“That’s it, baby. Just keep going,” I say.
“It’s not budging,” she huffs, and exhales her exasperation loudly.
“You’re doin’ just fine, Warrior Princess.”
“You know I used to have days down here. Some days I didn’t want to escape, because I wasn’t sure what was waiting for me on the outside, and others I just didn’t have the strength. I had nothing to fight for.” She looks at me and frowns. “I still don’t.”
“You got me. I know I’m no fuckin’ prize. I’m a bastard, and I push you to do things you don’t want to, and I’m a cunt when I’m hungry, but you have me,” I say, and I wish more than anything that I could have held her as I said those words, as if it somehow would have given them more weight. “You’ve always had me … for what it’s worth.”
“It’s worth,” she says solemnly, and goes back to working on the rope.
I wish it were true, but the fact is I promised to keep her safe, and I failed. I fucked up, and the two of us—well, we’ll pay for it for the rest of our lives.
Sometime later, after picking at it for hours with bleeding fingers and lifted nails and blisters that are red raw, Ivy finally frees her leg from its tether, and looks at me with wide-eyed wonderment, though I can clearly see her fatigue.
“I did it,” she whispers, and I can’t help but grin, because even weakened and exhausted as she is, her eyes are lit with fire. With hope.
“Get over here,” I whisper back, and she scrambles off the bed and gingerly walks over to me. She carefully climbs into my lap and I’ve never regretted the loss of the use of my hands so much, because I can’t hold her right now the way I want to. I pepper her face and hair with kisses and she takes mine in her hands, careful to avoid my black eye, and the laceration at the corner of my mouth.
“I’m so sorry, baby. I’m so, so sorry,” I whisper into her hair. A lump forms in my throat and tears spill out of my eyes and roll down my cheeks. I haven’t cried since I was a boy, but now that the floodgates have opened, I can’t seem to stop them. I don’t much care either. “I couldn’t do anything. I tried, I nearly took the skin off my fuckin’ hand, but I couldn’t protect you.”
“Shh. It’s okay. Shh.” She kisses my forehead, my cheeks, tastes my tears, and then she glances at my hand, and the revulsion and pity on her face almost flattens me. “Oh God, Tank. It looks bad.”
“Yeah, it’s about to get worse,” I say, taking a deep breath. “I hope you haven’t got a weak stomach, darlin’, ’cause I’m gonna need your help.”
I never told another living soul about my mother’s murder. I was too afraid. I was afraid he’d find out, and that he’d kill me too. Some days, I fantasised about it. When I’d spent my childhood locked down in this basement, I’d dreamed of breaking out and telling someone all the horrible things my father had done to me, to my mother, and to the boy across the street. But I never told, because I never had an opportunity to, and when I did finally escape, I was free—if only in the physical sense of the word. I’d never be mentally free. He’d made sure of that.
He made sure that I’d never think of another man again when they fucked me. Even with a clubhouse full of men. Even when it’d just been Tank and me alone in his room, I’d never seen the man in front of me. I’d seen my father, and the years of repression and the pain that he’d taught me to crave. I was sick, and I’d loved every second of it, because it was all I’d ever known. It was what I was bred to know, it was what I’d become accustomed to, and it was safe.
Pain, hurt, anger. They were safe.
Now though? Now pain is my enemy. It’s a bright slash against the night sky. A burn, rendering my flesh useless. It’s fear like I’ve never known, because for the first time ever I have something, someone to fight for. I never cared whether I lived or died. I craved death. I longed for it, but now that is the last thing I want. Now I want to fight, I have a reason to fight, and I’ll be damned if I let him take that reason from me.
I hope you haven’t got a weak stomach, darlin’. I’m gonna need your help, he’d said. But I couldn’t do what he was asking.
“There’s another way,” I say, shaking my head. “There has to be.”
“There isn’t time.”
“Oh God. I can’t.”
“Listen to me—I need you to do this,” he says, with a clear, level voice. “You do this, and you do it now, and you don’t fuckin’ stop until I tell you to and my hand is slapping outta those cuffs, you got me?”
“It’ll hurt you,” I say. I can’t even look at it, much less inflict more pain on him by trying to slide the cuff over his mangled fist.
“Stayin’ down here is gonna hurt me and you a lot more.”
“The sound will bring him running.”
“You give me somethin’ to bite down on then,” he whispers, and I still shake my head. I can’t make my legs move to stand, my arms to take hold of his hand. I can’t do this. I can’t hurt him.
“Ivy,” Tank says in a warning tone, “you do this now. I know you been wantin’ to pay me back for all those times I said no to givin’ you drugs.”
“That’s a little different from breaking both your thumbs, Tank.” I shake my head and admit, “I’m afraid.”
“You ain’t gotta be afraid, darlin’. I’d let you break every bone in my body if I thought it would save you,” he whispers, kissing my mouth. “Now come on. Let’s get this shit over with before he comes back.”
On shaking limbs I climb off his lap, and I kneel on the floor beside him. I lean over and take his belt buckle in my hands, unclasp it, and thread the belt through the loops until it’s free. I fold the leather and place it between his lips. He nods. And then I take hold of his wrist and gently slide the cuff down as far as it will go. It pulls on the metal embedded in his hand and he closes his eyes tightly shut. A strained groan escapes around the belt in his mouth.
I yank my hand away as if I’ve been burned. “I can’t do this.”
Tank growls and sets me with a look. I swallow hard. He was right about always making me do things I don’t want to. I slide my fingertips along the hard edge of his forearm, over bulging veins and down over his clenched fist.
Not even when I’d hated him mid-detox for withholding drugs from me, not even when he’d dragged me up to his cabin and kept me isolated from everything, and when I’d begged, kicked and screamed for him to give me the poison I was so eager to pump into my veins, had I ever wanted to hurt him like this.
I might have shot Killer for a fix, but it was purely accidental. I was so blinded by adrenalin and the fear that I had the coke in my hands and mightn’t get to taste it before he could snatch it away again. I hadn’t meant to shoot him, and I hadn’t meant to hurt Tank ever. I hated that this was our only option, but I steeled my courage because I’d rather he lived—we lived—than die down here.
“I’m sorry,” I say, and his body stiffens as I grab hold of his good hand and press the pad of my thumb against his joint. I force it down hard until I feel the knuckle give way under my fingers. He screams, but it’s silent, internalised, and made that much worse because of it. I want to be sick, but I keep it together as best as I can while Tank’s whole body tremors. He takes short ragged breaths in and out through his nose as I apologise over and over.
I slide the cuff down his wrist. More trembling. More silent screams swallowed up by the leather belt in his mouth. His hands are too large for the loop, even after I broke his thumb. I feel the bones shifting beneath the cuff the more I work it back and forth. It’s not just the thumb I broke that’s the problem—every tug of the metal pulls on his partially skinned hand and seems to bury it deeper. It’s another few minutes of what I’m sure is agony before I can work the cuff over his thumb and slip it past his fingers. The other, the partially skinned hand looks much worse than it did before, and the empty cuff that isn’t embedded in his flesh dangles like a macabre bracelet. His anger is a living, breathing shroud around him. And though I know it’s not directed at me, he won’t meet my gaze when I crouch down in front of him and remove the belt from his mouth.