Page 19 of Hunger
His eyes wander between the men, my face and my hand as I write, his subtle but singular scent slipping through the air towards me.
Every time he leans his weight forwards on the table, I’m aware of the honed bulk of muscle that makes up his torso, figuratively kicking my own little ass for wondering if the lower half is equally as impressive.
As I write down some suggestion about a contact in some government office, my phone, on silent, lights up, and the preview of a message appears.
I only see four words, but they make everything around them dissolve to white, entrapping me in a bubble with the person who sent them, with only the sound of the raging beat of my heart and the sickening crawl of malaise into my belly for company.
I see you. Whore.
The vision of Micah, his ocean-blue eyes, his golden blond hair and perfect skin, his outer beauty a foil for the rageful maniac inside, explodes before me like a keg of gunpowder as the insidious creep of his obsession makes its way inside me.
He knows the effect his words have on me, or rather the words one of the sinister members of his family is enjoying sending to me on his twisted behalf.
I guess this is what entertainment looks like for Micah Korhonen when you’re incarcerated, and he knows exactly what effect he’ll cause.
He saw with his own eyes the way I would cry, beg, bargain for him to leave me alone, threaten to go far away, to call the police, to tell everyone he knows.
He witnessed my distress, my tears, my torment, my transparent attempt at calm. And as I learned later in the few therapy sessions I could afford, he feasted off every morsel of my distress, my tears his sustenance, my pain the charge of a battery.
He knows that a single message like this will leave me weakened from panic for hours… if I let him. I mean, he is in jail. He can’t hurt me from there, and I don’t think even his rich degenerate cousins would risk hurting me for him.
He wants to see the reaction.
Don’t give it to him.
I inhale the words my therapist spoke to me, lifting my fingers to the screen and blocking the number. I don’t even know if that works with anonymous calls, but I do it each time anyway, until they get too bad and I have to change my number again.
That’s what I don’t get. There are only a few people who I give my number out to, and yet he seems to find it each time…
I turn my phone over, realizing I missed at least a minute of conversation. I stare back down at the page and the words which came to a halt mid-sentence, before looking up, only instead of seeing the men talking, my gaze is caught by that of Greyson who is staring straight at me.
For a second, I think he might be mad at my lapse in concentration, but there’s something else altogether chiseled into the smooth angles of his handsome face…
He inspects me, concern causing his eyes to darken as they wander over my surely ashen face.
I swallow, collecting myself, my fingers wrapping more tightly around my pen, as I look up at Ian who is speaking and try to follow what he’s saying.
I write a few lines only for the door of the meeting room to open and a man to enter, one whose presence is immediately so bold that it shifts the air in the room.
It’s the same man I saw watching us on Saturday—the tall, handsome one, early fifties, roughly.
As he enters the room, his footsteps seem to slow as he sees me, his turbulent gaze storming between me and Greyson before he finally approaches the table, greeting the men with authority.
He takes a seat in the large leather desk chair at the far side opposite me, sliding his hands onto the table as he regards me with about the same warmth he was observing me and Greyson with after I spilled my juice all over him.
I prepare to be introduced, but instead, a stone-faced Greyson says, “That’s all we need from you, Indigo. Go and find Donna. She’ll set you up with a computer. I need your notes typed up in Word format and emailed to me. She’ll give you the address.”
All trace of warmth seems to have been siphoned from Grey’s face, so instead of questioning him, I take my notepad, getting to my feet.
“It was nice to meet you,” I say to the men, who all respond courteously, but for one at the far end, spying me with about as much civility as a wolf tracking a deer he’s intent on consuming.
I leave the room, feeling Greyson’s eyes on me as I close the door.
6
Indigo
Istare at the gold-rimmed clock on the wall, the big hand approaching five.