“She is,” she answered, and marched out of the room.
Connor finally turned to address me. “I apologize if my sister was hard on you.”
I frowned. “Natalia is your sister?”
He nodded. “Half, actually. But that rarely matters when you share a mother. It’s sharing a father that makes it different.”
“She wasn’t hard on me,” I said after a beat. “Though I’m not sure I’m as athletically trained as she is. I had trouble keeping up.”
He laughed. “No one is as athletically trained as she is. She was almost an Olympic gymnast at sixteen, then decided the event trivialized the sport. She’s a tough girl to get ahead of. On anything.”
“I can see that.”
I grabbed the bottle of water Natalia had given me an hour ago and drained the rest of it, crumpling the plastic when I was finished. “So now what?” Inside, I prayed the training was over. I didn’t have anything left to give.
“Now you eat something and go to bed, and you do it again tomorrow.”
“Until when?” I called, following him out of the gym. “When are you going to tell me what I’m doing here? What’s the point of all this?”
“When you’re ready,” he answered, and disappeared down the hall.
* * *
Connor wasn’t lying about the training. I trained with Natalia every day. Occasionally, I’d get the afternoon off, but that was only to go to the lab to have more blood work done, more physical exams. I had a few mental evaluations too, but no one told me whether or not I passed.
I still hadn’t had the chance to escape into town to find a phone to call Anna. Her absence in my life was starting to get to me. Some mornings, I’d wake up, and the first thing I did was hurry to my bedroom door, planning to go see Anna, or make her something for breakfast. And then I’d remember. She wasn’t here. She was a hundred miles away in that crappy house, with our crappy parents, alone.
I needed to talk to her soon.
I saw Sam twice more the next week but only briefly. Once in the lounge, just as I finished my breakfast, and again in the lab. Sometimes, I’d knock on his door to see if he wanted to watch TV or work out together, but he never answered, and the door was always locked.
I started to wonder if he was a ghost, if maybe his room was always empty. I began treating it like a game, like a child checking his father’s desk drawer to see if it was unlocked, to see what he hid inside.
Before breakfast, I knocked. After dinner, I knocked. I did this for a few days until he finally answered.
At first, I was so shocked to actually see him inside, to have the door actually open, that I just stood there staring at my raised knocking first as if I were dreaming. Or hallucinating.
“Hi,” I said, and let my arm drop. “You answered.”
He smirked. “Well, you wouldn’t stop knocking. I got tired of hearing it.”
“Sorry. It’s just…”
I’m lonely.
I didn’t say it out loud, but I wanted to. I rarely talked to anyone other than Connor and Natalia. I still hadn’t seen that goddamn Fox since the day he brought me here. He was always out or gone or unavailable.
It was painful for me to admit to anyone that I needed them, but I figured if anyone could relate to the loneliness that came with living here, it was Sam.
“I’m going crazy here,” I said, and looked at the floor, then back up again. “Come eat breakfast with me?”
He thought for a second and then nodded. “Lead the way.”
Breakfast was cheesy eggs, bacon, and oranges. Sam told me about his first days in the building. He told me about his training sessions with Natalia and how she kicked his ass a lot. We laughed about the way she shook her head when we screwed up and made this tsk-tsk sound, as if she couldn’t bear to waste words on our incompetence.
After that day, Sam and I had breakfast every morning. He told me a lot about his mom and his dad. About where he grew up. He told me about his dream of owning a ranch in Montana someday.
But the morning ritual lasted only a week. The following Monday, Sam wasn’t there. And his absence in my routine had an effect through the rest of the day. I got through my training with Natalia by some miracle or act of God, but Connor noticed right away that something was wrong.
“You seem off today,” he said as he walked with me after the training session. He’d been sitting in on them a lot, and I always worked harder when he was present. Today, I could only muster the bare minimum.
“I’m restless,” I answered. It wasn’t exactly the truth but close enough. “I’m stuck in this building with no one to talk to, nowhere to go. I’m starting to feel like a caged animal. And…” I trailed off.
I miss my sister, I thought.
When I agreed to come here, the Fox hadn’t said anything about cutting off communication with Anna. I’d never gone a day without her before now.
When we reached the hallway of my floor, Connor pulled me to a stop outside my room. I looked down at his hand, his fingers gently wrapped around my wrist, thumb touching index finger. He had nice hands. His fingers weren’t too thin or knobby. The veins running through his knuckles were just present enough to be sexy in a way that was decidedly male.
He stepped closer to me, and my stomach pinwheeled. I pressed into the wall, and he mirrored my movements, putting only an inch or two of space between us.
I swallowed the rush of excitement trying to burst out of my throat, tried to put out the heat climbing up my legs.
If this was some kind of game he was playing, I had the feeling he’d set his trap and I was already caught in it.
He leaned into me and let go of my wrist, running his hand up my waist, sending gooseflesh down my spine. I nearly vibrated beneath his touch.
“Don’t give up, please. I know it’s rough,” he said.
“I feel like I don’t belong here.” I glanced away. “Like I’m not cut out for this.”
“You are.”
