Page 16 of Wraith

“I agree completely. Which is why I’m asking you to uncuff me.”

“You could be lying.”

“June.” A pause. “I am not lying about this. A man doesn’t lie about this. There are things a man will fake — interest, emotions, an orgasm if the situation is truly dire — but not this. Not right now. I need the bathroom and I need it soon, and if you leave me here, I promise you the smell alone will make you regret every choice that led to this moment.”

My stomach makes a sound of protest.

“You’d do it on purpose,” I say. “Out of spite.”

“Do you think I’m a fucking toddler? That’ll I just throw a tantrum and shit myself?”

I look at him for a long moment.

He’s right, and I hate that he’s right, and I hate even more that I know he’s right because I know him, I have the particular misfortune of knowing Dylan Mercer better than I’ve ever wanted to know another human being, and I know the difference between his manipulative voice and his real voice, the one that surfaces so rarely it’s almost startling when it does. The manipulative voice has a particular quality to it — smooth, measured, with a faint undercurrent of contempt running beneath it like cold water under ice. The voice he’s using right now doesn’t have that. It’s flat and stripped down and human in a way that makes me deeply uncomfortable, because it’s easier to deal with him when he’s the monster.

“Fine,” I say. “But I swear to God, Dylan.”

“I know.”

“If this is a thing…”

“It’s not a thing.”

“If you try anything…”

“I’m not going to try anything.” And there it is again, that voice, and I look at his face, at the part of it I can see below the cock-embroidered blindfold, and the set of his jaw is wrong for lying. I’ve seen him lie. I’ve been lied to by this man so many times and with such elegant, practiced ease that I have a PhD in the specific micro-expressions that accompany his bullshit, and right now, the lower half of his face is just a man who is in desperate need.

“I’m going to leave the handcuffs on you. And the ankle shackles. I’m only going to unchain you from the radiator and take your blindfold off. If that makes doing what you need to do difficult, oh well, but I don’t trust you enough to do anything else. Are we clear?”

“Crystal.”

I get to work, letting the monster free in my apartment and taking his blindfold off.

“Bathroom’s over there. Remember to wash your hands.”

He goes. And I go to my purse to get an aspirin for my impending hangover, and to the kitchen to get a glass of water, and to be closer to the knives in case he tries anything.

But he doesn’t.

After seven agonizing minutes — because I watch the clock for every single one of them, my hand on a knife, my heart in my throat — he emerges with a look on his face that I have never seen before: genuine gratitude.

Quietly, eyes down, he makes his way back to the radiator, takes a seat, and positions himself for easy chaining.

I stare for a moment, trying to comprehend. Waiting for the words — the tricky, slippery manipulations that’ll worm their way into my head and have me questioning whether I’m doing the right thing, whether it wouldn’t be better to just let him loose, to listen to him, because that’s the way our relationship was, he was always right, I was always wrong, and the best way to stay out of trouble, the best way to avoid any punishment or pain, was to just do what he said — but the words don’t come.

He’s just quiet.

Waiting for me.

It doesn’t make sense.

Another minute passes where I’m just staring, until he clears his throat quietly.

“June?”

I shake my head, regret shaking my head because the aspirin hasn’t kicked in yet and the hangover that’s brewing behind my brow is nothing short of colossal, and then head over to him to chain and blindfold and gag him.

“Yeah?” I say. Because it sounded like he asked a question, and responsible adults respond to questions.