Hi all! New chapter, sorry it's not too long. As Always, reviews are appreciated, it's what keeps me writing.

Chapter 27

I munch on an orange that the flight attendants had brought back for me. They were quick to run to the market and get enough food to hold me over until Brea gets here, I have until tomorrow to be by myself until Brea arrives by plane. I have a few chicken breasts, some fruit, carrots, celery and cucumbers. They got me some bread, butter, milk, eggs, and potatoes as well.

I never dreamed they would bring back so much food for me. I have clean water, or so they told me, and I should be okay until Brea comes.

It has only been a couple of hours since I got off the phone with Brea, and since the flight attendants had said their final goodbyes, but I have never felt more alone than I do now. The cabin is warm and cozy, but the outside is eerie and creepy. I don't know what kind of animals live out there, and I don't want to find out. I don't know what is more frightening, the uncertainty of what is out there, or the reality that I know more than I imagine is out there. How am I going to survive the night alone with all the nighttime noise?

I'm tired, but fear drives me awake, the occasional snap of a branch, the crunch of the leaves under somethings feet, whether it is a squirell or something bigger I don't know. I cuddle up with the blanket that Marrah gave me, and rest my head on my purse that Brea had given me on the hard wood floor. I don't have a bed, I don't have anything, just like when I was free.

It's funny how when you are free, you have hardly enough to survive, but when you are cative there are endless amounts of utilities that go towards comfort. I close my eyes for some sleep, but it never visits. I'm lucky to snooze for five minutes.

I watch the hours tick by little by little on a lonely clock that hangs on the wall. I wonder who forgot to take it with them. What they look like, do they have a family, kids? I'll never know. All I know is that Brea is on his way right now, he's on the plane, I'm where I need to be, and he'll be here tomorrow afternoon. I think I can make it until then. I know I can.

If only the sun would come up. I think I would sleep better. My eyes flutter open and shut until the morning light floods through my window. I feel safer now that things are starting to become visible. I get up out of my corner I have been huddled in and walk over to the kitchen window. The light from the sun shines through the cracks in the treetops subtly. Little by little the day gets brighter, the minutes turn into hours. I try to eat while I wait for Brea, and when I find nothing else to do, I decide to take a walk.

I unlock the door and open it, it's warm enough outside to not catch a cold. I put on my jacket and walk down the stairs, wondering which way I should go. I decide that it would be best to avoid any traffic along the road and head towards the backyard, where the wooded area stretches for miles.

In a few months this will be a difficult, or even impossible task. Walking softly along the stream so I can follow it back to the cabin, I watch closely each step that I take. The ground is uneven, rocky, and unstable. Stepping too harshly on a rock can cause it to topple over, I learned after almost falling in the water.

I walk for a while, until I reach a very large tree, then decide to head back to the cabin. The sun is getting to be higher in the sky, with any form of optimism, Brea will soon be here, and then I can resume my life, or rather, start over with him.

Trailing back to the cabin, the sun gets higher, the air warmer, and I peel off my jacket and tie it around my waist so I don't have to carry it in my arms. I walk among the stream, following it back until the cabin comes back into view, and I can tell already it's not empty.

A blue sedan sits to the left of the cabin, parked in the little flattened spot off the dirt road. Someone is there. My heart panics. I am not alone.

I creep up to the cabin, lightly stepping as quietly as I can, making sure not to step on any sticks or twigs. Once reach the cabin I stand on my toes and try to peak in the window, I don't see anyone. I walk around to a different window and look again. There is someone standing in the kitchen, I can barely see since the cabin is high up, the foundation of it has it raised off the ground. The shadow moves, and I strain to get a better look.

It is built like Brea, but it not dressed like him. This person is clean shaven, his hair almost nonexistent on top of his head.

It's not Brea.

Brea has a rugged look to him. He has longer hair, enough that I can run my fingers through it. Brea has a beard, one that is trimmed frequently and kept at a short length, but covers most of his face. This man has no facial hair at all.

