Rose Red: Model 85001

Chapter Thirteen

The next morning Van got up early. He couldn't sleep. He came into the kitchen and half expected to find Hitomi there making waffles like he had when they had had visitors, but today the kitchen was empty. Rather than waking Hitomi, Van considered making something for himself for breakfast, but discarded the idea. He wasn't hungry.

Instead, he put on a pair of work gloves and a jean jacket and went out to the garden. He pulled weeds until the sun heat up his black hair up like the asphalt. Then he heard his stomach growl. He needed to eat. He put away his tools and went back into the house.

Hitomi wasn't in the kitchen. It was almost ten. Van was surprised. Hitomi was usually up by then. Van's first thought was that she was probably sick. Van went up the tower and knocked on her door. No answer. He knocked again and again – nothing. Finally, he pushed the door open a crack and whispered, "Hitomi, are you okay?" No answer. Was she in the bathroom? He didn't hear the water running. He opened the door the rest of the way and saw that her bed was empty. It hadn't even been slept in. The bathroom door was wide open and she wasn't there either.

Van went back down the stairs and tore through the house. She wasn't in the kitchen, the front room or anywhere. This was ridiculous. She had to be somewhere. Her bracelet didn't let her leave the perimeter without his permission.

Van felt sick.

It was then that he remembered that he had changed her perimeter and she was now allowed to go as far as town. He also remembered that he hadn't even peeked in on her when he got home last night before he went to bed. Who knew where she was? She could have even left the night before and he wouldn't have even known.

He pulled out his pocket watch that corresponded with her bracelet and punched a few buttons. In a few moments a channel opened and he said into the watch, "Hitomi, where are you?"

"Van?" he heard her mumble. "I'm here. Stop yelling."

"I'm not yelling," Van said calmly, but he heard his voice booming through the hallway. Was that how much noise this function made? But, if he could hear her bracelet then that meant that she was still in the house. The noise was coming from the direction of his bedroom. Van started down the hall and looked in his room. It was empty.

"Hitomi," he said into his watch. The noise was deafening and it was coming from the spare room. Van turned off the function and opened the door.

There was Hitomi, lying on her stomach with her head at the foot of the bed and her feet resting at the head. Her body was jostling slightly, almost like she was laughing, but it didn't take Van two minutes to realize that the annoyingly loud wristband wasn't what she was making her shake. Something was wrong.

"Why are you sleeping in here?" Van asked cautiously.

It was then that he noticed that Hitomi was rearranging some scraps of paper on the carpet. Her long fingers crumpled them and dropping them in turn. "I couldn't sleep in my room," she finally answered.

Van sat on the floor and picked up one of the pieces of paper. It said, 'Did you find the money yet?'

"What's this?"

"Allen left them for me – tucked in my drawers."

"What does he mean, 'Did you find the money yet?'"

Hitomi snatched it out of his grasp and crushed it between her palms with the other notes. "He's a pig," she said weakly.

Van stared at her strangely. She was acting weird. "He left all of those? Can I see them?"

"No," she said. "He would only poison your brain and make you feel as bad as he makes me feel."

"Why?"

"I think he wants to buy my contract from you."

Van fell back on his wrists and thought about that. "I won't sell you."

"I know. That man just creeps me out," she said, flipping onto her back and expressing her concerns more to the ceiling than Van.

It made Van resent the ceiling. "You know, Hitomi," he said, venting a little. "If you didn't belong to me, then you could deal with this on your own, but because you're mine – you have to let me in on your problem. Please, can you show me the notes he left you?"
Hitomi gave them to him, clearly because she didn't think she had a choice when he put it that way. Van didn't like that, but took them and read them with a grave face.

"What money? If he wants to buy you, why do you have to find money?"

"I don't really get what he has in mind … exactly," Hitomi answered. "And I don't care. I don't want anything to do with that guy and I won't do what he wants. I am going to burn these and forget I ever saw them, just like I wish that I had never laid eyes on that sack of crap."

Van wanted to interrupt, but stayed silent, because what she went on to say was too interesting.