I buried the urge to snort, knowing how extremely unattractive it would be in this moment. “I don’t know about that. Your sister thinks I’m weak.”
“Natalia thinks everyone is weak.”
I met his eyes again. “What do you think?”
He pushed a stray lock of hair away from my face and stared at it, trapped in his fingers, for too long. “I think this place needs someone like you.”
He took a step back, smoothed down his oxford shirt and started for the elevator. As I watched him go, I repeated his last words in my head, over and over again until they sounded a lot like, I think I need someone like you.
* * *
Dinner that night was spaghetti. My favorite. But the table had only one place setting again, and Sam didn’t answer his door when I knocked.
I went back to the lounge, got comfortable at the table, and dug into the food. The spaghetti was delicious. The sauce was definitely homemade and had all the right herbs and spices.
I finished it off in record time, downed the small cup of applesauce they’d given me, and turned lastly to the lump of tinfoil on my tray. It looked like garlic bread, but when I unfolded the foil, I found a cell phone inside and a note tied to it.
My chest felt light and fuzzy with something close to gratitude. Something I hadn’t felt in a long time.
I undid the twine, and unfolded the note. Call Anna, it said, and was signed C.
Connor.
I clutched the phone to my chest and smiled.
* * *
I took care of my dinner dishes in a rush and hurried back to my room. I paced the floor, trying to decide if it was safe to call Anna here. No one ever visited my room except for Connor, and he’d been the one to give me the phone, so chances were I wouldn’t get in trouble.
Furthermore, wasn’t Connor my supervisor? If he’d given me permission, then I assumed it was okay.
I dialed our home phone and sat on the edge of the bed as it rang on the other end.
It rang an
d rang.
Pick up, damn it.
Finally, the line clicked open.
“Hello?” came my mother’s voice, small and unsure.
“It’s me. Let me talk to Anna.”
There was a pause, an intake of breath. “Hold on,” she said.
No, How are you doing? or I miss you. Par for the course with my mother. Showing emotion was like pulling teeth for her.
A moment later, little Anna’s voice filled the line, and I squeezed my eyes shut before I started bawling.
“Hey, bird,” I said. “It’s me.”
“Dani!” she said. “I miss you!”
“I miss you, too. I’m sorry I haven’t called, but there aren’t many phones here.”
“It’s okay,” she said quietly, but I could tell it wasn’t. Anna had a knack for downplaying how she really felt. Learned most likely from our mother. Maybe we were both more like her than I wanted to admit.
“How are you?” I asked.
I could almost hear her shrug through the phone. “I’m okay. I’ve been drawing you pictures since you left. I told Mom I wanted to mail them to you, but she said she doesn’t know the address.”
“That’s okay. Save them for when I get home, and then I’ll have a ton to look at all at once.”
She giggled. “Okay. When are you coming home?”
I looked out the expanse of windows at Lake Michigan beyond. It was called a lake, but it didn’t look like one. It looked as endless as an ocean. “I don’t know. Hopefully soon.”
“Are you having fun?”
I grunted. “Not really. I’m tired. A lot. And it’s boring here without you.”
“It’s boring here, too.”
“Is Mom being nice to you?”
“Yeah” was all she said.
I wanted to press, I wanted her to elaborate, but knew it wasn’t right to ask. Anna didn’t really know how terrible our parents were, or maybe she did in an abstract sense, and I wanted to keep it that way. The more I asked, the more suspicious she’d become. And I didn’t want her frightened while I was away.
“Well, I should probably get going. I don’t get long on the phone. I’ll call you again soon.”
“Tomorrow?” she asked.
“I’ll try. I love you, bird.”
She laughed through the line. “I love you, too.”
When we hung up, I lay back on the bed for a long time, trying not to cry.
* * *
I decided to skip breakfast the next morning. Sam wasn’t there again, and he wasn’t answering his door, and that left me annoyed and sad and miserable. I just wanted to start training to get my mind off everything.
I went straight into the elevator, jamming my finger into the button for below-ground level two.
When I arrived, I stepped into the hall just as a door on the left opened and a young man stepped out.
I slowed.
He froze.
Immediately, I recognized the look on his face. Caught.
He shut the door behind him and walked toward me, determined. Each step calculated, precise.
He was taller than me by several inches, bigger too. Nothing at all like Sam. This guy was cut. Veins ran through his knuckles, up his forearms, bulging beneath the skin. Strips of muscle stood out from each other like braided rope before turning into defined biceps, before disappearing beneath the sleeves of his black T-shirt.
I caught myself daydreaming about what he looked like without that shirt, maybe without the jeans, too, and quickly banished the thought.
The boy gazed down at me as he passed, eyes guarded and wild, and I looked up at him, unable to tear my eyes away.
The air crackled with awareness, as if he knew exactly who I was, as if he held the secrets to all of the things I’d been dying to know.
He stepped inside the still-open elevator, and I didn’t realize until he looked back at me that I’d come to a complete stop in the middle of the hallway to stare.
“Who are you?” I asked, even though several yards stretched between us now.
He leaned into the back wall of the elevator, hands propped on the edges of the railing as the doors slid closed.
