“I will stay here until we figure out a new plan then,” I say, my voice resolved despite the fact that I feel like I’m going to faint at any moment. I slump against a palm tree and look at him. His face is a mixture of confusion and anger. He has that face a lot with me, like he doesn’t know why I’m being nice. So I continue speaking. “I’d kill myself trying to row that boat right now. Don’t be flattered. I don’t care about you that much. We need a better plan.”
And with that I begin my slow trek back up the stone staircase, to the tower of gloom.
He follows.
F O U R T E E N
Nina—Present
Isla Culebrita, Puerto Rico
BEN SHUTS THE door behind us. The sun is starting to set. Somehow, the dread that hasn’t left me for almost four days is gone. Now I’m just exhausted. My fever seems to have broken, and my stomach growls angrily as I start the walk up the stairs to the tower.
“You don’t have to sleep up there,” Ben says, his voice hushed with shame. He closes his eyes. We’re both seconds away from collapsing from exhaustion.
“I’m fine,” I say, giving him a tepid smile.
“No, really. I insist. Sleep in the bed. I’ll sleep out here.”
The thought of a bed—a real bed—is too tempting to pass up. “Okay. Thank you.” I come down the stairs, suddenly aware of how much I must smell. Sweat, ocean water, dried blood, bad breath… a mix of gross things. “Can I…” I trail off. I close my eyes and lean against the stone wall. I need sleep, but first I need to bathe.
He seems to read my mind. “There are fresh towels in the wardrobe. I only have one toothbrush, but you can use it if you want.”
“Okay.” I walk past him and into the bedroom. “I’ll just be a few minutes. Then you can get your stuff…” It feels wrong, like I’m kicking him out. Then again, he kidnapped me, so I think we’re even now.
“Sure.” He looks down at his shoes and sticks his hands in his pockets. We’re both sandy and wet. He walks away, entering through a door I never noticed until now. It clicks behind him. He must be going down to the cellar.
He left me alone. He must trust that I won’t try and run away again. Either that or he doesn’t care anymore.
I close his bedroom door and look around. I grab a fresh towel, and a small bottle of shampoo. The thought of shampooing my hair seems so luxurious. I open the door to the bathroom. It’s a nice bathroom, now that I have the wherewithal to look at it objectively. It consists of stone floors and walls, a vintage sink and medicine cabinet, a claw foot tub, and a toilet. I hang the towel on the hook behind the door and let the ice water from earlier drain out. I watch as it quickly swirls down the drain. I refill it with tepid water—not too hot, not too cold. Then I walk to the medicine cabinet.
I see mouthwash, a toothbrush, toothpaste, floss, shaving cream, and a razor. Well, he certainly hasn’t touched those last two things. He’s going for the caveman look, apparently. I pick up the container of floss and begin to floss my teeth. Next, I take the tube of toothpaste and put some on my finger. He offered his toothbrush, but I’m not at that level of comfort yet. I rub the toothpaste on all of my teeth, front and back, until they feel semi-clean. Next, mouthwash.
After I’m done, I step out of my filthy clothes. My white blouse is now streaked with brown. My pink bra is now mauve—dirt and sand ruining it. My matching underwear is still the only thing that’s relatively unscathed. My dark grey pants are baggy and weighed down by the ocean water. I throw it all away. I’d rather be naked than wear them again.
I step into the tub. The warm water feels heavenly. I let out a quiet moan as I submerge. An hour later, after I’m done bathing, washing my hair, and relaxing in warm, clean water, I step out and wrap myself in the towel I grabbed earlier. It may not be the plush towels that I’m used to from the St. Regis, but at least it’s clean, unlike my clothes.
I pad over to the door and enter Ben’s bedroom. I decide to borrow some of his clothes, as there’s no way in hell I’m wearing my old, filthy work clothes. I rifle through the chest of drawers and I pluck out some dark blue boxers and a white t-shirt. I’d prefer to be wearing a bra—these twins need to be strapped in—but beggars can’t be choosers. I walk back into the bathroom and use his comb to comb my hair. I even sneak a bit of deodorant. Looking at myself, the bruised ring around my neck is as present as ever, if not worse today. The whole area around the ring is yellowed. My face is shining, a product of actually being washed for the first time in days. My arms and legs are still speckled with bruises.
