Total pages in book: 135
Estimated words: 127484 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 637(@200wpm)___ 510(@250wpm)___ 425(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 127484 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 637(@200wpm)___ 510(@250wpm)___ 425(@300wpm)
The shards of it still remained where they fell. No way was I cleaning up his mess, and he didn’t strike me as someone who would either. Well, that was a lie. He did the dishes from every meal. Everything in the cabin was kept spotless.
But the shards remained. A reminder.
My body was weakening. There was no fresh fruit left, even though I’d tried to ration. The bread that remained was stale and hard. And with the calories I was burning from pure fear, from running, pulling weeds in the area that could roughly be called a garden, from chopping wood, it was nowhere near enough fuel for my body.
Running was stupid. Expending energy I didn’t have. But I had to. There had to be some way to release the adrenaline, to feel like myself. Running had always been my therapy. My one solace. Escape.
I wouldn’t let him take it from me. Even as my body failed me.
Black spots danced in my vision, and I rapidly tried to blink them away. I was only a couple hundred yards from the cabin.
I’d make it. Couldn’t a person last for like months without food? I had water. And it’s not like I was technically starving. People in L.A. ate less than I did and managed to star in movies and walked catwalks.
Dramatic. I was being dramatic by thinking the trees were turning sideways. There was no way I was going to pass out.
Then the trees moved jerkily, the ground rushed toward my face and with a loud thump. With a flash of pain came blessed darkness and thankfully, no more hunger.
“Fuck.”
The single, four-letter word filtered through my groggy brain, mixing with the gnawing, urgent hunger that had become a part of me like a barnacle against a reef.
It was hard to think around it, even in my half-conscious state.
That was likely why I heard emotion in that single, four-letter word. Emotion that sounded incredibly like worry laced with an edge of panic.
I must’ve conjured that, though, in my desperation to have someone care for me.
Before I could register his closeness, Knox’s arms were wrapped around me and I was up off the ground. The movement made my almost empty stomach lurch as I fought to hold on to the meager nutrients I’d ingested that morning.
Plus, vomiting on Knox would be kind of embarrassing.
I somehow managed to steady my nausea, even as we started moving. He held me close to his chest, his arms like a band, absorbing the impact of his steps so he barely jostled me.
He smelled of pine and the ocean. Again, something I must’ve made up. And warmth I felt against his chest. That couldn’t have been possible; he was a human block of ice.
He didn’t speak, so all I heard was the low thump of his heartbeat. It was nice. Calming. It beckoned me back to the darkness.
“Piper, don’t you—”
Again with the urgent, worried and commanding tone. But even he couldn’t call me back from this blackness.
Fortunately.
Knox
Her runs lasted forty-five minutes to an hour.
The past few days they’d been closer to forty-five.
Because she was hungry. Weak. Expending too much energy by running through rough terrain followed by spending the day in the garden, pulling weeds, chopping wood. Doing anything but being still, reserving her energy.
It was driving me fucking crazy. Seeing her pick at food that was barely enough to keep her alive, let alone fuel her body for the constant movement throughout the day. A lot of people—most people, actually—would spend their time in captivity curled up in a ball. Sleeping. Escaping their reality. She had books. I knew that because I’d looked through her suitcase during one of her runs. And she had flashes of colorful clothes, lacy underwear that had made my cock weep at the sight of them. I slept with a pair of her pink panties curled in my fist at night.
It was fucking creepy, crossed a line even I thought I wouldn’t cross. Stealing panties like a fucking sex offender. But I couldn’t stop myself.
It was sick. That my thoughts were solely counting how many calories she was consuming, expending, calculating when exactly she’d succumb to the consequences of malnutrition and mild starvation.
Her cheeks were already hollow, dark circles ringing her eyes, even though she collapsed into a dreamless, exhausted sleep for over ten hours a night. Her frame was shrinking, clothing that fit her like a second skin a week ago beginning to hang off her.
Yet she still ran.
And chopped wood.
Hacked away at the overgrowth surrounding the cabin with rusty shears she’d found fuck knows where.
She’d managed to repair the shutters. She was … sprucing up the place where I was holding her captive, and I had no idea what the fuck to do with that.
I’d been expecting some kind of mental break. It usually happened a lot sooner than people anticipated. People fantasized how long they might survive in deadly situations. Self-aggrandized about their mental and physical strength. But when taken from familiar surroundings, creature comforts, and forced into survival mode, people generally withered within days.