by Karina Bliss
“Don’t you get it? No one can relate to my experience. No one can understand what it was like.”
“Try me.”
“You want to understand,” he sneered. “You want to know what it was like? Really?”
She nodded, her gaze unwavering on his.
“Then come with me.” Catching her hand, he half pulled, half marched her outside, across the damp grass. A light drizzle fell so softly Lee only registered it on the back of his neck, his cheeks above the stubble. It was very dark. No moon could get through these clouds. Only the yellow light through a neighbor’s curtains illuminated the uneven slabs leading to the garden shed.
At the door he paused. “Stop me anytime you like.”
Jules shook her head, her face an indistinct blur.
“You think I’ll go easy on you,” he said harshly. “You think this is a game?”
“No.”
The aluminum door rattled as Lee jerked it open, steered Jules inside and slammed it shut with a clang of finality. “Magnify that sound,” he told her shadow. “Imagine an echo. Every day you’ll hear it when the guard opens or closes it. Maybe once, maybe half a dozen times depending on how bored they are—or how angry.”
There weren’t any windows in the shed, that’s why he’d chosen it. After long hours spent working in the garden, he knew where every tool was. And he had long practice existing in the dark. He felt for and found the bike chain and looped it around her ankles. “Is that okay?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Then it’s too loose.” He yanked it tighter, felt her wince. “Stop is your safe word,” he barked. “Say it and we’re done here.”
“I want to understand.” He could hear the determination in her voice but also the fear... Yes...there was fear.
He threaded the ends of the chain through the exposed wooden framework of the shed and spun the combination lock. Some rags lay on the workbench; he used one as a blindfold. “Every time a guard enters, it goes on. Put it on.” She did, he checked and tightened it. “If they think you’re peeking...”
Lee slammed his palm against the aluminum siding beside her and Jules gasped. “They would use the butt of a Kalashnikov against my throat, pushing until I choked.” He laid his forearm against her neck and exerted the lightest of pressure, felt her swallow hard. “One liked to stroke my face with it.” Picking up a garden trowel, he laid the cold metal against her cheek.
“Blindfolded, you can’t prepare for the blows, you can only wait for them. Here.” His hand tapped her thigh. She jumped. “Here.” He rested a fist against her belly. “Or their particular favorite, here.” He flattened his palm over her pubic bone, struggling not to cry.
“And then they leave,” he said, “taking the light with them. And you know what happens after that?”
She cleared her throat. “What?”
“Nothing. You take off the blindfold but it doesn’t matter because you can’t see anything anyway. Go ahead.” The bike chain rattled. “You strain to accustom your eyes to the dark. On either side of you, just within reach, are a bucket and a bottle. The bucket’s your toilet, the bottle holds your drinking water. Rolled up against the wall behind you is a blanket, thin, flea-ridden, it smells of decay and mold and the last man trapped here. If you had light you’d probably see bloodstains.
“You smell the dirt, the damp, the sourness of your body, your excrement in the bucket. You protect your food because in the dark, mice, cockroaches and ants will take it. Sometimes you rattle your chains, simply to remind yourself you still exist. You do squats, push-ups and sit-ups because the shackles limit your movement to a few feet.
“You have no control over any aspect of your life...when you’re fed, taken for a shower, even over light or dark. You’re helpless. Every time the door crashes open, you don’t know if you’ll be killed or fed, exercised or beaten.”
He heard her choke back a sob in the dark.
“You have a safe word. Use it.”
“No,” she whispered.
He paused before continuing. “When they let you have light you mark time by how long it takes your bruises to heal. Your days become cycles of interminable boredom punctuated by intermittent terror. Your clothes rot on you. And you wait. You wait for your unit to burst through the door like the bloody cavalry. Even though you believe your brothers are dead...the SAS is a family that won’t leave a man behind.”
He heard another muffled sob from her but ignored it, caught up in telling the story.
“You thought you had inner resources...instead you’re at the mercy of mood swings, delusions and hallucinations. You’re unable to separate past from present, fiction from reality.”
Lee started to sweat. “You start to welcome the beatings because they mean human contact. Eventually even the lies you comfort yourself with...that someone’s coming for you...don’t work anymore.”
Jules moved and the chain rattled, startling him. She didn’t say anything.
“You consider taking your own life,” he said hoarsely. “Except you haven’t got the means. Until you realize that you do and you stop eating. They try to force you, but they can’t make you, not effectively.”
He started breathing hard, his lungs full of the earthy dankness of the shed. “Dying in the dark you hear a voice say that giving up isn’t an option. And it gets louder, more annoying. It won’t stop. Finally you...you start eating again. You’ve made a choice, to try to live. You expect to feel at peace now that you’ve come to a decision, but all you’ve done is open yourself to pain again, the pain of hope.”
He scrambled to find a point of reference in the dark, which closed around him in a dense suffocating mass. His skin clammy, his breathing shallow, Lee started to spiral into panic.
