by Drew Jordan
“If you would do what I say, like I asked you too, you wouldn’t be out here.”
My eyes burned from the smoke of my fire. But even as they watered, and possibly looked like tears to him, I felt no urge to cry. My days of crying were behind me. It never changed anything. It didn’t make you feel better. It didn’t release the sadness or the fear. All it did was make your face swollen and your eyes itch. I looked at him and I thought that for the first time ever, I could believe that everyone was capable of murder. Because I wanted to kill him. I wanted to reach out and choke him until he could no longer breathe and the light went out of his eyes.
But that would serve no purpose. I would be well and truly stranded then. Besides, I had no hand strength left. And even as I wanted to kill him, I still wanted to love him. I felt an irrational tenderness towards him, because on one level, I understood his anger. He was trying to protect me and I kept defying him. But at the same time, he was a monster, a man who kept a woman captive. He was the ultimate selfish boyfriend, in a twisted way, me the petulant girlfriend. No matter how we’d come to this point, we were both trapped in the ropes of the relationship we had forged. We were tied together, inexplicably, by our circumstances and our driving, primal need for each other.
By our loneliness.
“Is that why you’re here, to rub it in? To remind me that I’m stupid and make poor choices?” I covered my icy nose with my glove. “I already know that, so save your breath.”
His expression softened. He was squatting down and his knee poked through under the tarp as he crawled in beside me. “I’m impressed with your fire,” he said after a moment’s silence, as we just sat side by side. “You did a good job making a shelter for yourself.”
“Thank you.”
He pulled a ziploc bag out of his jacket. “Ash bark. Use it to start a fire if yours goes out. It catches even when it’s wet.” He set it down beside me.
“So I have to stay out here, indefinitely? Like one of the dogs on your sled team?” I knew I shouldn’t push him, but anger that he wanted to blame me for everything pushed the words out.
“No.”
That could mean either I was going to be allowed back in the house or he was going to drive me off his property. If that was his intention I just wanted him to get it over with so I could stumble off and die from exposure. So I told him that. “If you’re going to kick me off your land, just do it now. We both know I won’t survive so why drag it out?”
It was strange how optimism and pessimism could march in harmony with each other. I felt the deepest hope and confidence that he wouldn’t do that to me, that he couldn’t. Yet at the same time, I was certain he was going to. It didn’t make any sense. Maybe that was why even as I contemplated the prospect of death, I wasn’t afraid anymore, because it didn’t seem real. He wouldn’t actually save me only to push me outside to die. This was just a punishment. A test of sorts.
It wasn’t the moment that everyone faced in the seconds before their death. The total clarity and awareness that it was over, their life thread had snapped. I couldn’t quite grasp that this was the end, because I still believed he had good inside of him. Down deep under the gruff exterior and the empty eyes. He could care about me. He wouldn’t kill me, or condemn me to die.
Foolish, maybe, but also accurate.
“Laney.” He took my chin, turning my head to face him. “The last thing I want is for you to die. I also don’t want you to leave me. And I don’t like it that you want to leave. It makes me angry and I act like an asshole. It hurts me, do you understand that?”
Just like that, the door opened wide. Beyond it was the warmth of the cabin, food, water, and his strong, arousing body…
I walked through the opening he’d given me. “Baby, I don’t want to leave you.” I reached up and touched his beard with my glove. “But I’m new at being obedient and I’m used to having my phone, the Internet, videos to watch, books to read. I get restless. I went for a walk. What else am I supposed to do when you’re not home?”
Even as I spoke the words, I marveled at how sincere they sounded. They floated out of me, like musical notes, hitting just the right pitch. Always the chameleon, that was me. When his troubled expression eased a little, I felt a certain sort of pride, an odd pleasure that I’d eased his emotional discomfort. I pressed my lips to his with all the confidence of a lover, a woman who is assured of her reception. “You’re right, you know. You’re my everything.”
He was.
Yet I was amazed at myself. I really could use the label survivor, because what was the definition but someone who stays alive under adverse circumstances, using whatever means necessary. Not only had I built a fire, I’d put out the flames of his anger.
“I’m used to the quiet,” he said. “But I can see how you wouldn’t be. But you have to understand, if you defy me, I will punish you.”
I fought the urge to break eye contact, my heart rate increasing. He looked so calm, so confident in the fact that he was right.
“And the punishments are going to get worse if you put yourself in danger again. So don’t say that I didn’t warn you.”
There was nothing I could say to that other than, “I understand.” But then a calm equal to his fell over me and I added, because I couldn’t resist, a phrase from the depths of my memory. “Does it hurt you more than it hurts me to punish me?”
If he had said yes, then I might have screamed. I might have run, straight down into the river, drowned myself in the frigid water and been done with it. But he didn’t. He smiled and kissed my lips softly.
“Of course not. It hurts you much, much more. But you like pain, don’t you?”
I did. There was no denying it. Or the fact that my body started to wake up even now at the mere thought. “I do. But I don’t want you angry with me.”
