Caroline brought her legs up to her chest, crossing her ankles in front of herself. Her body was filling out, and I felt like such a dick every time I noticed.
“Can I ask you a question?”
After a month, I was an expert on watching her out of the corner of my eye. I rarely allowed myself to look at her unless she was speaking directly to me. Was this how a sober alcoholic felt when they smelled the tang of whiskey? It never touched their lips, but there was no way the temptation wasn’t pounding at their soul at just the smell.
My mouth salivated as our eyes met. It was the first time I’d allowed myself to look at her today. She grew even more radiant with each passing day.
“Always.” I tried to keep my voice calm, reassuring. She could never know how my heart raced at just the sound of her voice.
“I was hoping you’d allow me to go to the store.”
I said nothing, only raised a pointed eyebrow at her. This was my way of scolding her speech without actually scolding her. I waited patiently for her to figure out what she’d said and gave her a chance to rephrase.
And I did not do it just to see that flush cross her cheeks. I truly wanted her to think for herself, not in terms of what the “man of the house” allowed her to do.
Caroline had confided in me that she was allowed to watch television and read books. After she cleaned the house to his satisfaction or prepared a particularly good meal, she was rewarded. Her eyes even lit up when she told me about it, like she wanted me to be proud of her for having served her captor well enough to have gotten areward.
Despite my reservations about the use of that word, it took me some time to get out of her what type of rewards. Obviously she wasn’t watching just any television if she’d never seen a cellphone before, and it soon became clear why the hero she’d compared me to in that basement had been John Wayne.
I was no psychologist, and even I picked up on the fact that Caroline was only allowed to watch television or read books with a certain indoctrinated mindset. The “man of the family” and the “head of the household” mindset, where the man brought home the money and the woman knew her place. I never asked her, but it was my suspicion that Jones was grooming Caroline to be his next wife. Neo could not find any record of the wife outside of her name on their marriage certificate, so discovering where she was or how she died was basically impossible.
Caroline licked her glossy lips and rephrased her statement. “Iwould like to go to the store, and I was hoping you could take me.”
I smiled at her. “I’d love to,” I replied, not drawing attention to her slipup. “What are you going shopping for?”
She rested her cheek on her knees as she continued to look over at me. “I agree that I don’t know if I like cooking. I’m good at it, but I’m not sure I like it. But there is something that I used to do that I know Idomiss.”
I stared at her curiously. “What’s that?”
“Knitting. I used to do it before Samantha was born, but Mr. Dal—” Her cheeks flamed. “I mean,that bastard”—I smiled at her correction. Apparently I hadn’t cleaned up my language that much since she’d picked up on calling Jones that when Samantha wasn’t within earshot. I ignored how her eyes flicked about like she was worried Jones would suddenly appear and punish her. She’d get over that gut reaction in time.—“took away my needles when one of the other women stole one and tried to use it to stab him.”
Too bad she hadn’t succeeded.
“And you like knitting? This isn’t something you want to do because you feel youshouldbe doing it?” I didn’t think so, but I wouldn’t be doing my due diligence by her if I didn’t double check.
Caroline nodded, a smile creeping onto her lips. “Yes. It used to calm me.”
“Then let’s go.”
Her eyes widened and she bolted upright. “What?Now?”
“Sure, why not?” I got to my feet, brushing the sand from my torso. I’d helped Samantha build a sandcastle a little bit ago, and more than one handful of sand had been playfully tossed.
I held my hand down to her.
She stared up at me, her mouth gaping like a fish out of water. “But… I mean, it’s been so many years. What if I’m not good anymore? What if I don’t remember how?”
“Then we look up beginner videos online, and we learn.” I still held my hand out to her.
Caroline’s sea-green eyes blazed with uncertainty, but she reached for me, and fucking hell, that meant something to me. More than she’d ever know. Her trust in me meant everything, and I would never doanythingto betray it.
“You would learn with me?” she asked once I pulled her to her feet.
I shrugged, keeping hold of her hand but not bringing her towards me. The muscles in my arm burned, a raging inferno between desire and responsibility warring inside me. “Why not?” I asked her. “Can’t promise I’ll be good at it with my sausage fingers, but it’s certainly something we can try together.”
I was desperate for an activity I could do with her that my perverted mind couldn’t find some way to make sexual. Caroline smiled at me, and I knew I was fucked. I quickly broke away from her, whistling for Samantha.
I bent to pick up the towel we’d been sitting on when a hand touched my arm. Caroline was right there, mere inches separating our bodies as she tipped her head up to me. Slowly, she used her hand on my arm to pull me down as she lifted herself up on her tiptoes. I was helpless not to obey, my body automatically following her silent directives.