Total pages in book: 159
Estimated words: 144433 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 722(@200wpm)___ 578(@250wpm)___ 481(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 144433 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 722(@200wpm)___ 578(@250wpm)___ 481(@300wpm)
CHAPTER
TWENTY-TWO
MAEVE
For a while, I just enjoy the sweet, sweet sounds of a man being humbled by the consequences of his actions. Zhur bangs and bangs on the door, and I ignore and ignore and ignore. It's kinda fun. It makes me feel justified in my outrage. He's been using me all along, so he deserves what he gets.
But then he leaves, retreating to my barn, and I'm left alone with my thoughts again. All is quiet.
I really, really hate quiet.
I war with myself as I tidy the house. When I see he's eaten all my food but left crumbs all over the counter and the stale heel of a piece of bread? I want to fling myself out the door and choke him with it. I clean the kitchen in a frenzy of anger, pulling out some of my emergency supplies and making a soup with some local roots and flakes of freeze-dried meat. It won't be tasty, but it'll be filling. I scrub the dishes and then pick up the blankets he's somehow managed to scatter all over the house. How is it that one man has made such a mess in a few hours? Jeez. My sympathy for him dissipates with each new mess I find, and by the time I go to bed that night, I'm not even sorry that he's out in the barn.
It'll do him good.
I wake up with a few white fluffy hairs in my mouth (which I promptly spit out in horror) and peer out the window to the barn. It occurs to me that he could be an absolute prick and murder one of my cows—or all of them—as I turn on the automatic gate that lets them out into the pasture. After I count all the heads, I let out a sigh of relief...and then go picking through the barn's security feed because I'm nosy.
Zhur sits in the corner with the towel wrapped around his loins, a blank look on his face. This goes on for hours and my guilt twinges again. His fluffy head of white fur is disheveled and sticks up in wild tufts, but he's not even trying to fix it anymore. He looks like I broke him.
He looks like he doesn't have a friend in the world.
I know what that feels like. It's awful.
Shit.
I cannot back down this quickly. He needs to learn a lesson.
Even so, I grab the two biggest jumpsuits out of the laundry. I tossed them into the wash last night after they dripped all over the floor, and if they're not pretty, they're at least fresh and clean. I fold them and then add a large container of soup and a pitcher of water and set it all on the porch. If he can't help himself enough to get dressed and eat, then that's his problem.
Zhur doesn't come running the moment I open the door. It takes him a while to break from his stupor and then he gets up and urinates in the corner of my barn, at which point I turn the feed off, my stomach clenching. I also know what it's like to be on display for every single moment of your life, with no privacy to call your own.
Why does kicking out a jerk who's been nothing but mean to me bother me so much? He's threatened me with blackmail. Lied to me about paying me. Was a spoiled brat the rest of the time. Ate my food. Made a mess.
Maybe it's because I'm remembering how awful it was to be friendless and alone when I was captured and put in an alien zoo. When I sat on display without a moment's privacy or peace to myself, and that even though people were around me, I was still alone in the universe.
I was probably difficult to talk to back then, too. I distinctly remember a period in which I didn't get up from bed, didn't wash, didn't eat—until the aliens prodded me with shock-sticks to get me to do something, anything.
And while Zhur could definitely benefit from the receiving end of a shock-stick, something tells me that he's getting a wake-up call right now.
Even so, I won't be used. I might be nice, but I'm not an idiot. I'm not going to be taken advantage of again. If he apologizes, I'll talk to him and we can come to an agreement. If he doesn't have money, he can work around the farm to pay for room and board. The idea soothes some of my distress, and when I peek out on the porch later, I see the bowl is discarded, the clothing gone.
It feels thoughtless and my temper flares, but I put out a blanket on the porch for him to sleep with anyhow. Just because he's an asshole doesn't mean I have to be. I fill the bowl with another serving of soup and leave it, and go back to Nancy Fucking Drew. A short time later, I hear noise on the porch that must be Zhur picking up his dinner.