“Come back into the house with me and prove it.”
“I can do that.”
I stood up, ready and willing to walk back into his house, watching him put out the fire I’d made. I had the sense that we were more equals than before. I had earned his respect.
Next I wanted his trust.
And a part of me even wanted his love.
So I went with eyes wide open to receive the punishment that would hurt me more than it would hurt him.
CHAPTER TWELVE
I didn’t realize how stiff and weak I was until I tried to push open the door to the shed and every muscle in my body protested. I barely made it budge. His arm came up over me and he gave the door a shove, opening it for me.
“I chopped wood,” I told him. “My arms are sore, but I did it. I chopped wood.” I was proud of that fact. I wanted him to know.
“I’m impressed. I really mean that.” He put his hand on the small of my back. “Are you tired? I can carry you. You haven’t eaten anything and you must be frozen.”
The intriguing paradox of my stranger, showing concern for me after shutting me out in the cold for at least eight hours by the look of the sun, maybe more. Suddenly now he was worried that I might be frozen? It was hard to wrap my head around on the surface but I knew that to him it made total sense. He had proven his point that I couldn’t survive outside. He wanted me to understand the danger. I did. I always had, but he was right. I really, really grasped how perilous human life was in the bush and how easy it would be to die now. If the bear hadn’t done it, this had.
He cared about me, in his own maddening and twisted way.
What I found fascinating, more so than I should, was that he did. I wondered if he saw me as a whole human being, or as an injured creature he’d taken in. Was he interested in me because I was Laney, or because I needed him to survive? I didn’t know. So I decided to ask him. After I tested the boundaries, and how interested in honesty he was.
“I don’t need you to carry me. But I would like you to carry me. But at the same time, I want to do it myself because I need to know that I can.”
For some reason, that amused him. He s
miled. “My Laney, always thinking out loud.”
If only he knew the thoughts I had.
“Some might call that stubbornness,” he said. “I like to think it’s because you’re determined. Determined to come into your own. Is that right?”
“It is.” As we walked, the wind cut through me, and I marveled that on some level I could actually get used to the subzero temperatures. That I could withstand what was as much a mental challenge as a physical one. “I guess that’s why I thought I was coming to Alaska.”
“Thought you were?”
My steps were slow, methodical, but I climbed onto the porch, cheeks feeling like they might crack. Just split in half, frozen, exposing raw meat and muscle. Like a lean cut at the butcher counter. “I thought I was coming to find some inner strength, to be independent. But I was really coming here to run away from the fact that I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life back in Seattle.”
He held his hand out to me to help me walk and I took it, needing to lean on him just a little. “At least you’re honest with yourself.”
“Why did you come here?” I asked.
“I was born and raised in Alaska.”
It was a non-answer. Information he’d already told me. “Were you honest with yourself?”
“Always. So why were you traveling from Fairbanks up north? What was the final destination?”
“I was meeting a friend. It was going to be an adventure.” The more I walked, the more my body hurt, but at the same time, my mental fog started to multiply. I’d gone into a bizarre blank space in that shed, a sort of self-preservation where I wasn’t thinking about much. When I had thought, it had all been so clear. It seemed like heightened awareness, where everything made sense and I had all the answers to life, if not to how to survive the frozen Alaskan night. But now, it was cloudy again, a mist hovering over mud, thoughts that came to me than drifted away.
“I suppose your friend is looking for you,” he said, pausing at the front door to study me. “There are probably a lot of people looking for you if she is the type to really push for answers.”
“I don’t know if he is or not,” I said, putting a slight emphasis on the pronoun. “I haven’t seen him since we were kids.”
He opened the door and stepped back for me to enter first. “So he’s not a lover then?”
“No.” It was the truth, if not the whole truth. “Does your family miss you?” I asked. “Do you ever go and see them?” I shuddered with relief as the warm air of the cabin crossed over my face. My tense shoulders fell.
The corner of his mouth lifted up as he followed me inside and shut the door. “Is this where we share? Where I tell you who I am by cute little stories of my childhood? How would you even know I was telling the truth? Everyone remembers the past incorrectly, intentional or not.”
“Maybe it’s a stall tactic. So you won’t punish me.” I sat heavily in a chair by the table, unable to even consider divesting myself of clothes. I didn’t have the energy left and I felt frozen straight through the middle. It was going to take an hour to warm up.
“You don’t look afraid to be punished. You also don’t look angry. I would have expected a woman to want to smack and slap at me out of anger. I was prepared for you to claw my eyes out.”
“Then you don’t know me any more than I know you.” I pressed my cheeks, just to make sure they were intact. “I am not a violent person.” I also wasn’t stupid enough to attack a man who could easily overpower me, hurt me. More than he already had, that is. The thought confused me. I should be angry, he was right, but I felt less angry than triumphant, albeit weary. “Did you want me to claw your eyes out? I can try if you’d like.”
He studied me. “You sound so strange…. I think you need food and a nap. You don’t sound like yourself.” His brows furrowed. “Maybe I left you out too long.”
