“Mmm, this is so good,” I moan around a mouthful. “Beth, this is amazing. These are probably the best eggs I’ve ever had.”
She grins at me. “They did come out well, didn’t they? I wasn’t sure if I got the recipe right, but it seems like I might have.”
“Oh, you did,” I reassure her before I serve myself another portion. “This is great.”
Julian smiles, his eyes gleaming with warm amusement. “Hungry, my pet?” He himself has already eaten a sizable serving, but I’m on the verge of catching up to him.
“Starving,” I tell him, bringing another forkful to my mouth. “I guess I burned a lot of calories yesterday.”
“I’m sure you did,” he says, his smile widening, and then he tells Beth about how I almost won the race, leaving out the part about our fucking and my passing out afterwards.
When the breakfast is over, I’m so stuffed I can’t eat another bite. Thanking Beth for the meal, I stand up, about to go get a book for a relaxing reading session on the porch, when Julian surprises me by wrapping his hand around my wrist. “Wait, Nora,” he says softly, pulling me back down into my seat. “There’s one more thing Beth prepared today.” And he shoots Beth an indecipherable look—at which point she immediately gets up and goes into the kitchen.
“Um, okay.” I’m beyond confused. She had prepared something, but didn’t serve it during the actual meal?
At that moment, Beth comes back to the table, carrying a tray with a large chocolate cake—a cake with a bunch of burning candles.#p#分页标题#e#
“Happy birthday, Nora,” Julian says with a smile as Beth places the cake in front of me. “Now make a wish and blow out those candles.”
* * *
I blow out the candles on autopilot, barely registering the fact that it takes me three attempts to do this. Beth cheers, clapping her hands, and I hear the sounds as though they’re coming from a distance. My mind is whirling, yet I feel oddly numb, as if nothing can touch me right now. All I can think about, all I can concentrate on is the fact that it’s my birthday.
My birthday. It’s my birthday. Today I turned nineteen.
The realization makes me want to scream.
I met Julian shortly before my last birthday—and he brought me to this island shortly thereafter. If it’s my birthday today, then nearly a year has passed since my abduction—since I’ve been here, at Julian’s mercy and entirely isolated from the rest of the world.
A year of my life has passed in captivity.
I feel like I’m suffocating, like all air had left the room, but I know it’s just an illusion. There’s plenty of oxygen here; I simply can’t seem to breathe in any.
“Nora?” Beth’s voice somehow penetrates the din in my ears. “Nora, are you all right?”
I finally manage to draw in some much-needed air, and I look up from the cake. Beth is staring at me with a puzzled frown on her face, and Julian is no longer smiling. Instead he looks like a dangerous stranger again, his gaze filled with something dark and disturbing.
Holding myself together with superhuman effort, I squeeze out a shaky smile. “Of course. Thank you for the cake, Beth.”
“We wanted to surprise you,” she says, her features smoothing out as she takes my words at face value. “I hope you have some room left for dessert. Chocolate cake is your favorite, right?”
The ringing in my ears intensifies. “Um, yes.” Despite my best attempts, my voice sounds choked. “And you definitely surprised me.”
“Leave us, Beth,” Julian says sharply, glancing at her. “Nora and I need to be alone right now.”
Beth blinks, obviously taken aback by Julian’s tone. I’ve never heard him speak like that to her before. Nevertheless, she obeys immediately, practically running up the stairs to her room.
I haven’t seen Julian this angry in a while and I know I should be frightened, but at this moment, I can’t seem to bring myself to care about what’s to come. Every muscle in my body is trembling with the effort to contain the terrible storm I can feel brewing inside me, and it’s a relief to have Beth away from here. A year. It’s been a fucking year. The rage that’s building inside me is unlike anything I’ve ever experienced before; it’s like a dam has broken and would not be contained. A red mist descends on me, veiling my vision, and the ringing in my ears grows louder as my emotions spin out of control.
As soon as Beth is out of sight, I explode. I’m no longer rational or sane; instead I’m fury personified. I grab at the nearest thing I can reach—the chocolate cake—and throw it across the room, the dark-colored icing splattering everywhere. My plate and cup follow, hitting the wall and shattering into a million pieces, and all the while, I hear screaming, coming at me from far away. Some still-functioning part of my brain realizes that it’s me—that it’s my own screams and curses I’m hearing—but I can’t stop it any more than I can contain a typhoon. All the anger, terror, and frustration of the past year has boiled to the surface, erupting in a lava of fierce rage.