"Just think, Van. If I'd met you before I met him, don't you think I would have fallen in love with you on sight?"

"You would have?"

She wasn't listening. She was too exhausted. Now he could tell that she hadn't slept much that night. She had driven herself crazy looking at Allen's notes and wondering what they meant. She wasn't saying things she would normally say. "Do you think I would fall in love with you if I didn't have all these weird fears about being betrayed, about being sold again, about being abused?"

Van paused for a second. She was clearly so sleep deprived that talking to her about this now felt sort of like taking advantage of a drunken person, but if he didn't talk now, it would get harder to talk in the future. And then things would turn out just like one of those Asian dramas. He cleared his throat. "I don't think it matters when you meet people. If you're going to love them, you'll love them whenever you meet them."

"Hmm." Hitomi turned her head and her green eyes met his brown ones. "I shouldn't be talking to you like this."

"It's against the rules?" Van asked.

"Sort of. If a Sleeping Beauty becomes too emotionally dependent on her owner so that she becomes a liability rather than an asset, then the owner may return her for a partial refund. Do you want to return me?"

"No." He laughed since she was clearly joking. "I was just thinking. I never read the rule book. I'm allowed to ask you to do anything, right?"

"You're not allowed to ask me to hurt myself or others. Dirty dishwater is the limit for how much I'm allowed to suffer, but I'm sure an owner could think of a million ways to be cruel to their woman if they put some effort into it. I'm sure that that's how it was when I was with Allen. You know, Van," she said quietly. "I don't love him anymore. All it took was one glance across the dining room and poof – I didn't love him anymore."

"That's good to hear, since I can't let you be with him anyway," Van said – relieved that she said something like that before he launched in on all the things he'd learned from Dryden the night before. "He's married, you know."

Hitomi turned onto her stomach and moved onto her knees. Scratching her bedhead, she mumbled, "That's just like him. I'll bet she's rich."

"Yeah."

"I'll bet she was beautiful, but now she looks like a washcloth that's been used too many times."

"Yeah."

"I'll bet he fools around on the side and she can't do anything about it and instead of getting ticked off – she just takes it."

"Maybe."

"I'll bet she used to love something about him, and now she can't remember what."

"Stop," Van said sternly. "Today I'm going to take you to town for breakfast. There's this guy I want you to meet. He's a private investigator who works for Allen's wife. He wants to talk to you about Allen."

"I don't think I have anything to tell him, and I don't want to get mixed up with any of Allen's messes. Yuck."

"What about me?"

Hitomi turned to him and looked at him quizzically.

"I want you to talk to him," Van said persuasively. "I want to find out what Allen did to you that made you so messed up."

Hitomi started laughing. "And why do you want to clear my head? What does it matter if I'm too messed up to trust you? I'll still do anything you ask. You bought me!"

Van crinkled up his forehead. "I hate that. I hate it when you say that and I hate it more when I have to order you to do something. Can't you see that something's wrong with you? We need to find out what that brat did to you, so that you can get over it. Right now, you're like a ghost that I pulled out of a coffin. Do you think I want to leave you like this?"

Hitomi stared at him.

"I want to help. I went to town last night to talk to that private investigator. You think I went to go see Celena? I didn't. I didn't see one hair of her head. She was somewhere with Merle. Or oh? You think I like Merle. I couldn't sort things out with her. We couldn't come to a compromise and my little crush on her step-mum didn't help things."

Hitomi's eyes were like street lamp rings turned sideways. "You're admitting that you liked Celena?"

"Why should I be ashamed of it? I didn't do anything wrong. I liked her - I didn't sleep with her." Van got to his feet. "I was only thinking of you when I went out last night."

Hitomi's cheeks were ruddy and Van's heart beat felt like a jackhammer while he waited for her to answer him. "Does that mean you like me?"

"Yeah, I like you. Actually, it's really more than that. Haven't you seen my feelings for you? Do you really think what's going on is friendship? But … I can't even ask you to like me back, because it would feel like an order to me. Get dressed and I'll drive us to town."

