Page 138 of Relapse

“You can leave,” he repeated, this time, more harshly.

My lips moved, but nothing came out.

His glare cut right through me.

“I—I…” I took a deep breath. “I’d rather stay, if it’s all the same to you, sir—”

“It’s not,” he snapped.

My words died in my throat, and I sat there frozen.

“Oh, um…” I looked back at Noah’s sleeping form. I swallowed, untangling my fingers from the sheets near his hand. Catching one last ugly look from Mr. Hansen, I stood up. The thought of leaving Noah left a bitter taste in my mouth, but I didn’t really have much ground to stand on here.

I wasn’t an immediate family member, and Noah’s father probably wanted time with him alone. Deep down, I knew it wasn’t my place to demand to stay, and I should have been grateful Damian let me visit this long.

But something about Noah’s dad rubbed me the wrong way. I didn’t think Noah would really want to be left here alone with him. Especially after the details he’d shared with me about their previous interactions.

But what could I do?

Mr. Hansen moved aside just enough for me to squeeze past to the door. Slowly, I backed out of the room and into the hallway.

“I’m sorry,” I finally said, looking at the man, hoping to find some forgiveness in his eyes for bothering him. “I’ll just be waiting in—”

Cool air hit me, and I jumped.

He’d slammed the door in my face.

Chapter thirty-five

Medicated

SILAS

Ihadn’t expected to wake up after that night. But I did.

My world suddenly opened up, right along with my eyes. It was as if I had just gone to sleep for a night. I was in a hospital bed. White sheets. Yellow walls. The disgusting scent of my own lethargic body.

They had to have been giving me the good stuff, because I had no pain. Just minor discomfort, and that was mostly because of the bandages and all of the needles jammed into me. My eyes adjusted, focusing down on the hep locks sticking out of my arms, one attached to a full IV and the other open, a bit of bloody residue on the inside of the port.

Maybe they gave me blood. I wasn’t sure. I wasn’t even entirely sure how long I had been in the hospital. Or what day it was.

My left wrist was stationary, straightened out on the bed in a tightly fit cast that formed a knob around my fingers that had been smushed between two bricks. Fractured, broken, missing—didn’t really matter to me. I was just assessing the damage.

I took a deep breath and that’s when I felt the pain. The muscles in my face contracting in that simple motion caused waves of fire to shoot up from my nose all the way down to my jaw.

Damn, they definitely broke my fucking nose.

Then suddenly, the rest of the night returned to me like whiplash, and the visual of Noah on the ground next to me was the only thing I could focus on. I kept seeing my cousins holding him down, beating him.

I could still hear the sounds of him screaming my name.

My heart rate spiked. I could tell by the rapid increase of tempo in the stupid machine next to my bed. An alarm sounded and two nurses were in my room within thirty seconds or so.

“Mr. Thorne, you’re awake.”

“No shit.” My voice sounded more strained than expected. I coughed, trying to clear my airways. My throat felt like it was filled with iron flavored gravel.

“Slow sips, Mr. Thorne.” The nurse said, bringing a white cup and straw to my lips. “You have a cocktail of medication in your IV and we don’t want you to get sick.”