When I’m finished, I walk back out into the main room. Ben is sitting on the steps outside, admiring the stars.
“Hey,” I say, sitting down next to him. He nods, acknowledging my presence. He has a tray of food, and he’s eating as he watches the stars. It feels odd to be acting like friends. A weird, calming peacefulness overtakes me as I feed myself for the first time in days. I can’t handle much food, but a roll of bread and a small bowl of soup satisfies me. I gulp down the entire bottle of water.
“I liked the pink bra,” he says, chewing.
I roll my eyes. “I threw it away. Such a shame, too. I spent a lot of money on that matching set.”
“Well, I see you’ve made yourself at home,” he says sternly. He sniffs the air and then looks at me. “Are you wearing my deodorant?”
I shrug. “It’s humid here,” I answer, as if we’re old friends getting a drink at a bar. I shake my head and laugh at the situation. “This is so fucked up.”
Ben doesn’t say anything for a long time. I sit back on my elbows and look up. It’s a really beautiful night. The moon is full, and it gives the entire beach this magical, silver light. The stars and sky have so much clarity, it almost hurts to look at them. The ocean is still, and it only reflects the moonlight. The fortress that we’re on just adds to the experience, with the grey stone and historical feel. I see Ben lean down on his elbows too. Studying him, I see a man who’s been through hell and back—forehead creases where smooth, youthful skin should be. A permanent scowl etched onto his lips. A tenseness in the way he walks, sits, talks… like he can’t let go of the past.
“Do you remember Sera Andrews?” he asks quietly. I’m stunned to hear him talk about our past. It feels so… normal.
I nod. “She was a bitch in elementary school, but then her parents died and she became this really nice person. We were actually friends in high school.”
Ben grimaces. “She was so mean to me in public, but did I ever tell you that she used to bring me food some afternoons? Before my dad got home from work? Cookies, chocolate, gummy bears… even soda sometimes. She was so nice to me.”
“Really? I never knew that.”
He nods. “And then her parents died, and I snuck over to her house two days before my accident. I brought her junk food, soda, and some of my toys.”
I look at Ben now, and I try to imagine the Ben from my childhood. He would do that. He never held grudges, he never burnt bridges. “I always thought you guys hated each other,” I whisper.
He shakes his head and laughs, a quiet, thoughtful laugh. “No. I actually really liked her. I guess it goes to show that everyone is fighting their own battles. It taught me not to judge people, and to instead invite them out for a cup of coffee or something,” he muses.
I smile. “Aside from the murdering and kidnapping, I’d say that you’re a decent person,” I joke.
His smile drops. “I’m not a good person, Nina,” he says seriously.
“You could’ve killed me, and you didn’t. You couldn’t. That says a lot.”
He pushes himself back up into a sitting position and places his face in his hands, craning his neck to look at me. I’m taken aback at how striking he is now. Maybe this whole Stockholm Syndrome is working, or maybe I’m just peeling the layers off him to try and see the real Benjamin Adler.
“I hurt you,” he says quietly, eyeing my neck. “The one person I promised myself that I would ne
ver hurt.”
I swallow the lump in my throat. It’s amazing how seventeen years apart suddenly disappears—how everything in the last four days has unexpectedly and shockingly dropped away. Now we’re just Ben and Nina, two friends who spent too much time away from each other. In a way, I think my body recognizes him, because instead of fear, pain, and unease, I’m comfortable sitting here with him. Maybe I shouldn’t be—seventeen years is a long time—but I am.
“It doesn’t matter anymore,” I whisper, looking at him. “I want to say how bizarre it is to be sitting here with you, after all these years, strangers again… but it doesn’t feel that way to me.”
He doesn’t respond right away. Instead, I see his eyes scan my face and then my bare shoulder—the result of a too-large V-neck t-shirt—and something stirs in my belly. I should look away, to break the moment, but I don’t want to. I’m contradicting myself—everything—for him. But why?
