My palms are stuck to the wall, and when I peel them away, they make a sound. It’s nice to feel alive. To feel something . . . for someone. Even if it’s just sweaty palms caused from an intense stare.
“So now that we’ve cleared up all that, you have no reason to avoid me anymore.” Torrin’s fingers brush across my vanity where my dried corsages used to be.
“Nothing’s cleared up. I won’t let everyone think you’re some kind of immoral person because there are pictures of us dancing and someone said you followed me out of a party.”
His eyes drop to the spots on the wall my hands were just splayed across. His head tips, and I notice two slightly darker impressions from my clammy hands. He doesn’t say anything. But that kinda says more than any words could.
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?”
“No, you don’t have to go far. Just down the hall and two doors to the left. That’s it.”
My feet pad across the carpet, moving closer to the door. “What’s the surprise?”
“You know the definition of surprise, right?”
I lean into the wall the door’s on, staring at it. “I can’t do it, Torrin. I tried . . . I can’t get the door open.”
The handle jars a little when I guess he puts his hand on it. “I’ll help you.”
I bite my lip and try to keep the panic from rolling to a boil. It’s crazy what three days of isolation will do to a person. It’s crazy how the world outside of these four walls can seem so scary and unreachable.
It’s crazy that after finally earning my freedom, I seem to have checked it back in.
“You can do this, Jade. You’re strong. Stronger than your biggest, ugliest fear. Ten times stronger than that.”
I don’t believe it, but the confidence in his voice gets my hand to the handle. This is as far as I made it earlier, and already my hand is trembling. I wonder if Torrin can feel from the other side how scared I am.
“Ready?” His voice rolls through the crack in the door.
“I think so.”
I manage to twist the handle a little, and I feel Torrin twisting it at the same time. The knob turns all the way over, but when he starts to push it open, the door stays in place.
“It’s locked. You can’t open it like that. I can’t help you open it if it’s locked.”
The handle’s slippery from my hand, and I don’t dare let go because I’m not sure my hand could find its way back. So I lift my other hand and guide it toward the lock. This hand’s quivering too, but before it grows into shakes, I manage to turn the lock over in a quick motion.
“There.” My voice is high with strain. “It’s unlocked.”
“Then open the door, Jade.”
My heart is firing, and I’m not sure I can, but then I feel my hand twisting and my fingers pulling and then . . . the door opens. Something inside me is ready to be free.
Torrin’s hand is still wrapped around the handle when the door swings into my room. He doesn’t let go until the door’s open all the way.
He’s smiling and looking at me the way he used to. Like ten years of separation weren’t real. “Welcome back to the world.”
I brace myself in the doorjamb and look up and down the hall. Nothing’s different, but I feel like I’m seeing it differently. Like the house isn’t some reflection of my past but maybe a shadow of my future.
“Well, at least back to the hallway.” I smile back and take my first step out of the bedroom.
Torrin backs up to give me some space and waits. “Ready for your surprise?”
“I didn’t just ward off a panic attack for nothing.”
He waves down the hall. “Good. Then close your eyes and let’s get going.”
“Wait. No one said anything about closing my eyes.”
“Why do I feel like you’re still failing to understand the definition of a surprise?”
“Why do I feel like you’re still failing to take no for an answer to anything?” I sigh and close my eyes.
“Promise they’re closed?”
I feel his hand whipping right in front of my eyes, checking. “Promise.”
I hear some rustling. I have no idea what’s making it, but it’s coming from Torrin’s direction.
“Is this going to be anything like the last surprise you walked me to with my eyes closed?” I ask.
More rustling. “If you’re referring to the disaster known as The Night I Tried to Cook Dinner for You, then no. Hopefully nothing like that.” His voice is muffled for a few words, but it clears.
“What are you talking about? That was the best overcooked chicken and undercooked pasta I’d ever had.”
“Yeah, chicken marsala might have been a bit ambitious for a guy who hadn’t mastered the toasting of bread yet.”
My laugh chimes down the hall. It feels so good I just don’t want it to stop. I don’t want to stop smiling and laughing, because maybe, one day, they’ll outweigh the tears and sadness and I’ll remember what it feels like to just live . . . instead of feeling like I’m practicing for life.
Torrin comes up behind me and holds the side of my arm. I’m expecting his other hand to wrap around my other arm when his hand slides over my eyes.
“You peek,” he says like he’s defending himself.
I don’t argue, because he’s right. Even now, I can feel my eyelashes fluttering against his hand as I fight to keep my eyes closed.
When I feel him move, I move with him. He stays close, his hands on me, guiding me. Even though by my vision’s measure, it’s dark, it doesn’t seep in the way I’m used to. It can’t find the door to let itself in.
We move down the hall, and it’s not long before we’re rolling to a stop. I hear a door open, Torrin guides me a couple more steps forward, then his hands drop away. He doesn’t tell me I can open my eyes, but I open them anyway. I have to glance behind me to make sure we’re still in the same hall and didn’t take some wrong turn into a wormhole.
I think this room used to be Sam’s, but it doesn’t look like it. At all.
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 w
hat 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.”
My fingers feel limp compared to his, but he rubs my fingers, warming them, bringing them back to life. “That’s not why I’ve locked myself away.”
“Why then?”
I don’t want to reflect on that question, because I’m scared of the answer. I’m scared where thinking about it will lead me. I’m not ready. But . . . “What if I had found out I wasn’t chained to anything, Torrin? That I was free to go out that front door one day?”
“I don’t know.”
“I don’t know either. That’s the problem.”
He scoots closer until his arm is running down mine. His body’s warmer than the warm breeze blowing over us. “Well, nothing like an afternoon at the beach to relax and reflect, right?”
“Yeah, but it doesn’t smell the same,” I say, wondering if I can just delay the inevitable forever. I think it would be better than confronting the realization that I might never have carried that chain out of the front door if I had found it was bound to nothing.
Torrin lifts our hands and drops them on his chest. He’s not letting me bury mine again. “Well, you know where to find that when you’re ready.”
I’M READY. OR at least I think I’m ready. Or I am for sure pretending to be ready.
Either way, we’ve loaded the Tahoe and are parking at the public beach access, and Dad’s shutting off the engine. It’s my first time outside in two weeks, and I’ve been on the cusp of a meltdown ever since we backed out of the garage.
The media’s still camped out, as abundant and vicious as ever, but Dad got his windows tinted super dark a few days ago. That, and a blanket tossed over me sprawled out in the back, meant a successful escape without a caravan of news trucks following us.