It can't be Brea.

I grab a stick, I don't have any other weapon, I don't even have a phone. My phone is inside, it's charging in an electrical outlet. I then pick up a small pebble, and throw it at the window that would open up to the bedroom in the back of the cabin, then hurry back to the window by the kitchen.

No one is in there now, whoever it is must have gone to investigate the noise. It's now or never, and I can't live out in the woods. Brea will be here soon, if anything happens, well I just hope that he finds me, whatever the condition I am in.

I push the door open silently, it doesn't creak like I thought it would, like the first time I entered the building. I don't shut it behind me, if I would need to run, I have a clear access to get away. I just hope this person is not armed.

Why are they here anyway? What do they want with an old house like this? There isn't anything here, except me.

I can hear the man moving around the cabin, my heart races. I know he's in the bedroom, so I walk over to the door, I hope I'm able to knock him out before h even sees me. I'm almost there when the bedroom door swings open and I'm face to face with him. He smiles, he looks familiar, his eyes, they're the same color as Brea's.

"Well I'm glad you're here, I hadn't known where you went," he says with a grin on his face. It is Brea, I don't even recognize him.

"Brea?" I ask. I'm astonished, he has changed so much in such little time. It's only been a few days, but he has never looked so different without his locks of hair and his clean shaven beard.

He nods his head, "yes it's me, what's the matter you don't recognize me?"

"I didn't at first, no. You are - you look so different."

"Yeah, well I had to lay low. They were searching for me, they were going to arrest me."

"For what?"

"For stealing property." It takes me a second to realize he's talking about me, and I was - and still technically am- the property of that horrid place. As much as I want to deny it, if they find me, they can probably take me back and breed me like a dog.

His grim expression fills the room, I don't want him to worry, we are here now, in a better place. In a place that is free, they won't take advantage of me here, and they wont be after him. But I know he chose to hide here in case someone did decide to come after us. We are outlaws, we can't trust anybody, not even here.

But I trusted the flight attendants, and they more than anybody were capable of shipping me back to where I came from. I am property after all, in America at least.

I close the distance between us, brushing my lips against his he welcomes my kiss and deepens it. It feels so different, I don't feel the constant scratch of his beard against my lips. I feel nothing but skin now. It's so weird, but good. He looks and feels so different without all of his hair.

"I can't wait until we can start again," I say when he breaks the kiss. He chuckles, the laugh reaching his eyes for the first time in a long time.

"I know, but first we need to get some supplies, something to trim it with. We have nothing, but we are going to go shopping.

"When?" I don't want to picky or seem spoiled, but I'd like to have a bed to sleep in again.

"Right now, we'll go get some food, some furniture. I can't afford everything right now, I need to start job searching, but I brought the basics from home, I have clothes, I brought you more, since you lost all of yours being chased. I have pillows and blankets, but everything else we're going to need."

"Okay, let me get my bag and we'll go."

"Alright, let's go, I'll be in the car waiting. We need to go to the bank and exchange the American money we have for their currency. Then we can go get everything."

"But what are we going to do if we buy furniture, how are we going to get it here, the car isn't big enough."

"We'll figure it out, they have to have a vehicle that will haul it out here, get your stuff Adley." I grab my purse and follow Brea out the door. He grabs the key from his pocket and locks the door behind him. I head down the stairs and open the car door and get inside.

"Where did you get the car?" I ask.

"I rented it, it's cheaper than buying it over here," he says.

"And the key to the house? How did you get that when you were in a different country?"

"They mailed it to me."

"Oh."

"Don't worry Adley, I have everything under control."

"I know you do, I was just curious that's all." Brea just looks at me and shrugs. I guess it's alright for me to be a little curious. How can you not be. There's nothing to think about when everything is taken care of things for you.

We drive to the bank, Brea tells me to wait in the car. He comes out a few minutes later, counting money and then shoving it in his wallet and shoving his wallet back into his pocket. He hops in the car and we make our first stop at the furniture store.

