Lost & Bound (14 page)

Callum

The moist liquid trickling down my face
causes me to stir in my sleep. It takes me a moment to remember where I am. I
try to open my eyes, but only one of them offers a sliver of sight. My left eye
is bordered closed, my heavy lid not opening no matter how hard I try.

I shuffle my body to a more comfortable
position, but realize my arms are tied behind me to the post of Leila’s bed.
The feel of rope against skin registers in my brain and I remember being
caught.

When I move again a groan
escapes
from the back of my throat, causing someone to stir
in the room.

I open my one good eye and Leila hovers
over me like an angel. The light hits her face, making her glow in a sea of
darkness.
Angel
, I repeat the word in my mind.

“Am I dead?” I mutter.

“Dead, no.” She furrows her brow. “I’m so
glad you’re finally awake,” she says, her fingers trailing over my cheek. They
feel numb against my skin and I flinch away from her touch.

“Oh Callum.” She brings her hand to her
mouth to suppress a cry.

I want to tell her to be strong, but when I
attempt to speak, nothing comes out.

She rushes around the room and returns with
a glass of water. “Here, drink.” She holds the rim of the glass against my lips
and I tilt my head, welcoming the lukewarm liquid into my mouth. It’s like
heaven against the rawness of my throat.

I try to speak again. “Leila,” I murmur, my
cracked voice doesn’t sound like my own. “Leila,” I say again.

She’s beautiful as always. Not a mark on
her face. Her hair is messed up a little, doing wild things on top and her eyes
have black streaks underneath them from where her mascara has run. Other than
that she looks perfect.

“I’m so sorry,” I finish.

She shakes her head. “This is not your
fault,” she murmurs, her hand resting on my knee.
Surprisingly,
it’s the one part of my body that isn’t aching.

I don’t remember the beating, but the look
on Leila’s face tells me she witnessed it all.

“How long have I been out?”

“An hour, maybe two.”

Her thumb gently rubs my knee in a round
circular motion. “I was so worried, Callum.”

“Hey, I’m okay.”

I try to move my body, but the pressure on
my ribs is too much. It feels like a dagger sticking into my side. I cough,
which makes the pain worse.

“Has he been here?” I croak out the
question.

She nods her head.

“Did he…” I pause. “Did he touch you?”

“No.” She shakes her head. “He didn’t touch
me.”

“Good.”

She settles on the ground next to me, her
hand still resting on my knee. She studies my face before speaking again. “He’s
going to kill us,” she states simply.

I don’t think I can deny the possibility.
“Maybe,” I answer.

Leila was so close to freedom and now she’s
staring down the barrel of a death sentence, or worse. I wish she’d kept
running.

“Why didn’t you keep going?” I ask. “You
should have kept running.”

She swallows and her eyes instantly fill
with tears. “I’ve wanted to get out for so long, but if you’re not there, if
you’re not waiting for me…I’m not sure I want to be free.”

I want to smile, but my lips don’t allow
it.

“What do I look like?” I ask.

Leila shakes her head. “It doesn’t matter.”

“Show me.”

She hesitates, but I give her a
demanding
look with my one good eye.
She walks over to her dressing table, picks up a small mirror and brings it to
me.

“I need to wipe a cloth over your face,”
she says as she grasps the mirror in her hands.

“Show me,” I say again.

She holds the mirror before me. “Fuck.”
It’s worse than I imagined.

My face is a mass of purple and red. A trail
of dry blood runs from my nose, to my lips and down my chin. My nose isn’t
broken, but the sides are tinged purple, as is the skin around my eyes.

“The hulk really let me have it didn’t he?”
I let out a laugh, trying to soften the mood.

“It’s not funny,” Leila tells me. “I was
worried that you…left me.”

She thought I might die. I’m not entirely
sure that I’m not dead. I watch tears trickle down her cheeks and I feel my
heart ache deep in my chest.

“You won’t get rid of me that easily,
Leila.”

And I’ve never meant anything more in my
life.

Callum

When I wake the first thing I do is look
down at my body, just to make sure I’m still here. As weird as it sounds, I
didn’t expect to survive the night. I want to pinch myself to make sure I can
still feel, but I realize my arms are still bound making the pinch impossible.

I hear keys jingle upstairs and the hulk
appears in the doorway. Round two, I presume.

I don’t know how much more I can take, I
have no fight left in me and at this point, as morbid as it sounds, I would
welcome death.

The hulk walks downstairs, each step
causing the stairs to creak under the pressure of his weight.
 
