“Shower,” Bane explains sardonically. “Soap is above you, unless you’d rather I do it for you. You have ten seconds.”
I achingly scramble to obey as he trudges away. It’s the first time I’ve been alone or clean since Mr. King dragged me to this hell, and in spite of my depletion I find myself singing softly—perhaps there is a shred of humanity left in me, after all. By the time I’ve lathered and rinsed everything, I almost feel like a person. Just as I turn off the water, I see Bane’s dark shape fill the frosted glass door and a threadbare towel is snapped unceremoniously in my face.
“Towel,” he grunts before disappearing again.
Baffled by his caveman-like hospitality, I dry myself and wrap my hair in the towel. It’s surprisingly clean, if old. As I slowly and carefully make my way out of the shower, I am surprised to find a large white t-shirt and boxer briefs folded on the sink waiting for me.
Dressed, I push the bathroom door open and find myself in Bane’s utilitarian bedroom. He is sitting on the bed in gym shorts, cross-legged and shirtless, eating Chinese food out of a takeout container.
“Where’d you learn to sing like that?” He asks. When I don’t respond, Bane sighs and tosses a box at me that I barely manage to catch. “Eat.”
His eyes follow me as I precariously lower myself to sit on the floor as far away from the bed as possible. More urgent than my wariness and attraction to Bane, though, is my growling stomach. I can’t remember the last time I’ve eaten.
Peeling open the lid of the takeout container, I see that it’s chicken fried rice. My stomach lets out a hungry rumble that can probably be heard in the Empire State building. I’m about to dig in with my bare hands when a plastic spoon and paper napkin launch across the room and smack into my face.
“Ow!”
“Hey!” Bane’s voice is terse. “Manners!”
I don’t bother to shoot him a withering look. I am too hungry and use the spoon to begin shoveling food into my mouth. For a few blissful minutes, my entire world is chicken fried rice. The only thing that interrupts my ravenous gorging is Bane’s low whistle.
“Jesus,” he mutters. “My mother would whip your ass for eating like that. ‘How can you taste it if you eat so fast,’ she’d say. ‘Don’t be an animal.’”
“Yeah well my mother would call the cops on you for kidnapping, beating, and starving me.”
“Yo mama sounds lame.”
“Yo mama sounds mean.”
“Let’s not.” Bane grimaces. “And for the record, I didn’t do any of that shit to you.”
I snort into the rice. “For the record, yeah you did.”
Bane’s chopsticks become pointers. “Let’s set this fucking record straight, Red, not only because you are proving to be a monumental pain in the ass, but because I think you just might be smarter than you look. You’re obviously too smart for poor Coco, but for god’s sake don’t tell her I said so. I’m gonna level with you here because I think your higher judgment will bring you around to my way of seeing things.”
“I’ll never be your property.”
He laughs. “See, now, I admire your balls, but you’re misguided. Listen to me, I’m only going to say this once.” Bane sets down his tray of chow-mein and levels those calculating eyes on me, suddenly serious. “You keep this up, we’ll both be dead within the week. Yeah, both of us. Dead. D-E-A-D dead. I need you to chill the fuck out, and you need me to protect you. See? We need each other right now. I don’t like it, but that’s how it is. I scratch your back, you scratch my…well…whatever you don’t mind scratching.”
That boyish grin almost makes me smile in spite of my disgust. But I crush the impulse and say with boiling calm, “Please let me go, Bane.”
Bane’s grin fades and he slowly shakes his head. “No can do. Look, I don’t know what they have on you, but I am assuming that they covered their asses somehow before tossing you in here, am I correct? Some kind of threat, what’ll happen if you run away?”
I blanch, suddenly remembering Mr. King’s threat to kill Rachel.
“That’s a yes,” Bane interprets. I’m beginning to wonder if he can read minds. “Trust me, Red, they mean it. They’ll do it.”
Trust. That’s one thing I certainly can’t do.
Bane takes another bite of chow-mein, chewing it thoughtfully before continuing with his mouth full. “They’ll do it no matter what, sure as the sun shines. Death, rape, blackmail. They stand to loose too much if just one girl slips away. It’s a whole business for them, one I never wanted to be a part of, but hey, we don’t always get what we want right? Even if you did get away, they’d find a way to do whatever they promised and more. I promise you.”
He swallows, holding my gaze with his intensity. His voice drops about an octave. “And if you succeeded in escaping, it would reflect on me. Make them suspect I helped you. Then I’m a traitor. Then I’m dead. They’d love to have an excuse for me to be dead, Red. You’re their latest little attempt to trip me up, a baited hook. They want me to let you go. They want for us to fuck up and give them a reason to come after us. Hard as it may be to believe, I’m not Mr. Popular around here right now. Shocking, I know.”
Bane chuckles at his own self-assessment, and then allows the merriment to drain from his face. Something haggard and hunted lies under the jokes. I can see that he means it, and in spite of myself I feel a pang of sympathy for him.
“So you see,” he concludes, “I don’t want you here. But I sure as hell can’t let you go.”
Frustrated with myself for believing him, I let my head fall in my hands. “It’s not fair.”
He’s the one who decided to join a biker gang. If being in a gang isn’t all puppies and rainbows, it’s his own damn fault for making a bad choice. Why should I pay the price? Me, I didn’t have a choice. But I can see that it doesn’t matter: we’re both here anyway.
“Come here,” he says, patting the covers next to him.
My body seizes up. No way am I getting on that bed.
He sighs. “I’m fucking tired, Red. I wanna sleep and you’re a flight risk. So you’ll just have to sleep with me.”
My blood drains and then rushes back into my face and I shake my head vehemently.