"We don't have enough money right now for all the furniture we had back at my home. We can get a table and chairs, and a couch with a built in bed, that's all we can afford right now."

"I understand," I say. I was hoping for a real bed, but this will do. Anything ought to be better than what I slept on last night, which would be the floor. We try out a couple of models and then decide on a dark brown one couch and a pine table with four chairs. Brea arranges for the furniture to be delivered to the house in a couple of hours and then pays for it at the counter.

We then go to the hardware store. The cabin has a wood stove, and we can't afford electricity right now, since Brea has not gotten a job yet, we have to be conservative. Brea picks out a nice chainsaw and an axe to cut and split wood. We can use the wood to have warmth and during the night. We pick up matches and lighter fluid as well to help get the fire started.

Our last stop is the grocery store, we pick up more food, mostly canned. There is no refrigerator, so we will have to rely on the coming cold weather if we want something to stay cold. It's a little warm yet, but the winter will soon begin. Brea tells me it will get cold enough we will be able to have meat in the winter, we will just have to store it somehow so wild animals don't get to it.

We load all of our new belongings into the car and drive back to the cabin. I unload all of the groceries into the cabin, while Brea heads off to the woods to cut down trees.

He picks a tall maple near the cabin, only a few hundred feet out, long enough that it wouldn't fall on the cabin when it is cut down. He stays near the cabin, so I can see him. The tall giant falls and he begins cutting away at the tops of the branches, stacking the wood as he cuts it, it is thin enough at the top he can just bring it in without having to split it.

There's a knock on the door, the furniture is here. I answer the door, tell the guys to give me a minute, and pass by them to go get Brea. He comes inside and signs the forms, then tells them where to put it inside the house. They do all the moving, neither of us have to lift a finger.

Everything is coming into place, little by little. Brea is not finished with cutting wood, but returns inside once it starts getting dark, bringing in some of the wood and starting a fire in the stove. I help him carry some inside, and then we begin to set everything up, putting sheets on the foldout mattress of the couch, pillowcases on the pillows, we crawl into bed, it's been a long day. It's time to sleep.

We pull the covers over our heads, cuddle up to each other for warmth, and fall asleep in each other's arms. I almost forgot how good it feels to sleep in his arms, with his body against mine, I am safe from the world. He is my protector, my savior.

He has saved me from so much, from living a life as a dog, from being beaten, harshly abused, raped. He has taken me away from it all, and for that I can never be grateful enough. He may not want me fully, he may not want this child, or any of this to happen, but he has given everything up, for me. I can't ever thank him enough.

I am awake before Brea, he is sound asleep, and I decide to let him be. I warm up a pan, and start frying some scrambled eggs, I only wish that I had some bacon I could fry with it. No more luxury dinners, not for a while. Not without meat, not without any refrigeration. We need to stay under the radar for a little bit, make sure that they stop looking for us. In the meantime Brea can find a job and we can live more comfortably then.

I leave the food to cook for a while and start unpacking everything Brea had not unpacked yesterday. I might as well do that, he will have a long day today splitting wood. I unpack his clothes and put them in the kitchen cupboard doors for now, there isn't anywhere else to put them, but I'm guessing he wont want them to lay in his suitcase until we can afford more furniture.

There's enough clothes here to last us a while, I don't know how we're going to wash them though without a washer and a dryer. I separate my clothes and Brea's, then turn my attention back to the suitcases.

There is one more left to unpack, but when I open it, I see that it's not clothes. It's full of papers. There is a stack that is just regular printer paper, nothing special about it, but there are other stacks, folders, papers filled with small print that spark my curiosity. I flip through them, the folders, trying to decipher words that are too big, I can't sound them out. There is a picture of each one of a girl, along with what looks like a name, an age and whatever other information I can't figure out. It almost looks like a profile.