* * *
Natalia kicked my ass in training that day. She knew right away I was distracted.
“What is going on with you?” she asked after she’d body-slammed me to the floor for the third time.
“Nothing,” I answered.
“Then stop doing nothing and do something.”
She caught me with an uppercut ten minutes later and laid me out flat.
“Shit,” I mumbled as I blinked back the fuzziness in my vision.
She softened, but only for a second, and offered me her hand. I took it, slogging to my feet. Natalia gave me a quick break after that, but experience had taught me it would only be enough time to wipe the sweat from my forehead and grab a drink of water.
After I’d done both, I came back to the center of the gym and stripped off my damp T-shirt. I tossed it aside.
“Have you seen Sam lately?” I asked casually, acting as though I didn’t care about the answer.
Natalia set her hands on her hips and cocked her head to the side. “Sam? Is that what’s bothering you?”
I shrugged. Don’t say anymore, I chided myself. Natalia had that look on her face, like she was about to devour me for supper.
“You’re letting a boy distract you?”
“No. I just haven’t seen him in a while, and I was wondering—”
“If you let your attachments get in the way of your focus, then you’ve already failed.”
“Excuse me?”
“You heard me.” She came within one foot of me and put her hands on either side of my face. It was an extremely intimate gesture for anyone. For Natalia, it was downright bizarre. “Listen to me. You put your faith in you and only you. You trust yourself and no one else. Or you will be dead before you know it.”
“Dead?” I echoed.
That seemed like an exaggeration.
“Yes,” she said. “Dead.”
She stepped back, withdrawing her hands from my face. “Now, are you ready to work?”
I nodded, trying to shake off the unease, to clear my head. “Yes. Yes. I’m ready.”
“Good.” And then she swung.
* * *
Several hours later, I physically felt a little bit better. I was able to fend off a lot of Natalia’s attacks, and even got in a few good punches of my own. But I was exhausted. And still unsettled by what she’d said.
Near the end of our session, I deflected a right jab, but Natalia caught me with a left punch to the side, and I doubled over. She only gave me ten seconds before hoisting me up by the collar of my shirt. She shoved me into the wall and brought a knee up for a side blow.
I crossed my arms at the last second, using them as a shield. As she rebalanced, I brought my arms up through hers, forcing her to lose her grip, giving me an opening. I locked my hands behind her neck and pushed her down while I brought my knee up.
The air rushed from her lungs when I slammed her in the chest.
When I let her go, she stumbled to the floor, gasping for breath.
Someone clapped from the doorway.
It was Connor.
Natalia climbed to her feet and scowled at her brother. “Stop clapping like she’s fucking Girl Wonder. You’ll give her an ego.”
Connor stopped clapping, but the amused smile was still plastered on his face.
Since anything I said or did could be directly quantified by the number of bruises Natalia would give me tomorrow, I said and did nothing. Even though I wanted to smile right along with Connor.
Natalia scowled harder, if that was even possible, and shoulder-slammed Connor as she stormed out.
Connor laughed, and I imagined Natalia’s blood boiling as the sound followed her all the way to the elevators.
“She’s going to punish me tomorrow, you know,” I said.
Connor came
closer and handed me a clean towel. “No, she won’t.”
I frowned. “Then you don’t know your sister very well.”
He let me dry off for a second before explaining why he’d come. “I have a surprise for you. Head up to your room and clean up. I’ll come get you in a bit.”
“Another surprise?” I asked.
He licked his lips, drawing my attention to them, and I had a flicker of a thought as to what it would feel like to kiss him.
Damn it.
“Thank you for…you know,” I said once I’d gotten control of myself. He nodded, clearly knowing I meant the cell phone.
“So, what kind of surprise is this?” I asked.
“The good kind.”
“Good is subjective.”
He took another step, officially crossing into personal-bubble territory. “We’re going out, you and I.”
“Where?”
He smiled again. “You’ll see.”
* * *
I took extra long in the shower, hoping Connor wouldn’t show for a few more hours so I could maybe take a nap. Unfortunately, when I came out of the bathroom only wrapped in a towel, he was sitting on my couch.
“What the hell?” I said, instinctively using an arm to shield myself, even though the towel did the job.
“I told you I’d come for you,” he said matter-of-factly. “And here I am. I almost came in there to fetch you. You were taking forever.”
Whereas he’d been in good humor when I left him an hour ago, now he seemed prickly and impatient.
“Sorry.” I tightened the towel around my body. Connor’s eyes didn’t stray from my face, and I found myself annoyed about it.
“Get dressed,” he said. “And hurry.”
In the bathroom, I dried and dressed in record time and twisted my hair up in a loose bun. It wasn’t great, but it would have to do.
When I returned to the bedroom, Connor stood at the wall of windows, staring at Lake Michigan beyond. Today, the water was black as death, the sky heavy and gray.
I joined him at the windows, but he didn’t look away. “Our mother drowned in Lake Michigan,” he said quietly.
The admission caught me completely off guard, and I blurted, “Oh.” Then, “I’m sorry.”
Forged: An Altered Series Prequel Page 3