“It is strange how normal this feels,” he answers finally, giving me a small, sad smile. “It’s even stranger that you trust me.”
I smirk. “I only trusted two people in my life. And one of them just rose from his grave.”
F I F T E E N
Ben—Present
Isla Culebrita, Puerto Rico
ONCE THE WIND picks up, we head back inside. As I close the door without locking it, I turn to face Nina. She’s so vulnerable, and yet she trusts me. She trusts me enough to stay, even when I gave her the option to leave. Don’t even get me started on how she looks wearing my clothes.
“Let me just grab a blanket and one of the pillows. You can sleep in my room.”
She shakes her head. “I’ll sleep in the tower of gloom. It’s fine.”
I crane my head and look at her. “The what?”
She sighs and points to the stairs. “My prison cell. Whatever you want to call it.”
Her words stir my guilt, and it slowly seeps into me. Ashamed, I feel my cheeks burn. “You don’t have to sleep up there. Come on, inside the bedroom. I’ll use force if I have to.” I expect an angry glare, because after I say it, I realize my joke may not be funny yet. Or ever. But instead, her eyes widen and her coral lips part. I clear my throat loudly. “Kidding.”
She doesn’t say anything as she walks quickly into the bedroom. I grab the thinnest blanket and a pillow. She sits down on the bed, and I have to look away because the position highlights the bruises dotted along her legs.
“Goodnight,” I say, not facing her and walking toward the door to let myself out.
“Ben?”
Her voice is light and tinkling. I resist the urge to turn around. “Yeah?”
“Will you stay? In the room with me?”
I know she’s asking her childhood friend Ben to stay. We used to do that a lot back in the day as kids. I’m sure it brings her comfort knowing that I’m here, even though I recently tried to fucking kill her. But I digress. I know from my training that in moments of distress, one will cling to anything good they can—for her, it just so happens to be me.
I am her savior. I am her captor. It’s irrevocably fucked up.
“Goodnight,” I say again, purposefully not answering her question because I don’t trust myself around her. I don’t know what I expected from her. I didn’t expect to have this reaction around her—the tightening around my heart, the quickening of my pulse…
She’s so strong. Resilient. Passionate. She’s everything I hoped she’d be, and more. Witty, kind, beautiful… it overwhelms me how good she is. After all these years, she’s still the beam of light that I crave. She’s still the thing I need the most. She’s still home. And that scares the living shit out of me, because I’ve repaid her kindness by keeping her captive. How fucked up is that?
I quickly close the door and walk away, up the stairs, and up to the tower of gloom.
If anyone deserves to sleep there, it’s me.
S I X T E E N
Nina—Present
Isla Culebrita, Puerto Rico
THE NEXT FEW days pass in a blur. I wake up every morning, brush my teeth, and wash my face. Ben gives me new clothes to wear. I spend my days walking along the beach, and for the most part, Ben and I ignore each other. We eat dinner together on the stone steps of the lighthouse every night, but we keep our conversations friendly and light. We’re still treading lightly around each other, testing the waters, trying to figure out how time has changed the other person. I go to sleep early most nights, my body still sore and functioning at half-capacity, the bruises changing and evolving but still painful.
I’m still recovering from whatever caused my fever. My body was weakened by dehydration and stress, and I can still feel the effects. Not eating certainly wasn’t helping.
By the seventh day on Isla Culebrita (“The Island of Little Snakes,” according to Ben), I’m beginning to feel normal again. Or, as normal as possible in this screwed up situation. I wake up for the first time without a pounding headache, and my neck bruises have turned green and yellow. It’s still unsettling, but at least I know they’ll be gone soon. Though they do cause Ben to look away whenever he notices them.
Over the last three days, I’ve seen six boats. Three of them were the big, cruise ship kind, coming into the port of San Juan for a day of cultured fun. The other three were smaller, and I had to fight the urge to run out and wave my arms. In retrospect, I understand why I didn’t.
