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“Is that why you promised her?” Knix’s deep, sexy timbre rolled over my ears like liquid chocolate. I wanted to curl closer to it, dive into the richness of it, but my limbs were weigheddown.
There was a quiet moment where I wasn’t quite sure if I had managed to fall deeper into sleep and it was just my consciousness that was drifting in the dark warmth of my own mind. But then shockingly, the voices came back. Just a brief moment. A spotlight before it all went out oncemore.
“I promised her because I loveher.”
* * *
The next time I woke, I was alone. The room was empty, and my head pounded. The door opened and the soft sounds of shuffling feet and monitors beeping in the distance reached my ears. I turned to the side, skipping over the blonde woman in light blue-green scrubs and looked up. My own monitor wasblack.
"How are you feeling?" The nurse reached my bedside and I switched my gaze toher.
I sat up slowly. "Fine," I said. "Did I have—um..." I trailed off, looking at the door, wondering where the guyswere.
"Visitors?" she supplied. I nodded and received a smile in return. "Oh yes, quite a few male friends you have there." Her smile flipped, and she frowned when she noticed that the monitor was black. "Huh, someone must have accidentally pulled this out of the wall." She leaned down plugging it back in. I frowned, grimacing at thenoise.
"Do you know where they went?" Iasked.
She smiled once more. "Oh yes, I do believe a couple went to get your paperwork. You're beingreleased."
"Iam?"
"Yes, we only held you overnight. We had someone come in and wake you up every hour or so. Do you not recall?" I shook my head. "Well, no worries. You woke up, answered questions, and went right back to sleep. We gave you some pain medication not long after you first arrived, but we were informed that the first time you woke up, you acted a bit strangely—not uncommon—but we just wanted to be sure that no ill effects would take place afterwards and you didn't seem to need it much after the initialexamination."
"Oh." I reached back and touched the back of my head. Sure enough, there was a small lump the size of a quarter on the back of my head. I looked down my arms when I stretched them out in front of me and noticed some bruising andscraping.
The nurse busied herself around the room, retrieving the clipboard at the end of my bed and then gesturing to the small stand to the side of me, on the other side—away from the monitors. "They did bring you some clothes to change into. Do you think you'll need somehelp?"
I shook my head and flung the bed sheets to the side. I slid my legs over and then gently pulled the heart monitor wires and stickies away from my skin. The monitor started going haywire and the nurse sighed before reaching up and turning it off for me. I grimaced at the gross residue the stickies left behind on my skin. I'd have to see if I could scrub it off in the bathroom while Ichanged.
The nurse set the clipboard down on my bed, alongside my legs and tipped my arm to the side, revealing where they had inserted the needle for the IV they had given me. She quickly and gently removed it, checked the rest of me and made sure I could stand without vomiting or passing out. She snatched up the clipboard once more and then left. I moved around the side of the bed and reached for the small pile of clothes one of the guys had left for me—probably Bellamy, I decided. He knew how much I loved the yoga pants I had started wearing for our workouts and self-defense training and my favorite pair sat ontop.
I moved to the bathroom, closing the door behind me, and paused to take a look at myself across the room in the mirror. There were dark circles under my eyes. My arms felt sore and achy as I set the clothes on the sink and then reached up to untie the strings holding the hospital gown closed at the back. I grimaced and stretched awkwardly as I let the material slide to thefloor.
I shuffled through the clothes but when I didn’t find any panties, I sighed. The yoga pants went on sans underwear and I reached for the sports bra and tank top next. When I tried the light jacket, I realized that the tank top was really a much better option than longer sleeves—the fabric over the scrapes along my arms made me wince in pain. I slid the jacket back off and held it in myhands.
Looking up, my gaze met my reflection once more. Bruises and scratches lined my elbows and the sides of my arms. I touched one finger to a long, red scrape. It hurt. My body ached. But my mind wasn’t on the accident. It was on the vague memories of what had happened—what I had said the first time I wokeup.
What had Idone?
I jerked my gaze back up to my face. There were lines around the corners of my lips, redness under my eyes—joining the dark marks of exhaustion despite how long I had apparently slept. Overnight, the nurse had said. An entire night where the guys had been given the chance to think about my stupid admission. I gulped back on a tight feeling in mythroat.
What had they thought aboutme?
Even now, they were out there checking me out of the hospital. Was that because they were willing to stick around and find out if they could work something out or were they just good people? Did they just want to make sure I was okay, and then they would come in here and calmly explain why, after this job, we should all go our separate ways? I would have to move out of the only place where I felt truly and honestly happy andsafe.
Was it allover?
My bare feet on the cold tile slid backwards and my back hit the door. Something sinister slithered up through my soles, crawling into my veins, up to my heart—squeezing the organ in my chest. My throat closed. I gasped and gasped again. Tears popped and slid down my cheeks into the hollows of my neck and over my collarbone. The tracks burned like fire racing across myskin.
I sobbed and slapped a hand over my mouth, trying to stifle the noise. My knees hit the floor hard. Nails bit into the flesh of my arms as I gasped for air. My chest squeezed—cutting me off. My heart thundered in my ears, screaming loud enough that I had to close my eyes against the pain itcaused.
We could have been fine. Why did I have to ruinit?
If I looked inside myself—looked at all the people in my life that I loved—I’d see ties to friends and family. Worn and gray ties. Ties that had died off. Ties that might die off. But then I’d see the five golden threads that tied me to five important people. Those ties were beautiful, painful, impossible, but mine. All mine. If I reached for a pair of scissors and cutoneof them—a piece of myself would die off. What would it mean to cut away all five of them? Would I evensurvive?
The sound of my gasping breath and the sobs that could no longer be choked back, no matter how hard I tried, hurt my ears. It resounded. Repeated. And it destroyed me. So focused on the tiny, broken shards sliding up through my skin and littering the floor of the hospital bathroom, I didn’t even notice when the door behind me opened or when shoes squeaked against the bathroom tile until strong arms wrapped around my shoulders and pulled me up against an equally strongchest.
He burned bright like the sun—they all did. Warming me from the inside and chasing away all the pain and dark shadows. My face pressed into soft fabric and my unbrushed, matted hair was stroked away from my cheeks. Long fingers slid through the strands and then tucked them over my ears. Feather-soft kisses rained down on my forehead, against my temples, on my cheeks, and closedeyelids.