Without saying a word he walks over to
me. I bow my head and wait for his fist to meet my face, but it doesn’t come.

Instead, he reaches around me and loosens
the ropes from my wrists.

“Stand up,” he instructs, the deepness of
his voice evoking memories from the night before. I struggle to stand, my legs
wobbling beneath me like a baby giraffe that’s just been born.

The hulk grabs my shirt in his fist and
pulls me to my feet. He tightens his grip on my shirt and drags me through to
Leila’s bathroom.

“Wash
yourself
,”
he tells me. “You have five minutes.”

He turns around to face the wall, obviously
not worried that I’ll jump him and fight for my freedom. He knows I’m weak and
doesn’t see me as a threat. I should feel embarrassed, but I don’t.

I step into the alcove of the shower and
allow the water to wash over my body. It’s cold at first, too cold, but the
water warms soon enough, stinging where my skin is broken. The air hisses
through my teeth when I take in a breath.

The metallic taste of blood rolls over my
lips before spilling to the ground. I watch the water as it swirls down the
drain, tinged maroon and red, a painful reminder of yesterday’s beating.

My body adjusts to the temperature and I
want to stay in the shower longer, but before long the hulk steps forward
shutting off the water.

“Get out,” he grunts.

He hands me a towel. The white cloth smears
with red as I wipe the last of the blood from my skin. One wipe of my hair and
the towel is ripped from my grasp and tossed to the floor.

“Are you serious?” I grunt as the hulk
grabs me by the elbow and shoves me forward to the sitting room. He points to
the clothes sitting on the arm of the sofa. A plain black tee and some grey
track pants. I slip them on, my body unforgiving when I move, pain shooting
through every muscle, even the ones I didn’t know existed.

“No underwear?” I sneer.

The hulk shrugs his shoulders and points
toward the bed where Leila is sleeping.

“Move, now,” he says, his voice deep, the
sound you’d expect from a giant.

When I reach the bed he grabs my arm and
ties me to the bedpost. He leaves
more slack
than the
night before and I’m surprised when he only ties one arm, leaving my right arm
free.

He stands and turns his back on me.

“Thanks. How about some breakfast?”

He ignores me and walks upstairs, closing
the door and locking it behind him.

“Callum?” I hear Leila’s small voice next
to me.

“Hey,” I say, my voice less croaky today.

“I thought you’d never wake up,” she says.

“What time is it?”

She looks to the clock beside her bed.
“It’s just after eight in the morning.”

I didn’t have that much sleep. Seven hours
max.

I furrow my brow.

“Callum,” she says softly. “You’ve been
asleep for over thirty hours.”

My eyebrows reach up my forehead. “What day
is it?”

“Saturday.”

Fuck, I’ve been
asleep for almost two days and I still feel exhausted. As if on
cue, I let out a tear-inducing yawn. My ribs ache from expelling the air, but I
attempt to hide the pain from my face.

Leila smiles at me softly. “You look well.”

“I do?”

“Much better.”

She settles on the ground next to me, her
hand resting on my knee, a gesture that causes my body to warm all over.

I hear the keys jingle in the lock again.
Leila snatches her hand away from my knee and looks up the doorway in
anticipation. I prepare myself. I’m ready to face my father.

But the person standing in the doorway
isn’t him. They’re too short to be the hulk and too round to be my father. It
takes me a moment to register who it is as she descends the stairs, her gaze
fixed on the floor.

The years have been unkind to her. Her hair
is now silver and her face
is
round, actually her
whole body is round. I can see the creases on her face, lining skin that was
once tanned and flawless.

There’s no mistaking the truth. It’s her.
The woman who spent more time with me than my mother and father combined.

“Rosa,” I say faintly, but she doesn’t hear
me. “Rosa,” I repeat, this time louder. She hurries through the archway into
the bathroom.

“She’s here to clean. We can’t talk to her,”
Leila tells me.

“That’s bullshit,” I say and instantly
regret the harshness of my words. “She will help us get out of here. She
practically raised me.”

I notice the look of pity on Leila’s face.
“Callum, she won’t help us. She is one of them,” she says the words with such
hatred, it surprises me. I can’t imagine Rosa being anything but kind.

My eyes travel to Rosa. She’s in the
bathroom scrubbing the shower, washing the remnants of my blood down the drain.
I can’t believe what Leila says is true. Surely Rosa will listen when she
realizes it’s me.

She grabs something from the cupboard and
then picks up my blood stained towel from the floor. She walks over to Leila
and hands her some clean linen. The whole time she avoids looking in my
direction.