A touch on his cheek made him jump. Fingertips, feminine and reassuring, stroked his face. His breathing eased. Jules. He closed his hand convulsively over hers, holding it against his clenched jaw for one weak moment before releasing it.
“The Americans burst in and you think you’re hallucinating, that this is another dream. And then you come home and people call you a hero and all you did was survive. Even when you didn’t want to.”
The bike chain rattled as she drew him closer and then her arms closed around him, like two tight bands, only they didn’t feel constricting; they felt like the only things holding him together, holding him upright. With a shuddering breath, he bowed his head and buried his nose in her fragrant hair.
“It was your voice, Jules,” he whispered.
Her soft lips trailed across his cheek and pressed a kiss against the corner of his mouth. At some point she’d taken off the blindfold. He turned his head, their lips touched, blood warm. Her hands closed around his biceps, holding him there. As though he had the power or will to move away.
The kiss became charged with desire. Lee needed to lose himself in her, to turn the dark into their shared refuge. How many times had he tried to summon her in captivity? How many times had he failed?
Deeper and deeper they spiraled into the kiss, until she was everything—her arms tight around his neck, her body with its narrow waist and flare of hips pressed the length of his, her scent in his nostrils.
They broke apart for a breath, then kissed again. He slid his hand up to cup her breast, found the peak through her thin robe. She wanted him. It was in her breathing, in the restlessness of her fingers, in the fervency of her response. “Jules.”
“Don’t stop.”
/>
He slid his palms over the silk of her housecoat, tugging the tie free, pushing it off her shoulders. He fumbled with the buttons of her pajama top, baring her skin, tasting each nipple.
Her arms were tangled in her sleeves. With a murmur of impatience she wiggled free, careless of where her clothing fell. Her hand worked at his zipper, exposing him to the cool air and her warm grasp.
“Jules.” He pulled down her shorts and found her wet, swollen and ready.
“Now,” she whispered hoarsely.
Lee lifted her, but the shackle around her ankle caught against something and she was stuck.
Reality returned so fast he felt dizzy.
What had he done? “You’re chained,” he said numbly. Hunkering down, he tried to figure out the lock, but his fingers were shaking. “What’s the combination?”
“Four, nine, eight, six. But it’s okay.” He felt her touch his hair. “I’m okay.”
Still in a blind panic, he wrestled with the numbers.
“Let me.” Jules crouched beside him and took over.
Lee dropped his face in his hands. “What the hell was I thinking?”
“Lee, I’m okay...really.”
“This screwed-up shit is mine to deal with, not yours.” He yanked open the shed door to give her more light and saw the glint of chain around her ankle. Shame overwhelmed him.
“You don’t deserve this,” he rasped. “I’m so sorry.” He watched her line up the rotating numbers and then helped her pull the length of chain apart.
“Nothing happened here without my consent.” Her compassionate gaze lifted. “Nothing.”
It was the last straw. “I’m sorry,” he blurted again, and stumbled out of the shed at a run.
* * *
HE NEEDED HER.
It was all Jules could think of as she fumbled to unwind the chain from her ankle. Impatiently she did up her pajamas and then felt around the floor for her robe. It took more precious seconds to find the tie but she didn’t want to spook Lee further by appearing mistreated. Judging by his stricken expression and the way he’d run, he was feeling guilty enough.
She tripped on the uneven path in her haste to reach the house, falling heavily on her hands and knees and scraping her left palm. Jules swore.
The neighbor’s porch light flicked on before she could scramble to her feet. “Who’s out there?” quavered the older woman.
“It’s okay, Rosemary, it’s only me.”
“Jules, you gave me such a fright. Are you all right?” Brandishing a can of hair spray in one hand, and a leprechaun doorstop in the other, her elderly neighbor peered over from her porch in her nightgown. “I’ve been hearing bangs and rattles to wake the dead.”
“I was looking for something in the shed and tripped.” Getting to her feet, Jules brushed off her palms, ignoring the sting. “I’m sorry I woke you.”
“Well, I’m relieved I won’t have to fight anyone tonight.” Rosemary replaced the leprechaun on the doorstep and straightened, one hand on her heart. “Ooh, I’ve gone all light-headed. Silly old woman getting frightened like that. I must stop watching so much CSI.”
Jules looked anxiously toward her own porch and then stepped through the low hedge between the two properties. “Let me help you inside.”
“Sweetie, your hand is bleeding,” Rosemary exclaimed as Jules came into the light.
“It’s nothing.”
“And you’ve smeared blood on your pretty robe.”
“It’ll wash out.” Jules settled Rosemary on her La-Z-Boy rocker in her living room. “How are you doing?”
“Better...perhaps a glass of water?”
Jules hurried into the kitchen and filled a glass, craning for a glimpse of Lee through the window. The lights were still on but she couldn’t see his silhouette anywhere. She hurried back to Rosemary. “Here you go.”
