Page 54 of B-ry
All the negativity seeped in then. There was no one looking for me. I’d been a pretty crappy person and admitting that did me no good right now. It wasn’t like I could deny it though or push the thought away. I had the people I worked with but we didn’t really hang out or call one another. We didn’t make plans to do things that weren’t work-related. Maybe if I had tried harder. Let my guard down a little more. I was sure that to them I must have still seemed like some stuck-up princess.
Thinking that only made me think of Bryan. He wasn’t far off at all the first time he had met me. Back when I had it all. The car. The family money. The huge ring on my finger and the easy future ahead of me. One where I didn’t have to worry about anything. I was the pampered princess. And now I had fallen so hard.
There was no sense in dwelling on all that right this moment.
But Bryan.
Sweet, gruff Bryan. The odd mix that made a perfect man. The one that I had lost.
I was so stupid and I knew that eventually I would push far enough for him to snap. To be fair, that hadn’t been my intention that night. I had been confused for so long. I had convinced myself that he didn’t care about me because how could he? I was just something to conquer. To play with. To pity. Right?
Perhaps I had been wrong all along.
Maybe those moments when I saw a softness flash in his eyes wasn’t just me wishing that I had seen something there. Could it have been real? I wanted it to be.
Only wanting hadn’t gotten me anywhere lately.
It didn’t matter now because it was clear that night. He had made his decision to cut me loose and I didn’t take him as the kind of person that wouldn’t hold true to something once he had it in his mind. It was set in stone. And I had been left behind.
I missed him and I feared I would never be able to tell him how I really felt. I would never be able to thank him for everything he did for me. I would never feel his strong arms around me again.
Those arms, they made me feel so safe and warm. I wished more than anything I could be wrapped in them just one more time. And have his low voice in my ear, whispering things that made me blush and feel like a queen all at the same time. Those words that I had just realized weren’t meaningless. They weren’t simply things he had said to get me out of my clothes.
I swallowed hard, trying to keep the tears at bay because I had been hit with a hard dose of reality. Whether or not he meant the things he had said to me, well, I would never know. Because there was no way out of this that I could see.
How much more of this could I take?
How long was I going to be here?
The time trickled on so slow. There was a sliver of light that came in from the top of the curtain that covered the only window in the room. I had no idea where I was or if there was anything around. Once, I thought about screaming but then I feared what would happen if I did. I knew that he would get to me before anyone outside would. If there was even someone around to hear me, that was.
One time I heard a lawnmower and it gave me a little spark of hope. But the fact that my captor stayed out of the room the whole time it was running made me think that it was just him taking care of the yard. I thought it was strange. Some of the things he did. Like if that had been him cutting the grass, he must have not been so crazy, maybe. He did mundane things. Even though this room wasn’t the cleanest, I had heard him moving about the house cleaning before.
I tried my hardest not to think of that man all that much. He made my skin crawl when he was in the room with me. But when he left, I was always on edge wondering when he was going to come back. I didn’t know why he took me and his words earlier confused me even more.
More days passed. I counted them thanks to that space above the window that allowed me to see when the sun rose and fell each day. I wondered if I would be here long enough to lose track of time. If one morning I would just wake up and forget what day I was on.
“Why am I here?” I asked boldly one day.
He was sitting there sharpening a knife and I suddenly thought that maybe I had picked the wrong time to grow a backbone.
His eyes cut up to look at me, but he said nothing.
“If it’s money you want, I’m sure you are not going to get it. In case you are not aware, I haven’t spoken to my family in months and I am currently very much broke.”
“Fuck your money,” he said and there was a cold edge to his tone. “I don’t want money. This isn’t about fucking money!”
He was starting to get mad. I guess I hadn’t really thought of what kind of reaction I was going to get. Then again, I hadn’t really been thinking at all when I opened my mouth.
Maybe I was tired. I was done with whatever little game he had going on here. I wanted out, whatever way that may be. There was no way I was going to make it here for months. Or years even.
If I thought living in a tiny box surrounded by drug dealers was a shock, it was nothing compared to being in this cage. How I would have given anything just to be able to stand up straight for two minutes.
“Then what is it about?” I asked and this time I made sure that I kept my voice calm and even.
I needed to understand why I was here. I needed to know the reasons why he locked me in a cage. I had to know why all of this was happening to me.
“You see,” he said, the left side of his face twitching a little. “Something was taken from me and I deserve some payback, don’t you think?”