Van left the room and put his work gloves back on. He paused for a second to see if Hitomi would follow him out of the room, but he counted to ten and then twenty and she didn't come. His pride wouldn't let him wait forever. He went out to the yard and started digging a hole. He was planning on planting a cherry tree for her.

Hitomi sat in the spare bedroom after Van left and crawled back under the covers. She put the pillow over her head and breathed out of a crack between the pillow and the mattress. It had honestly never occurred to her that Van liked her, but she should have known.

What other owner in the world would cheerfully pay back a purchased woman's debt? No one. Anyone else would have whored her off in the form of renting her out until the money was paid off. Either that or he would just sell her for a profit as fast as he could and start again with someone new.

There were other things should have tipped her off, too. Van didn't go into town – hardly ever. If it wasn't to pick up clients, he'd always take her with him. She should have figured out that he was no longer roosting (or wishing to roost) outside Celena's door. All that Celena talk must have just been grieving her loss while he made new memories with Hitomi.

She pulled the pillow off her head. Did she like Van back?

When she first here, she had just been grateful that he wanted her as a permanent kind of employee rather than a sex toy. So, she got used to that idea. In her mind, she expected that one day he would want to marry someone. She assumed that the time they spent together now improving his place was a step in that direction – though not a step towards actually finding a woman. One day Van would want Hitomi to do the work of the place while letting his wife play hostess. Hitomi shuddered at the idea of listening to the shrill instructions of some picky outsider instead of Van's mellow requests. That had to mean that she had never really wanted him to get married.

That didn't mean that she wanted him herself and the idea of his falling in love with her had never cross her mind. But why else would a man help with the dishes if he wasn't interested in the woman he was helping?

Hitomi looked out the window at the open prairie. That was what the problem was. There were no women around here. Van probably had no intention of taking a wife aside from her. As much as Hitomi wanted to avoid the thought, he had probably bought her to be his girlfriend, without knowing whether she was right for him or not. He had been that desperate for someone to come live out here and he had the example of Dilandau and Celena to give him courage to do something a trifle unconventional. That was it. It was his unrequited love with Celena that made him buy her. And even though Hitomi was the cheapest model on the floor, Van had paid all the money he had to buy her.

This was a bad situation.

If it had been someone else, would he have fallen in love with her instead of Hitomi?

She shook her head and pushed herself off the edge of the bed. Even though Allen had tainted her room with his scum, she still had to get her clothes. Up the stairs she went. She picked her clothes and changed into them quickly. She didn't stop to check her hair or even put on another layer of deodorant. Van was waiting and she didn't want to make him wait any longer than she had to.

After all she could see him in the yard from her window in the tower. His back was to her and he was digging a hole.

And he looked pathetic.

He was heaving the dirt so sloppily he was getting it all over him, but that wasn't what made him look pitiable. It was his shoulders. Van had great shoulders – straight angles where they should be straight and rounded where they should have been too. Out in the real world, those shoulders would have been the undoing of countless women, but out here – they didn't count for much. The only person around to look at him adoringly was her – and it didn't matter how adorable he was – she didn't want to do it.

She flicked her chin towards the door against the sight of him when her brain said to her, 'Hitomi, he's lonely.'

She glanced out the window. He was indeed alone – probably more alone than anyone she had ever met before.

Since it was her own brain she could easily retort fiercely, 'It could have been anyone and he probably would have fallen in love with her.'

But her brain wouldn't let her have it her way. 'So?' it said. 'Can't you just count your lucky stars?'

"And when someone else comes along?" she asked out loud.

Her brain went silent. It couldn't respond to that. As a purchased woman, if he didn't also make her his wife, he could have her and a wife and there wouldn't be anything she could say about it.

It was better to play it safe.

She shrugged her shoulders and hopped down the stairs. She'd just forget Van had said anything and things would go back to the way they were before. Then her brain would stop going in circles and she could focus on the jobs he had for her to do around the house. At least the house wouldn't turn on her.

Author's Notes: Isn't January the dreariest month of the year? I have no beta reader and tonight I'm a little worried that I've made a mistake. Thanks to everyone who reads and REVIEWS. I like reviews.