Prisoner (Criminals & Captives #1)(82)

I’ve put pillows along the edge of one side of this circular room, and I can curl up here for hours, pausing from the pages of my book to watch squirrels dart between the scrub trees. I also set up a desk and chair so I can work.

Back in my old dorm room, the only green I ever saw was the little patch of scrubby grass in the courtyard. Here, vines have grown up the walls of the buildings all around, thick like a blanket. Even the Bradford Hotel is covered with them. This place is overrun by nature—including the wild men who live here.

They’re beautiful too, with the same primal strength as these stone walls.

Nate goes back and forth between here and his farm. He’s tried to build a whole life there, but he can’t quite leave the crew behind. I like to talk to him when he’s here. I think he is relieved when I chat with him. He’s still not comfortable with Grayson keeping me captive.

What I don’t tell him is that I don’t want to escape.

Stone still gives me this look sometimes, like he wants me gone. But we’ve formed a kind of truce. I think the murderous look in his eyes isn’t really about me, anyway. Nowadays he’s obsessed with finding the other boys. We all are, but it’s a long road, full of dead ends.

Grayson and I have a nice, big private bedroom of our own on the fourth floor, and now there’s this turret room, my library.

Well, I had to keep the books somewhere.

I hear footsteps behind me, and a smile tugs at my lips. A book lands on the nearby cushion. Pleasure fills me at the sight of the old, loose binding. One shelf is already full of the books Grayson has brought me.

“What’s this one?” I ask.

“Open it,” he says with a new kind of tension in his voice. I glance at him curiously. He stares down at me, brown eyes wary.

So far he’s brought me Hemingway and Steinbeck—the classics. He’s brought my childhood favorites by Madeline L’Engle and Cynthia Voigt. He brought me new paperback thrillers and murder mysteries, hundreds upon hundreds of pages flush with ink. I’ve loved every single one, so I don’t know why he’s nervous now. I pick up the book and look at the cover. Nothing but faded cloth. No title. No author. That isn’t too surprising. Sometimes with old books, the ink will fade.

I open the cover. There’s nothing inside. No title page.

Turn the page. Still nothing.

It’s blank.

I look up at him, the question in my eyes. “What’s it for?”

“It’s yours.” He clears his throat. He looks down, and when his gaze meets mine again, his eyes pierce me. I remember the way he looked at me that first day, in the hallway of the prison, as if he could see inside me, straight to the heart. He terrified me then. He still scares me, but in a different way.

“I don’t…”

He shakes his head, gaze locked on mine. “It’s your book, Abby. Your story to tell.”

He wants me to write down my story. And he won’t settle for anything fake, just like I wouldn’t for him. He wants it real. Raw.

He always does.

*

I stare at the empty book, lying on the floor. Days pass before I pick it up and move it to my desk. Another week passes by before I open it and look at the first blank page. Two more weeks pass before I manage to write a paragraph.

Then the floodgates open.

I have too much to say, about my mother. About all the times I waited for her and she never came for me. About the forgotten birthdays, but there was also the soggy mush of a birthday cake she made me when I was six. Or the five-dollar bill she would leave on the counter every time she left for a bender because, even when she abandoned me for the drugs, she wanted me to eat. About the way she looked when my stepfather lay dying on the floor, both pleading and resigned.

My hand can hardly keep up with demand, and soon enough, half the book is full. I read a few snippets to Grayson one day in bed. It feels weird but kind of good too.

“These are amazing,” he says.

“You’re an easy audience.”

He grabs my hair and makes me look him in the eye. “They’re f*cking amazing.”

I smile.

“Remember that intro story you wrote for the journal?” he asks.

I nod.

“It was such bullshit,” he says.

“What?” I give him a punch in his non-wounded shoulder, and he grabs my wrist and flips me over, pinning me under him.

“Total bullshit. Some shit about college class.”

I look up at him, feeling so perfectly helpless and enclosed. I think I’ll never get sick of him. “The journal was for the prisoners.”

A smile quirks his lips. “What do you think you are? I’m keeping you here. You can’t leave.”

He’s just smug enough to make me hate him sometimes. But he’s right about one thing. I’m one of them. Not only because I’m here, with Grayson. I was in jail too, even if Grayson busted me out on transport.

“It was a bullshit vignette,” he continues, goading me. “You make all of us spill our guts, and you write about not being able to decide what to wear to class?”

“Excuse me,” I say. I’m annoyed because I know he’s right.

“You should change it.”

“What? It’s already published. It’s on the site. I can’t just go in and change it. Even if I wanted to, I don’t have the passwords.”