Collared(64)

Torrin shoulders up beside me and motions at the room. “You missed the beach. I brought you the beach.”

My eyes haven’t taken in a quarter of the room before my hand finds his. Tying my fingers through his warm hand, I give it a squeeze of thanks. He replies with a longer squeeze.

I try to take in the rest of the room, but there’s too much to see. Too much I don’t want to miss. Heat lamps are positioned around the room, radiating down at us, and a couple of fans are spinning at a low setting, creating a warm breeze that rolls over my body in a familiar way. If I close my eyes, I could be standing on the beach on a warm summer day.

The room’s been emptied of all guest room furniture, and replacing it is one of those hard plastic kiddie pools filled with water that’s been dyed blue. A beige tarp’s been laid out behind the pool, taking up most of the room, and it’s covered in what looks like sand. Real sand. Buckets of it. I have to move closer to see if it’s real or just some mirage.

I skim my bare foot through it and discover it’s the real stuff. It’s warm on top and everything from the heat lamps.

Brightly colored buckets and shovels are stationed around the sand, and there’s even a small floating kite that’s been tied to one of the fans. The sound of waves crashing and seagulls chortling echoes around the room.

It’s the beach. Two doors down from my room.

“Did you do this?” I wander farther in, closing my eyes at the way the sand feels on my feet. The way it gives when I walk, leaving footprints behind to remind me I was there.

He hovers behind, letting me explore on my own. “Your family helped too. All of them.”

That would explain all of the footsteps I kept hearing. “Everyone?”

“Well, your dad helped by not throwing me out of the house like I know he wanted to.”

I twist around in the sand, burying my feet in a little deeper. I’m surprised when I see him because when he helped open my door, he was in the black-and-white priest outfit I’m used to seeing him in. He isn’t anymore.

So I can guess what the rustling sounds were caused by. “Did you seriously just strip in the hallway?” I motion at his swim trunks and faded hoodie he’s thrown on.

“Why? Should I not have?”

“Not if you don’t want everyone to think there’s a naked priest running around the top floor.”

Torrin lifts his eyes to the ceiling and closes the door. “What do you want to do first?”

There’s a picnic basket and blanket spread out in one corner of the room, but I take a seat where I am, lifting my face to the pretend sun, and smile. “This.”

With my eyes closed, it feels so much like the beach I’m half-anticipating a cool wave to break around my ankles.

“So I’ve noticed you’ve taken to wearing sweaters in the summer—ones that cover your neck . . .”

“You know what’s great about going to the beach?” I pause a beat. “How relaxing it is.”

“So does that mean you don’t want to talk about your sudden addiction to high-necked sweaters?”

I elbow him when he settles into the sand beside me. “No, it means I was hoping to not have to, but now you’ve brought it up . . .”

“That doesn’t mean you have to talk about it if you don’t want to.”

I don’t realize I’m rubbing my neck until Torrin’s eyes drop to it. “It’s just this big, ugly reminder to everyone that I was weak—that I was powerless.”

Torrin’s brows come together like he’s trying to figure out if I’m being serious. “I look at that scar, and I see strength. I see a person who survived ten years in a situation most would have crumbled under in less than a month. I see a survivor.” He stares at the pool in front of us like it’s the Pacific. “That scar doesn’t prove you’re weak, Jade. It proves the opposite.”

I lie back and stretch out, wiggling my feet and hands into the sand. I close my eyes because if I tell him what I think I’m about to, I don’t want to see what he looks like when he finds out. I cover my eyes with my forearm like I’m shielding them from the sun, but really I’m shielding them so he can’t see them squeeze closed tighter. “I wasn’t chained to anything, Torrin.”

He’s quiet for a minute. “What do you mean?”

I haven’t told anyone—not even my parents. I’d planned to never tell anyone either, but right now, I have to tell Torrin. “The other end, it wasn’t locked to anything. I was . . . free. I just didn’t know it.”

Torrin’s quiet. “How—”

“The detectives I met with last week told me.”

“How long?”

“I don’t know. No one ever will either. I was free. I should have known it. I should have felt it or been able to tell, but I didn’t. I could have left. I could have gotten back to my life. I could have . . .” I know we can both fill in what I don’t say. “He’d broken me though. My will, my spirit, my soul, whatever you call it. All of it. He broke it.”

I feel him lie down beside me before his hand digs under the sand to find mine. He pulls it to the surface. “You can’t keep beating yourself up for that. You can’t let it keep you locked in your room for the rest of your life.”