Different.

Chapter 13: Unlikely Partners

Chapter 13

Unlikely Partners

I really should've thought this through.

But I guess in the heat of the moment, emotions flying and my stubborn head still very much in tact, there was no way to know how the only sound would be the constant splattering of a leaky pipe in the far corner and our all but silent breaths.

I was just trying to do the right thing by him but, god did he have to make it so awkward?

"So..." I cleared my throat and scratched at a phantom itch on the back of my head.

I mean what is there to talk about with a guy who's been locked up for years because of something he didn't do? The weather? Last nights game?

His eyes, his icy blue eyes, they never once left my face.

I squirmed under his gaze and looked at everything but him. The packed dirt floor, the rusted part at the bottom of the bars of his cage, the crack in the ceiling.

He hadn't said a thing.

I'd been sitting in there with him for maybe half an hour, and no matter what I tried to say, he just kept staring at me like he could see into my soul.

It gave me the creeps.

Maybe it was just me, but I was practically suffocating on the uncomfortable tension in the room. Actually, scratch that, it was definitely just me because he seemed more puzzled than anything else.

"Do you-" I started to try again, but he finally spoke, cutting me off.

"Why are you here?" He asked gruffly.

I blinked, surprised, and forced myself to look into his eyes.

Despite the fact that they were shrouded by darkness and bags, despite the fact that he was so slim I probably could've snapped him into two pieces with my elbow, there was something dangerously enticing in his eyes. A fire in them that I doubted would ever really extinguish.

"I..." My voice was nothing more than a hoarse whisper.

Why was I there?

He raised a brow expectantly. "Well? Obviously not for the riveting conversation."

"I just uh...well I figured it must get kinda..." I cleared my throat again, swallowing the idiotic lump that had quickly formed and looking up at the zig zagging crack again. "lonely, being in here."

He laughed.

Yes, that's right, laughed.

To say I was thrown off guard would be a bit of an understatement.

As if we were two long time friends sipping lemonade on the porch and I'd mentioned some old raunchy joke we shared.

"What?" I asked, looking back up at him hesitantly.

When a guy who's been locked in a cage for years and tortured to the point of delirium starts laughing, I was guessing it was not a good thing.

"You. You you're funny," He said, still laughing dryly under his breath.

"I don-" But he cut me off again.

"Why should you help me? I'm a traitor. A liar. A monster. Scum." He hissed, spitting out all of the horrible things I'm sure had been hardwired into his brain by that point.

I peered up at his dry, cracked face, and whispered gently, "I don't think that's true. I don't think it's true at all."

He just looked at me for a moment, unsure of whether or not to trust me.