“Thank you. You go home and attend to that nasty graze.” A clock on the mantel chimed. “Goodness, I didn’t realize it was so late. Midnight!”
Jules caught the sounds of the Pink Lady’s engine firing. “Good night.” Rushing to Rosemary’s front door, she eyed the dead bolt, then swiveled and raced through the house, past the startled woman and out the back door again. Hurdling the hedge, she tore down the side of her house and out to the curb, by which time the sound of the Caddy had faded to a distant rumble.
He was driving too fast.
She stared down the empty street.
Maybe he’d left a note. Jogging into the house, Jules finally found one on her pillow in the spare room.
“I can’t deal with this right now. I’m deeply sorry, Jules.” He’d underscored deeply. “You don’t deserve this.”
“Don’t tell me what I deserve!” No point phoning his cell—he wouldn’t answer it until he calmed down. Constitutionally incapable of doing nothing, she called and left a message anyway.
Where would he go? If it was Nate and Claire’s she could try phoning him in forty minutes. And if he didn’t answer his cell, she’d try their landline. Except if he wasn’t there, she’d only worry them.
Maybe he’d gone to a motel. Maybe he’d already arrived. She grabbed her cell again.
“The mobile device you are calling is either turned off or outside the coverage area.”
“Don’t do this to me!” Jules sat down and tried to think but found herself crying instead, her emotions a cathartic soup after what he’d shared. Picking up her cell she sent a text. Do NOT feel guilty. No, she needed to evoke a response. Deleting it, she sobbed and tried again. I won’t sleep unless I know you’re safe.
Tears streaming down her face, she lowered her cell and stared at the blood on her robe.
Wiping her nose on her sleeve—what the hell, it was ruined anyway—she pulled herself together and rose to doctor her graze with antiseptic and a bandage. Then she changed into a clean pair of pajamas and hunted for one of Lee’s sweatshirts to pull over it.
Crawling into bed, Jules laid her head in the indent he’d left in the pillow. Staring up at the ceiling, she prepared herself for a long night.
The beep of an incoming text sent her scrambling to the nightstand for her cell.
One word. Safe.
She let out a shaky breath. It was a start.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
JULES WAS IN the garden hanging out the washing when she heard Lee arrive home the next morning at eight.
Her pulse picked up and she took a couple of deep breaths to compose herself before she called, “I’m outside.”
She’d already decided that she wasn’t going to make a fuss so she returned to hanging out the bedsheets. She would remain calm and follow Lee’s lead. It was the perfect day for drying laundry, sunny and warm with a sporadic breeze that wafted the white cotton sheets.
His shadow loomed behind the sheet. “I apologize for what I put you through last night.”
So they were starting formally then.
Picking up a blue plastic peg, Jules finished attaching a pillowcase. “As I said last night, you have nothing to apologize for.”
The clothesline was an old-fashioned one, a four-sided umbrella shape. She swung it round and he came into view. He didn’t look as though he’d slept, either. His stubble was almost a beard and his green eyes were bloodshot, but he was still the most beautiful sight in the world. “Where did you go?”
“I drove mostly...went out to the coast and sat on a beach. Foun
d a twenty-four-hour McDonald’s.” His mouth twisted. “The usual haunts of the angst-ridden.”
If he could find a sense of humor, they were going to be okay. She smiled but he didn’t smile back, instead bending to pick up a wet sheet from the clothes basket between them.
“I managed to clarify a lot of things.” Pegging one corner of the sheet to the line, he added awkwardly, “If that’s any consolation for scaring you half to death.”
“I’m glad,” she said simply. “But I was never afraid of you. Only...” Hurting with you. Words couldn’t express her sadness for what he’d suffered.
“Yeah,” Lee said gruffly and disappeared behind the sheet as he pegged the second corner.
“No one could come through what you did unscathed, but you’ll eventually recover because you’re...” Jules hunted for the right word.
“A bullheaded arrogant jerk?” his shadow supplied.
Jules swung the clothesline another turn. “Irrepressible.” She tried to smile again, but he was looking beyond her. Turning to follow his gaze, she saw only the garden and the plum tree, both heavy with morning dew.
“I was once,” he said. “And I hope to be again.” His gaze returned to her. “This isn’t going to work, Jules—not yet.”
His tone was so even it took a moment for her to realize what he was saying.
She dropped the peg she was holding. “You want to break off the engagement?”
“Short-term. I’m not stable yet and I won’t let you share the burden of my recovery.”
“You’re not a burden, you’re my love. And that’s my choice to make.”
It was amazing how steady her voice sounded considering the sky had just fallen in.
“You must be having second thoughts after what happened last night.”
“None. You would never hurt me.”
“How can you know that when I don’t?” Picking up her hand, he examined the graze on her palm. “I hurt you last night,” he said harshly.