Collared(62)

He does a slow spin. “I’m a priest. Everyone already looks at me and thinks the worst. I don’t care what anyone thinks anyway. I care what you think. What you want.”

“I can’t have what I want.”

“Maybe you can’t. Maybe you can. But first you have to decide what you want.”

I don’t know what to do again. Where to hold my arms. Alone. In my bedroom. With Torrin. It messes with my mind. “I like spending time with you. I want to spend time with you—”

“I like being with you too.” He stops in front of my nightstand, his brows coming together like he’s trying to figure out what’s missing. Him. He’s missing. The photos of us that used to sit there. “So what else is there left to talk about?”

“Just this little thing known as the international media. You. Me. Headlines trying to draw an illicit connection between us. Just those things and a few hundred others.” I decide to settle on the bottom corner of my bed. Seems like a safe spot . . . without seeming like I’m looking for one.

Torrin makes a face. “Their objective is to sell papers, advertising time, not the truth. People know that. Let them write whatever the hell they want about me. I don’t care.”

My eyes cut to him. “Well, I do.”

He walks to the end of the bed and stares at the same spot on the carpet I was concentrating on. He comes close to smiling, then he scrubs his face. “Earl Rae kept you chained up for ten years. He took a decade. How much longer are you going to let him keep you chained away from doing the things you want to do and being with the people you want to be with?”

His question hits me in the gut like he’s swinging a bat. I lean forward and comb my fingers through my hair. “I don’t know, Torrin. I don’t know. I miss the strong girl I used to be. The one who wouldn’t let anything slow her down or get in her way.” My fingers curl into my hair. “God, I miss her.”

I feel the mattress move when he sits on the opposite end of it. He’s leaning forward like I am, still concentrating on that spot. “She’s still there. You just have to find her.”

I bite my lip and slowly nod.

“So you’ve been locked inside for a week. Barely went out the weeks before that. Were missing from the world for ten years.” The mattress whines when he shifts. “Is there anything you’ve really missed? I’m talking ‘you have one day to live—where do you spend it?’”

He doesn’t ask me who I’m going to spend it with, and I’m grateful because I don’t need to complicate things between us. They’re already too complicated.

“The beach,” I say. “I miss the beach.”

Torrin’s head turns my way. “Our beach?”

I nod. “That one.”

He’s quiet for a minute—his thoughts are loud though. “Well, you miss the beach. I’ll have to figure out a way to get you to the beach.”





I TRIED LEAVING my room last night after Torrin left. I tried until my forehead was sweating and my hands were shaking. I tried for a solid hour, working up the courage and mentally preparing myself.

I never made it out the door. I got as far as my hand on the doorknob, but I couldn’t manage the next part. My hand couldn’t twist the handle. My fingers couldn’t pull the door open.

No one had locked me in the room. I’d locked myself in . . . and I couldn’t free myself. I felt as powerless as I had on the end of that chain. The one I could have just picked up and walked out the front door with.

The same thing is happening, but this time, I know I’m free to go. This time, the only thing holding me back is myself.

I’ve heard footsteps moving up and down the hall all morning, but no one has banged on my door or tried to beg or order me out. I kind of wish someone would though because, like that day when I dropped to my knees on the lawn in front of hundreds of cameras, I can’t do the next part alone. I need help to get out from behind this door, and I’ve forgotten how to ask for it.

After years of asking, hoping, and waiting for it, help is just as much a fairy tale as happily ever after.

I’ve just stepped out of the bathroom adjoining my room, towel-drying my hair, when I hear that knock. It doesn’t sound like any of the others I’ve heard so far.

“Jade?”

I stop dabbing the towel through my hair.

“So I know you’re in there since, you know, you refuse to leave your room.” He pauses. “Are you going to talk to me, or should I climb the roof again?”

“What is it, Torrin?” I sail the towel back into the bathroom and tug on the sweater I pulled out of the closet.

“I want to talk to you.”

“You are talking to me.”

He sighs. “I want to talk to you, not your door.”

I move toward the door. “What do you want to talk about?”

“Actually, I want to show you something. Talking isn’t required if you’re sick of talking to me.”

I don’t smile, but I want to. I can feel it beneath the surface, trying to push through toward the light. “Fine. What do you want to show me?”

“It’s a surprise.”

“Is this your way of trying to get me to leave my room?”