I sit upright, waiting for her eyes to meet
mine, hoping she’ll recall exactly who I am and what I mean to her. When she
doesn’t acknowledge me I can’t hold it in any longer.

“Rosa,” I say, my voice soft. “Rosa?” I
repeat.

She keeps her eyes fixed on the floor as
she takes the dirty clothes from Leila’s basket and cradles them in her arms
together with my bloody towel.

“Rosa?” This time I hear the desperation in
my own voice. She keeps walking until she reaches the stairs. When she slowly
ascends the steps one by one I shout out, her lack of humanity aggravating me,
the realization that everything I’ve ever known is a lie. “Rosa, what the
fuck…what the fuck is wrong with you?”

I feel my heart hammering in my chest,
threatening to burst at any moment. This can’t be happening, Rosa would never
choose him over me.

“Rosa,” I say again, but this time it’s
barely a whisper.

And then she’s gone.

Leila

Sometimes I think he won’t survive it. He
will break before long. I can see the cracks beginning to show. Being trapped
down here messes with your head, your mind plays tricks on you while you wait
for something to happen. You wait for the next time he will assault your body.
You don’t hope for it, but you anticipate it. You know it’s only a matter of
time and you’re powerless to stop it.

For me this is nothing. Three days in
isolation is
tolerable, b
ut for
Callum, I can see the struggle in his eyes, the fight disappearing with each
minute that ticks by. I don’t know if he will survive this. And that scares me
most of all.

“Callum?” I question.

I can’t tell if he’s awake or not. His eyes
are closed, but I think he’s just resting.

“Mmmm,” he murmurs.

“Callum, are you okay?”

The question seems silly. All I have to do
is look at him to know he most definitely is not okay.

He shifts his body. “It’s all gravy.” He
tries to laugh, but stops himself when he feels the pain in his chest.

“I don’t understand,” I question. “Gravy?”

“I’m good.” He smiles. “It’s all good.”

I let out a sigh.

“How are you my little fighter?”

Fighter
. The
endearment doesn’t belong to me. I’ve fought nothing. I’m nothing more than a
scared little mouse.

“I’m worried about you,” I admit.

He coughs, his hands pressing against his
ribs to dull the pain. He forces his lips into a smile. “No need to worry about
me.”

“You need to eat more,” I tell him.

The maid brought our dinner an hour ago.
Some egg and potato concoction, but Callum barely touched his portion.

“I’m not hungry,” he says.

His face is still bruised, but he looks
better than yesterday. Sleeping on the bed helped. He was able to pivot his
body, his left arm still tied to the bedpost, but there was enough slack for
him to rest on the bed easily enough.

His body is still tired though. His only
exercise comes once in the morning and once in the evening when the guard
unties him. He gets twenty minutes in the bathroom, no more, no less. Other
than that he’s bound to the bedpost, trapped inside his own mind.

“I can’t believe she’s so callous.”

He’s talking about the maid again. She
brought our food and despite Callum’s repeated attempts to talk to her, she
ignored him.

It hurts him, more than anything his father
has done.

Osborne hasn’t visited again, which is
surprising. But every time the door is unlocked my body tenses waiting for him
to appear. Part of me wonders if he’s waiting for Callum’s body to heal so that
he can put him through the next round of beatings. I shudder from the thought.

“What day is it?” he asks.

I have to think about it. “It’s Sunday.”

“He should be home?”

“Yes.”

I look at the clock. It’s seven. It will be
dark out and I can hear a breeze outside and rain.
Lots and
lots of rain.
Although there are no windows in the basement, I know it’s
raining. The leak in the bathroom tells me so.

“Your friend,” I start. “He will come back
for us, no?”

Callum swallows roughly. “No,” he answers
gently, his eyes watering just the slightest. “He won’t be coming for us.”

I nod my head, but I’m not sure I truly
understand. Why would his friend not come back for us?

“My father is a powerful man, Leila. He
can’t know that Eric helped us. It wouldn’t turn out well for any of us,
including Eric.”

Callum is a good friend. He is loyal and
caring. He is everything his father is not. I love that about him.

He taps my leg with his foot. I look up at
him and he offers me a warm smile.

“
Lie
with me,” he says, holding his hand out to me. I take it and he pulls me into
his waiting embrace. He adjusts his head on the pillow, leaving enough room for
me to rest my own. I lie facing him, my hand still in his as he laces our
fingers together.

“Something’s not right,” he whispers
against my skin.

We
lie
in silence, listening to the rain leaking through the bathroom roof. I wonder
if this is the calm before the storm.