His footsteps rattled on the metal stairs on their way out the abandoned warehouse and soon I was alone in the silence, alone in the dark. My heart was still racing. My breath still ragged. I knew this to be true: Nick had only left me alone because he believed that I wouldn’t leave myself.
If he had had any suspicion at all, he would have stayed. Fuck, I wouldn’t have put it past him to chain me to the old radiator in the corner. But he was certain I would sit there. On the cot. Like a good dog. He was certain the next day I would get up when he told me. Put on the slutty clothes like he told me. Smear red lipstick messily across my lips to make them all think I was drunk, that I was easy enough to take advantage of. Just. Like. He. Told. Me. Nick knew I would go into that place the next day.
But Nick didn’t know that I had someone who told me I would never go back to a place like that. Who told me I was wrong when I said I lived in a place like that. Who risked his life to take me out of a place like that.
I wasn’t sure just how different Conor was from Nick. I wasn’t naïve, even if I was sometimes blinded by hope. But there was this glaring difference, something, at least, to hold onto: Nick would send me in. Conor would drag me out.
For now, that was enough.
I packed up my things as quietly as possible, afraid even then that it was all a trap. That Nick was waiting for me to do just this. That he was lurking in the shadows downstairs.
He didn’t know. He didn’t know about Conor.
I sneaked down the stairs and I repeated those words again and again, step by step. He didn’t know. He didn’t know about Conor. He didn’t know. He didn’t know I had Conor.
Outside of the warehouse, the night swallowed me whole.
Nick was gone.
Because he didn’t know.