I shouldn't enjoy riling her up.
I'm going to have a very hard time not doing it anyway.
An hour later I come back with a grilled chicken sandwich, fries still hot, a tall water with a straw, and a bottle of ibuprofen. I set it on the table just outside her reach and watch her eyes move from the food to my face and back, calculating.
"Brought lunch. Ibuprofen for your wrists. Eat."
"I'm not hungry."
"You are." I shake two pills into my palm and swallow them dry so she can watch, then slide the bottle toward her. "Take them. You'll feel better."
She doesn't reach for the food. She reaches for the ankle chain instead, testing the slack, fingers working the links with a stubborn methodical patience that I respect more than I'm going to tell her.
"Let me go," she says quietly. "Please. I won't say anything. I promise."
I crouch down to her level. Close enough that I catch the citrus in her hair even in a place that smells like concrete and age. "Not yet. Eat first."
She holds out for another few seconds, then reaches for the water with trembling fingers. Small careful sips. No pills yet. Still testing the chain when she thinks I'm not watching.
Stubborn.
Good.
CHAPTER 24
HARVEE
I want to throw something. There's nothing within reach, which is its own specific kind of torture.
I kick my legs in the air instead, glaring at the door he just slammed like I can burn a hole through the metal with enough contempt. It doesn't work. He's still gone and I'm still here and the chain still clinks every time I move.
Breathe.
I blow a loose strand of hair off my forehead and take stock. My black crop top has ridden up completely, bunched under my ribs. My pink sweats have slipped low on my hips and I can't reach to pull them up with the chain where it is, which leaves my entire midriff exposed to the cold concrete air and absolutely nothing I can do about it.
I sit with that for a moment.
Then I stop trying to fix it.
I replay the last hour. The way his shoulders coiled every time I pulled against the chains. The jaw that kept ticking. His eyes when they moved over me, how they changed, that specific quality of darkening that a person can't fully control no matter how hard they're trying to look like they can.
It was doing something for him. I'm almost certain.
The thought moves through me in two directions at once. Something cold and calculating underneath, something else that I'm not going to look at directly.
If I lean into it, I might get the chains loosened. Might build enough of something that he lets his guard down. It's not a perfect plan. It's the only one I have, and I've clawed my way out of worse situations with less. My parents' voices surface briefly —Miami's dangerous, Harvee, just come home— and I push them back down where they belong. They don't know what they're talking about. They never did. There are things that chased me out of that small town they know nothing about, whispers that followed me everywhere I went, a past I couldn't outrun no matter which direction I walked.
Miami was supposed to be the place I finally got ahead of it.
Drip. Drip. Drip.
The pipe in the corner yanks me back to the room. I settle into the couch, pull the ibuprofen closer, and let myself think clearly for the first time since I woke up here.
I have a plan. Loose and improvised and built entirely on a hunch, but a plan.
Now I just have to wait.
CHAPTER 25