Maybe I prefer to be a martyr, to sacrifice myself for Ben even though he was the one who got us into this situation in the first place. Besides, they probably wouldn’t have been able to see me. The ships are further away then they seem.
Ben says tourists come to the island from Isla Culebra, so we always keep an eye out for that. I have no idea what we would do if that were to happen. I don’t know how I would respond to other people. I don’t trust myself just yet, and I don’t exactly know what I’m protecting myself from.
The small boats remind me of Rachel and Garrett. I miss them the most, considering they were my two best friends in San Juan. My relationship with Garrett is… was complicated. I have no doubts that he’s doing his best to find me, but I’m beginning to fear being found. I’m beginning to dread the day we leave.
I question my sanity every single second that I choose to stay here. I observe Ben as he takes his morning swims in the ocean, his strong arms gracefully gliding through the water. I watch him as he prepares our dinner delicately, as if we’re having a grand fucking feast rather than canned soup and bread, or whatever he manages to catch during the day. I look at myself in the mirror, trying to grasp the woman staring back at me.
I can’t deny it. I’ve changed. Benny’s death marked and scarred my soul, searing it black for years. The death of my father was just as bad. I never knew my mother, so the deep-rooted longing for her isn’t there like it is for the two people I lost. I’ve made and lost friends over the years; boyfriends, neighbors, acquaintances—but having Ben back, even if it’s royally fucked up and even though our situation is less than ideal—it feels as though parts of my soul are mending again, for the first time in seventeen years. It’s odd to admit that, when five or six days ago, I would’ve given anything to leave this damn place.
In the early afternoon of my seventh day, I decide to go swimming. I need the vitamin D, and I need to move my body. I’ve never been a particularly active person. I walk a lot, and I consider my weekly, six-hour hikes through El Yunque, a tropical rainforest located about an hour outside of San Juan, good enough. The rainforest is amazingly beautiful, and in the summer during the hot months, the flora and fauna are breathtakingly bright and diverse.
As I walk down the stone steps, I see Ben doing pushups in the shaded sand a few feet away from the bottom of the staircase. I stop and stare, because I’m a woman and I can’t help it. The muscles in his back are strong and defined. I can see them working, tightening and contracting, and the bulges in his biceps powering him up and down. The sounds he’s making intrigue me the most—a k
ind of manly grunt. Shocked by my reaction, I close my eyes and take a deep breath.
It’s not like this should surprise me. After all, there have been a few instances over the last three or four days that have me doubting my mental health. I can see now why people fall for their captors. An ounce of kindness here, a piece of bread there, a bed, fresh clothes, a shower, shampoo… in a place where I have almost nothing, he gives me everything. It’s almost too easy. But I don’t think that’s what’s happening here. I think a part of me longs for a time when I was happy. It’s not that I’ve been completely unhappy for seventeen years… it’s that I finally feel like I’m reuniting with my other half. With Benny.
I quietly walk down the rest of the stairs, and as I do, Ben stands up and watches me, breathing heavily. His hands are on his hips, and he’s wearing a pair of black basketball shorts and a white t-shirt. His face is streaked with sweat, and his fiery hair is slicked back. I want to ignore it. I want to keep walking—out and into the ocean—and scream under the water about how obtuse I’m being. But our eyes remain locked on each other for much longer than a friendly glance. I feel my whole body burn under his gaze. This is crazy. I’m crazy. Ben’s eyes flick from my eyes to my legs, and back up again. He not-so-subtly licks his lips and gives me a timid smile.
We’re crazy.
I begin to jog away from him. I really wish I had a bra right about now. I jump into the water, running until I can’t anymore, and then I float on my back and close my eyes, letting the current carry me. After a few minutes, I begin to swim laps parallel to shore, back and forth, until my arms feel dead. The clothes are weighing me down. In an effort to streamline my stroke, I take them off—all of them. I tread water and bask in the feel of the cool liquid on my hot limbs. The sun is beating down on me, and for a second, it feels like I’m on vacation rather than stuck on an island for the foreseeable future.
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