bedroom after her short tour, locking the door behind her, and went to bed to sleep. She was still groggy, tired, her body drained and her mind at capacity to deal with all the rapid changes. She had never been good with changes, always questioning things, questioning herself and her self-worth, whatever little of it she had.
And she needed space away from… everything. She needed the space to process her new state of being, process what she’d tried to do, process all the emotions seeing him again had roused within her. She needed… she didn’t know what she needed. Tears welled up in her eyes as she stared at the view through the window, at both the fact that he had given her this and the fact that she still didn’t matter beyond whatever her usefulness to him was.
She was vulnerable in every way to him, and it burned in her chest to realize it.
She looked out at the mountains, wondering if she had the courage to actually jump off the cliff to escape. Stealing the drugs and drinking that mix had been the lowest of her depression, a void she couldn’t have seen the end of as alone as she had been. And he’d brought her back from the jaws of death. She didn’t doubt he’d do it again if need be. Clearly, she was important to whatever his plans were, though she couldn’t imagine them.
But even as she hated him for it, she was secretly glad for his presence. With him, even with everything that he brought, she didn’t feel alone. It was odd how she had spent her life sharing her space with people and felt loneliest, but there she was alone and somehow not feeling as dejected. Knowing he was somewhere in the house made her feel… just feel. And it felt fucking good to feel again after going catatonic for so long.
She didn’t realize when she drifted to sleep, but when her eyes opened next, a lamp was on by her side and it was dark outside. A cool breeze drifted in from the open deck doors, and Lyla sat up on the bed, rubbing the sleep from her eyes, watching the dark silhouette of the man leaning on the railing in the cold.
Keeping the softest, thinnest blanket wrapped around herself, she padded out to him, drawn like moth to flame, a moth that knew it would burn but unable to resist the pull deep inside.
It was very, very dark outside. The moon was a thin crescent in the sky, barely lighting anything. The mountains looked a little blacker than the sky and the waves barely glimmered, but their sound was loud, a soothing whoosh of water lapping against the shore. The wind was soft and cold on her face, and Lyla felt herself take in a deep breath, allowing herself to experience being outside like this for the first time. She still had an escort—she doubted he would let her be alone on the deck so close after she had tried to kill herself—but his presence wasn’t that of a normal escort. She liked sharing this with him, and whatever his motives, he had given something precious to her.
“Thank you,” she murmured quietly, her words low so as not to break the moment.
He didn’t say anything, simply looked out into the dark, his elbows on the railing, hands hanging loosely from the wrist. She looked at what he was wearing—jeans and sweatshirt—and realized she’d never really seen him so dressed down.
He looked the most relaxed that she’d seen in her memory.
Questions bubbled inside her. “How long have you lived here?”
“A few months.”
She took a step closer. “And how long have you had it?”
“About five years. It took a year to build.”
That was a long time. Stepping closer to the railing, heart racing at the nothingness beyond, she gripped the blanket. “Why not live here before?”
He turned his neck to look at her. “You weren’t here.”
Her breath caught in her throat. She didn’t know how to respond when he said things like that, like they were facts instead of lies that he fed her. Her heart, desperate for affection from him, wanted nothing more than to believe them, to believe the narrative he was spinning for her. But she had dealt with him for too long, she knew he was a master of manipulation and he knew which strings to pull for her, since she was an easy puppet.
Turning her face away, she didn’t say anything. They simply stood in the dark for long, long minutes before he broke the silence.
“I don’t understand emotions,” he began, interlinking his fingers. “I never have. I don’t find them particularly useful for myself, so I have never been attached to anyone either. People have been either useless or useful to me.” He turned fully to sear her with a look again. “While you do fit my plans quite nicely, it’s incidental. You’d be here even if you didn’t.”
Lyla felt her lips purse. “You’re a liar.”
“I am,” he agreed without a pause. “But I don’t lie to you.”
A dark sound left her as hope, hope she’d thought dead and buried, resurfaced.
She saw his jaw clench at the sound.
A tense silence followed before he moved to the door. “I’ll sleep in the other room until you invite me back. This bedroom is yours. This whole house is yours. There’s food in the kitchen. Help yourself.”
With that, he headed to the glass doors. “Oh, and don’t try to kill yourself again. You’re very close to getting a lot of answers you’ve been waiting so long for. You don’t want to miss them, not this close.”
Asshole.
Always dangling the carrot of truth in front of her. But he’d never explicitly told her that he would tell her soon, always pushing it to ‘someday’. She didn’t know if it was a line to hook her in or if he actually meant it. That was the thing with him—she never knew what he meant. But she was hooked, and the lure of answers was more than the lure of death, at least for the moment.
Shaking her head at herself, she followed him inside after a while, closing the glass doors behind her, realizing she was both dirty and hungry. First things first, she headed to the only black door in the room she hadn’t opened, one tucked in a corner of the room on the other side of the closet. Assuming it was the bathroom, she went there.
The door opened into a short corridor—there were a few of those in this house, she realized—and opened into a bathroom unlike any she had ever seen. Her jaw dropped in shock, she stood rooted to the spot, frozen as automatic lights turned on behind a false ceiling with her presence, lighting the huge space in dim yellow.
It was black—like the other decor in the house—and metal and glass, the aesthetic screaming wealth and class. She had seen rich bathrooms, had spent her time soaking in many of them, but this was another beast entirely.
