Shattered

Chapter 46

I just stared.

No words came from me, I was rendered entirely and completely speechless. In front of me, I was looking at someone who just made a fool of Lucas by simply being in this room. My eyes were wide in disbelief and shock, but in my mind, it made sense.

There couldn't have been a way she made it out with him here.

"Nakoa, what the fuck?" My words came out separated, like they were each their own sentence. She grinned at me, mischief in her expression. And I continued to stare, looking over her body, which was hardly clothed at all, only wearing a maroon sweater, obviously too big, and also very obviously not wearing a bra.

"Pretty cool, huh?" She winked, then bent down to pet Nova. "You got any hairpins in here? I can get you out of that," she said with a point to the handcuff that restrained my arm, slowly becoming more painful.

"I think there's some in the blue bag on the sink."

Nakoa was quick to turn and skip into the bathroom, where I heard her rummage for a minute, obviously excited that whatever her plan was, it was currently working. I still couldn't believe it, and I don't think I could be blamed for that. It never crossed my mind that a trick could be used as a way out.

"You're going to have to give me the rundown on how you pulled this off," I called to her while shrugging the laptop away, reaching to return it to the nightstand. I didn't think about what would happen next, I only thought of what would happen right now, in the coming moments.

"Well, I hid from Lucas, that's the basic version of it."

I glanced to the dogs, confused. "Couldn't he have just used his dogs to sniff you out or something?" I don't know how dogs work, if that was just something from the movies, or if they were even the breed for that.

"That's why I'm wearing Lucas's sweater." She reached for my arm, hairpin between her fingers, and began working through the lock. "I also took his underwear, because I didn't want to risk wearing my own or going without anything at all. Oh, and I used his stuff when I showered last night, just to ensure all of my scent would be covered." Her voice was light and cheerful as she spoke, strongly contrasting with the way she spoke yesterday.

It had to be the stress of the situation, I concluded. She wasn't like this before New Year's, and all that had changed since then was that she now she lived in isolation, apart from Lucas, and was frequently assaulted, in multiple ways. Let it be known, though, that I did not think of myself as above Nakoa, or on some pedestal. But our lives were still different. Our captors were different. Our personalities were different. The outcome was destined to be different, yet I never thought this would be the result of her experience.

I wondered how I looked to her. How she thought this shaped me, and what she thought of the person I was slowly becoming.

One thing I knew for sure, however, is that regardless of if we stay here or escape, we've been forever changed, and it would be impossible to return to the lives we had lived before. When the time came, I would mourn that old life.

"It might take me a bit to figure this out, I only learned to pick locks on doors, not handcuffs," Nakoa explained, interpreting my silence as impatience or perhaps, frustration, when I was only stuck in my thoughts, as I always got lost in them.

"Do what you have to, I'm just tired of getting locked like this," I said, wishing it were Chandler who got detained to a bed so often. "Just when I thought he might finally stop," I added in a soft whisper.

His trust in me was slowly coming back, recovering from the destruction I caused when Nyx told me those codes, so I shouldn't be surprised that he left me like this, but that doesn't mean I can't be upset by it. He knew how much I hated being locked in a room, especially confined to the bed. I didn't see a point in why he did it this time, except to spite me, unless he suspected that Nakoa could possibly be in the house. Where had they even gone to look for her?