That brought a rusty laugh from my mouth. It was safe to say he had, yes. Twenty minutes would have been sufficient. “Like mayonnaise? You left me out too long and I started to spoil? A nap would be nice but I thought you needed to punish me still.” I wanted to get it over with then sleep.
“No. That was your punishment. I think you learned your lesson.”
“I did.” I learned that I was never getting away from him unless he wanted me to go. And even that didn’t ensure he’d escort me to safety. I had to be whatever he wanted me to be in order to get out alive. Eventually, someone would find me. They had to.
After removing his boots and coat, he squatted down between my legs and gently peeled my wet gloves off my hands. They were an angry red and I couldn’t bend my fingers. “They need to acclimate to room temperature gradually. We’ll just leave them uncovered for a few minutes.”
I didn’t care, particularly. They could pop off one by one and I wasn’t sure it would matter much to me. I wasn’t ever going to text again.
“I don’t want you to think I’m a cruel man.” He bent over, undoing the laces on my boots. “That’s not what this is about.”
I said nothing. I wasn’t even curious what he was going to say. It didn’t matter what it was about. It only mattered that it was.
He unzipped my jacket after taking off my boots, then went and made me tea. He held it to my lips while I sipped, the steam making my nose itch, my cracked lips awkward and slow to grip the mug. I burned my tongue. “Motherfucker,” I said.
“Such language from such a sweet girl.”
I was a sweet girl. I was also loving. Malleable. And more than a little willing to take a detour into crazy when the moon was full…
“Sometimes nothing says what you feel like a curse.”
“I used to feel like a curse all the time.”
I watched him blowing the tea for me, and moving the cup so it would swirl off some of its heat. “Yeah?”
His eyes lifted and met mine. “Yeah.” He put the cup to my lips. “Try it now.”
I did. It was perfect. Sometimes you just needed to wait a second and it would be exactly what you needed.
“Lie down. I’ll get you out of these cold clothes.”
He was gentle with me. More so than my mother had been. She’d always been brisk in her dressing of me, shampooing, shoelace tying. Irritated that she had to hit pause on her life and care for me. I’d learned to be clean early on so she wouldn’t have to pick up after me. It was not a surprise that my apartment now was an explosion of clothes and kitsch, a floral chaos. It was the freedom of living without her rules.
Lying back, I let him take me out of his clothes I’d been wearing. I was still cold, the deep to the bone painful cold. “Do you have kids?” I asked.
That seemed to actually shock him. He jerked a little pulling my shirt up. “Do I look like a father?”
“What does a father look like? But you do know how to take care of me.”
“My feelings for you aren’t paternal.”
A shiver rolled over me. “What are they?”
He smiled and it was intensely sexy and more than a little disturbing. “They’re distracting. They’re hot and dirty and alive. They’re possessive.” His hand covered my breast and he rubbed his palm over my nipple. “To answer your question, because I’m feeling generous, no, I don’t have kids. I’ve never met a woman who was enough of a match for me.”
It was sick and twisted, but I wanted him to say that he had now. That I was the match for him. It would be, in a sense, the ultimate acceptance, to be loved by the solitary man in the woods. I already had a bizarre sense of pride that he didn’t want me to leave. That he was holding me captive. Not every woman would be kept by him, I was sure of it.
Yet at the same time I wanted him to be forced out into the cold the way I had been. I wanted him to understand that he couldn’t just keep me against his will. That he couldn’t break me that way. But then I wondered if he even needed or wanted to break me. I had no idea what his ultimate goal was.
“What do you see happening between us? Like in six months?” I as
ked, genuinely curious. Did he want to keep me forever? Or just for the winter? If he tired of me, I wanted to know that he would take me to town and I could regain my life. I needed that reassurance.
Seeking reassurance from the man holding you hostage is stupid. I should have known that.
He made a face. “Oh, my God. Is this where we discuss our relationship and where is this going and what exactly we mean to each other? Blah, blah, fucking blah. This is what is happening between us- you obey me. That’s it. The whole story.”
I nodded. “Okay. When you go to town can you get me a book please? I need something to do.”
“You’re relentless. And not at all afraid of me, are you?”
“Is that what you want, me afraid of you?” I was sleepy, head still foggy. I put my hand over his, stroking the back of his knuckles.
“No. That’s not what I want.”
I stopped asking questions, but I did know what he wanted. He was clear about it and he was right- it wasn’t complicated. He wanted me obedient. A companion on his terms. I would give him what he wanted, and maybe, when the time was right, he would give me what I wanted.
Or I could take what I wanted.
The plan was forming in the back of my frozen brain. It was a very cracked out idea, one that I never would have considered a month ago. Yet, it all suddenly made perfect sense. I could have what I wanted.
Most of my life, I’d been passive, reacting to what others did. Never initiating action. But when I chose to be manipulative, I was good at it. It was the innocent eyes. That’s what Dean had told me, anyway.
“Can you show me how to use the chainsaw?” I asked. “I can cut wood while you’re out hunting. I want to be useful.”