“She’s okay.” His hand closes around mine carefully. “She’s safe. Remi had her the whole time. She’s with Herb and Leah now.”
Some of the panic eases then, just enough for everything else to start creeping back in around the edges. Getting tied up, the smoke. Evan carrying me.
“I thought they had her,” I whisper, which turns into a cough. “I wasn’t going to let them take her.”
He frowns, eyes moving over my face. “That’s why you were at the tower? You thought someone took Elle?”
I nod weakly. “Stacey told me she had her. And said if we wanted her back, I needed to come alone, with cash.”
Evan’s expression drains slowly of what little softness was left in it.
“She told you she had Elle?”
“I thought—” My breath catches painfully. “Remi wasn’t answering, and neither were you, and I just…” Tears sting unexpectedly. “I couldn’t risk being wrong.”
His hand tightens around the bed rail, the knuckles going pale around the split skin. He looks down and breathes through his nose, trying to keep something violent behind his teeth.
“She used you,” he says roughly. His eyes lift back to mine, the anger pushed back. “Who was with her?”
The question catches me off guard, and I blink at him. “What?”
“The bruises on your arms, baby—your wrists were tied.” His jaw flexes hard, then his voice drops low. “Who the fuck did this to you?”
A shiver crawls over me despite the warmth of the hospital room.
“There was a man there,” I whisper, and Evan goes completely still. “Something about money… Stacey owed him a lot.”
My breathing starts speeding up again as pieces force themselves back together, and the monitor starts climbing with my pulse.
“I gave her what I had, then tried to leave after I realized Elle wasn’t there, but he grabbed me.” My voice shakes harder now. “I fought him, and then—”
My eyes flick instinctively toward my bandaged wrists, and Evan follows the movement. Something cold moves across his face so fast it makes my stomach drop.
“Did he do anything else?” he asks.
The memory crashes back hard enough to make me flinch. Fingers twisting into my scalp and dragging me. Concrete digging into my knees and rope burning into skin.
“I think he was trying to scare me,” I say shakily. “He said he’d come back for me later, but—”
“They left you there.”
I look at him and realize he’s seeing it now. Me tied up on that chair while the tower filled with smoke around me.
“You came back for me.”
My voice comes out small, and something shifts in him. Relief and exhaustion and something deeper, cracking through the tight control he’s been holding onto since I opened my eyes.
His hand slides over mine on the blanket before he can stop himself, fingers closing tightly enough that I feel the slight tremor in them.
“Yeah,” he says. “I did.”
His thumb drags against my knuckles once, rough and careful at the same time, and when he looks at me again, there’s something wrecked in his expression.
“You scared the fucking shit out of me.”
His words crack slightly on the way out, quieter than everything else he’s said since I woke up.
“Sorry,” I whisper.