As I sift through the papers, I realize that some of these girls look familiar. I recognize them from the facility where Brea rescued me from. Are these all girls that he has slept with? There can't be this many of them. Brea was very experienced when I met him, he knew when I was faking it, he knew that at first he wasn't pleasuring me, he could read my mind. But it would be impossible for him to sleep with this many women, he would have to bring two or three home a day for years in order to achieve this kind of sexual history. There must be three thousand pictures of girls here, not all of them have folders, some are just single sheets of paper. Some have really thick folders. I find everyone I've ever seen there, I find familiar faces, acquaintances, my neighbors in the cell block, Analia, Elodie, they are all here.

A creak in the floorboards makes me jump out of my skin. Brea is up. Shit. He's going to be mad at what I found. Maybe. But not as mad as I am for this...this, whatever the fuck this is. I hear him open the door to go outside. He must need to use the bathroom. I come out into the kitchen holding a small stack of the folders that were in his suitcase. I need evidence at hand. I stand waiting for him to return, flip the food around before he comes back, then wait for the door to open.

He climbs up the stairs and the door swings open, revealing his clean shaven face, his shorter hair, his blue eyes and muscular arms. His eyes lock onto the folders in my hands, and they widen. He is afraid, or surprised, or something, something that I have not seen much in him, something I haven't seen at all.

"What the hell are these?" I ask, holding the folders in my outstretched hands. He looks at me in shock, as if I'm holding the raw bloody heart of a bear in my hand. He shakes his head slowly from side to side, "I- I don't -"

"Don't get me started Brea! Of course you know what the fuck they are!" I scream, throwing the folders across the room, directly at him. The papers fly out and scatter across the floor, creating a wall of tension between us that is even more sharp. "Now, what I need to know is what the fuck these things are doing here? Why do you have them?"

His shoulders sag, all the air exhales from his lungs. "Adley, I don't know what I can do to make this go away, I can't help what happened in the past, but remember where we are now. Remember that."

"I need you to tell me what the fuck these folders are doing here. Why do I see all of these familiar faces from that facility? Why do I see Elodies face, and Analia's? What the fuck are they? Did you sleep with them? Is that why they are here? So you can remember them? There is a lot of fucking women here Brea." I stop and think for a minute. "Is this the reason why I was never allowed to go into your office alone?"

"Adley, I didn't want to tell you, look I don't like what I did but I had to, it pays better than any job out there, well better than most. Better than any job that I could get -"

"You work for them? I trusted you! How do I know all of this isn't a fucking scam? How do I know you're not going to just take me back, send me back, whatever. How can I ever trust you again?"

"I wouldn't blame you if you didn't, but listen, I brought you over here, I quit my job there, I moved over here, you can't deny we're not in the same place anymore. This is a free country, you can't be held captive here, how could I bring you here if I expected to give you back, how could you be here right now if I didn't want you to be free?"

"I don't fucking know, but you could have told me the truth!"

"Yeah, and you're handling it so damn well!" he yells. "You know why I took you? Because no one else would take you. They would have artificially inseminated you, they would have done it a few times and then after your fourth kid, guess what? They would kill you. You'd get a sleeping pill and you'd never wake up. Is that what you would rather have?"

"No, I'd rather you set me free once you brought me home, that way I wouldn't have to deal with pigs like you."

"And they would find you and haul you right back! I wouldn't have been doing you any favors."

"Well I'm not doing you any by staying here," I yell and stomp across the floor. Fuck him. I'm not spending one more minute in this place with a lying pig. The door swings open and stands behind me as I walk down the stairs. Brea remains in the house, he's letting me go. I start walking along the stream, the same path that I took yesterday. Walking around the fallen tree, the door slams behind Brea and I hear him yell behind me, but he doesn't chase after me, he knows better.

"Adley, you better get back here, you'll never survive out there by yourself and you know it." I don't care, if I die, it's going to be far away from this place, far away from him.

The man I once loved is now a man I can never trust again.