A panel of windows covered three quarters of the wall opposite to her, looking out over the sea, the other quarter covered by a large mirror. A black granite countertop held a black sink in front of the mirror—the kind without any cabinets behind it. The cabinets were under the counter, covered by dark wooden panels. In front of the windows, a shower space large enough to fit ten people was sectioned off with frosted glass. Another section with frosted glass held the toilet, a black toilet. She’d never seen that.
And in between the shower chamber and the sink, right against the windows, was a large sunken tub in the same black granite.
Blinking in awe for long minutes, it took her a while to actually move into the area.
Wow.
Wow.
Dropping the blanket near the entrance, she moved to the tub, looking over the fancy knobs. Looking at the tub brought back memories of other tubs, of water and the deadly lure beneath it.
She headed for the shower instead, stripping as she went. It took her a second to figure out the buttons on the panel but once she did, water began to fall down like rain, straight from the top.
Stepping under the hot spray, she felt the warmth seep into her muscles, relaxing her for the first time in such a long time a sigh escaped her. She stood under the spray long enough for steam to begin fogging up the glass. Content for the moment, she turned to the shelves in the corner for some shampoo and stopped. Tiny bottles—shampoo, conditioner, body wash—lined the shelf, different brands, different products, all sealed.
She stared at the shelf in wonder.
Not only did he know she liked the cute bottles, he was giving her options to try. Again. He was giving her the chance to experiment and see what she liked.
Who the hell was this man?
Shoving the question aside for later, she explored the different bottles, looking at each label, all the scents—jasmine, coconut, blossom, citrus, and the list went on. She picked the one that said ‘peaches and cream’ and poured a dollop on her hand, bringing it up to her nose.
Oh, she liked it. It smelled really nice.
Slathering it over her body, she scrubbed herself clean, taking the longest, most relaxing shower of her life. Using the same scent for the shampoo and conditioner, she spent a few glorious minutes enjoying the hot water, marveling that she could. In the complex, in all the houses she’d been in, showers had been communal, so finding any semblance of time and privacy had been out of question. This was such a novel experience for her that she took her time, staying under the cascade until her stomach growled.
Shutting off the water, she grabbed a towel from a stand outside and dried herself, wrapping it around and walking to the mirror. Fresh-faced and rested, she looked better than she had in months, though still too thin. The weight she’d lost over the months was visible in her protruding collarbones, and even on her face which had lost some of its roundness. Her shoulder length hair, though jagged, was much quicker to dry. Leaving it as it was, she left the bathroom, noticing the lights automatically turning off behind her.
She picked up the blanket from the floor and dropped it on the bed before turning right. Going to the closet, she explored, trying to find something comfortable she could wear, like a tank top or sleep shorts, but she couldn’t find any. Hesitating, she bit her lip and looked around the wardrobe. There was no way she was going to sleep in any of the pricy clothes hanging there. No way. But what the hell was she going to wear otherwise?
Her eyes fell on a t-shirt he’d left folded at the bottom on his side, probably because it had wrinkles. Taking it out, she shook it open and quickly put it on. Foregoing any underwear—it wasn’t like underwear was given a lot of priority in her experience—she found a hamper in the corner and left the towel in.
Barefoot, clean and dressed, she headed out of the room. The house was dark except for a few night lights. She quietly made her way to the kitchen, lights coming on as she passed by. It was so cool. but it took some getting used to. Automatic lights weren’t a thing she had experienced. Good old switches to turn them on and off.
The kitchen, like everything in the house, was spacious and clean and modern, a lot of black and white decor interspersed with chrome. She went to the double-door refrigerator to see what it had, never really knowing how she’d cook anything because she hadn’t ever cooked. The girls had been given sparse meals like rations throughout the day. She’d never even boiled water for tea. Did she even like tea? She’d never tasted it, so she didn’t know.
But now that the thought was in her head, she went investigating. Going on her toes, she opened the cabinets one by one, her hunger sidelined for a moment. The first cabinet had neat jars with labels for each thing—flour, rice, pasta, and so on. It was the raw ingredient cabinet. The second one had all kinds of seasonings one could imagine. The third had plates and bowls and glasses on different shelves. But none had any tea.
Dejected, she rested back on her feet, her hands opening drawers and looking inside a little more frantically. So much stuff, but no tea.
It was the same with every single place she opened up. Stuff, stuff, more stuff.
But she needed the tea. She needed to know if she liked it, needed to prove to herself that she could boil water and brew it, that she wasn’t completely useless.
Her lips quivered, and she gripped the counter, taking a deep breath to try to understand why she was feeling this, this odd tightness in her chest, this ball of emotion in her throat, so tight it felt like it would explode and destroy everything. Her arms began to shake with the strain of holding the counter, her breaths becoming choppy as her mind tried to make sense of this. Was this a lingering after-effect of the drugs? Or was she breaking down? But why? Why over tea, of all things? Nothing had happened to her. She was in a beautiful place and there wasn’t a sense of prevailing danger. Why then did her entire body feel like it would collapse in itself?
Her knees buckled, and she went down, her body shaking as the ball in her throat got heavier. Her nose started to burn, her eyes watering, her mind both mindless and mindful of every single second.
She didn’t understand what was happening, and it was scaring her. This wasn’t the black hole, this was something else, something unfamiliar.
She lay down on the floor, the cold marble comforting against her heated cheeks, shaking, sobbing, shivering, and she succumbed to blessed oblivion.
