kidnapped when I was eighteen, a few weeks before my nineteenth birthday. At first, I thought I was being trafficked. I remember being shoved into the trunk of a car after working my shift at the bakery, and then being dragged out at a shipping yard.”

Sidence doesn’t have a shipping yard, so my assumption is it wasn’t here, the location seems inconsequential, so I don’t ask.

“When they threw me into a shipping container, I was… certain I would find myself in another country by the time it opened again. I was in the foster system, and when I turned eighteen, I was by myself. So, no one would come looking for me. If I was lucky, myboss would alert the authorities, but… you know, without voices to advocate for finding me, I knew the news of my disappearance would all just disappear, like I did.

“When the doors opened hours after I was placed in there, I realized it hadn’t been moved. Nothing was different, the sea in front of me all the same. That was when I met my five captors. I don’t know if the trauma blocked what they looked like, or there were other elements, but I just remember their smells. They weren’t there to traffic me, just torture me.”

She takes a deep breath, and when she looks at me, I immediately turn away. I know I’ll look at her a certain way, and she won’t want that.

She isn’t fragile. She isn’t glass.

“I was in that shipping container and under their torture for one hundred and forty-four days. In total, I was gone for nearly eleven months. From being tortured, raped, and defiled, to being buried alive.”

I gaze at her hand, unwavering and resolute, mirroring the steadfastness of her tone. This story of hers is horrific, yet it’s as though she were telling me a bedtime story. One of fiction that had no reality in her life.

“I was buried alive for one hundred and eighty-six days. The only reason I know exactly how long it was is because when I was taken from the shipping container to my burial site, I saw the date. May third. It was the first day I felt the sun on my skin, and the last until I was dug up. Tyson’s son was the one that found me by accident. Mischievous kid, digging up old graves.”

“You truly can’t die…” I say under my breath.

“No, I can’t. Even if my head is decapitated, my body will heal it. If it isn’t reattached, it will grow back. That just takes… a long time.”

My gaze slowly finds hers, “You know from experience?”

“I do.” She answers so quickly, it deepens my shock. “I did it to myself, Kai. I laid down on a set of train tracks and tried to end my life. Unfortunately, I just woke up several weeks later next to thosesame tracks,” she laughs through her sentence, “I wasn’t even worth being found… Anyway—”

“You know I am about to say something you’ll find dumb, right?”

“I know.” She pulls her knees slowly to her chest.

“Then why say it?”

“It’s how I felt.”

“You still do, it seems. Sydni would have combed every inch of this world to find you.” She locks eyes with me, intensity burning in her gaze. “And so would I.”

“Because you’re a stalker.”

“Your stalker.”