But I shook my head. “I just know how to get back up.”

“That’s half the battle.”

She studied me as I wiped her face.

“Kai owns a dojo in Meridian City,” she told me. “Did you know that? It’s where our family trains.”

I looked into her eyes, something unsaid passing between us, but I swore it sounded like an offer.

But she was deaf, dumb, and blind if she thought I was welcome there. I had a job to get back to anyway.

Hopefully.

I tossed the cloth down and rubbed my eyes, forgetting where Will set my glasses last night.

“You need another shower,” she told me.

“Speak for yourself.”

Three people in a small bed…we were all sweating last night.

I grabbed a comb on the small table and started working through my tangles.

“Micah and Rory are all right,” I informed her. “Taylor is a concern, but no one goes against Aydin’s orders that we’re not to be touched.”

“We or you?”

I narrowed my eyes on her. “What would Aydin have against you?”

Why would he protect me and not her?

But she just shrugged. “Nothing. He doesn’t even know me.”

“He seemed to know you,” I retorted.

He knew her name. He recognized her.

She didn’t say more, though, and we heard the floorboards creak, both of us spotting Will walking past and halting as soon as he saw us.

His hair was sexy-messy as his jeans hung low on his hips, the top button undone, and he just stood there, his eyes falling down and then back up again, taking us in.

I stood there in my tank and underwear, while Alex was still in his T-shirt and no pants.

“Fuck my life,” he grumbled, shaking his head and continuing down the stairs to his door. “Use the tub if you want. Clothes are in the bureau,” he called out. “I’ll go get some breakfast. Stay here. Both of you.”

The door opened and closed again, and I leaned over, starting the water.

“If you have an exit plan,” I asked her, “why isn’t he rushing to escape? I heard him yesterday. He didn’t want to leave.”

It was odd, wasn’t it? You would think he’d be ecstatic to be saved, but he didn’t look like he was happy she was here.

He didn’t look happy either of us were here.

Prisoners sometimes got so used to being inside, that it was scarier to leave. They had a home, three meals a day, a regimen…

Sooner or later, the familiar hopelessness was easier than the hopeful unknown.

But that wasn’t Will. He had a home, friends, money, opportunities…

We were missing something. Something he wasn’t telling us.

Alex shook her head, looking after him down the stairs. “I don’t know,” she said. “But if I know anything about Will, it’s not to assume anything. He knows more than we think, and he’s more patient than a crocodile.”

• • •

It had been days now. I still hadn’t shown up to work. I still wasn’t answering my phone.

A missing person’s report must’ve been filed by now. Had Martin been notified?

Not that he’d care, but he’d probably feel pressured to deal with it, in any case.

He wouldn’t find me, though. My best chance was to make my escape with Alex and drag Will out of here if we had to when it was time. I didn’t like the way Aydin looked at her yesterday. Something was going on.

In the meantime, I’d stay on his good side. If it took until the resupply team showed up, I didn’t want him locking me in the basement to hide me from them.

Will wanted the room to himself for a bit—to bathe, I presumed—while Alex disappeared into the tunnels to…do whatever it was she’d been doing in there. Will told me to go to my room and stay there, so of course, I ignored him and made my way through the greenhouse again to search for tools in the garden shed.

I no longer needed them to get into the tunnels, but they might come in handy for other things—weapons, carving out a hiding place, escaping…

Aydin, Micah, and Taylor worked out in the gym, and I wasn’t sure where Rory was, but this was my shot.

I headed out the kitchen door, across the terrace, around the greenhouse, and into the garden shed, hearing the waterfall around the other side of the house and feeling its mist.

What was this place like in the summer? An image flashed in my mind of me sitting on the balcony with a book as the water fell in the distance.

I nearly rolled my eyes. I’d better not be here that long.

Stepping into the damp structure, I spotted a worktable and grabbed a rusty old wrench, a hammer, and a couple of screwdrivers, trying to fit them all into my pockets until I saw the tool belt hanging on the wall. I smiled, reaching over and pulling it off the hook.

Perfect.

I tied the rust-stained belt around my waist, situating the load over my side instead of at my front, because I hated walking with a clunk of crap over my thighs. I’d realized that tidbit building the gazebo all those years ago.

I scooped up some nails and pliers, pausing as I thought about that tiny gazebo. A roof like a witch’s hat and constructed using aged materials that I’d salvaged from St. Killian’s long after it was abandoned. I’d wanted it to look used. Like it had always been there, maybe even before the town.

It wasn’t my best work, but it was my first, and finishing it was more of an accomplishment than I thought it would be.

It took so much longer than it should’ve because I stopped caring about everything, including my work, for so long. I went months without touching it, deliberately avoiding the village so I didn’t have to see it, and eventually, I’d forced the finish, getting it done without the chandeliers I’d dreamed about, because it would’ve been too painful to remember him every time I looked at it.

I didn’t want to build or design. I didn’t want to do anything because of him.

Nothing else mattered as I mourned the loss.

But I got it done. When I finally resumed my work, it was because, once again, I’d pulled myself up to my feet. Like the coffee table books, the gazebo was another trophy I collected for living another day.

But I’d never see it again. It wasn’t there anymore.

I left the garden shed, treading through the wet grass, but instead of heading into the kitchen, I detoured into the greenhouse, pulling the ladder off the wall I’d spotted in here yesterday and propping it up underneath the broken panel in the roof.

Climbing up, I sat on the top of the ladder and started reattaching the rusted chain, using my pliers to open up the link and re-thread it.

I didn’t give a shit about this place. I knew I was just making beds in a burning house.

But this was who I was, and I wasn’t going to wallow away my time, waiting for my heart to catch up to my head, and if it was something as simple as keeping my hands busy in order to survive Will Grayson and how much I wished I could do everything over again, then that’s what I would do.

The calm in the chaos.

The only other option was to waste my time thinking about things I couldn’t change. He hadn’t said he loved me back last night. I hadn’t expected him to, but if I had any doubt on whether or not he still did, I had my answer now.