Page 8 of Signed For Him

"Come here," he tells me as he lifts his sticky, sweat-covered body from mine and lies beside me, his arm out above my head. An invitation to curl up beside him. I check the clock as I do, my heart hammering in my chest so hard I'm terrified that he'll feel it. Four hours. Four hours until I can go home.

My body fits next to his disgustingly well, the touch of his body moulded to my own bringing me more comfort than I would ever dare admit.

His hand twists and turns the lockets of my hair as the other holds me close.

"I wasn't always like this. I'm sorry you only got to meet this version of me." His voice is soft, possibly softer than I've ever heard it as his words fill the empty void around us.

I don't say a word, worried that anything I do say may trigger his anger.

"I'll go in willingly with them, I won't fight it. Just let me hold you one more time before it's your time to go." His words send a cold shock through my body - startles me in the worst possible way. He can't possibly know. He wouldn't allow it. He can't.

"I know this is goodbye. I'm not going to stop them. I just want you for a little while longer before our time is over," he tells me as he places a kiss on my forehead, bringing me closer once more, leaving no space between our bodies as his breathing evens out while his hands caress my skin.

He knows. He knows, and he's letting me go.

Five

Charlie

Gray is pacing. Tapping his fingers against his outer thigh and pacing as if the action will gain us our freedom or calm his erratic thoughts. If only.

We had a plan. Well, Gray had a plan that was supposed to be our escape. I waited and waited and when the sun came up, I realised that something had gone terribly wrong. So here we are with plan B. Presumably. This is what he was doing the last time he had a plan. Pacing and panicking.

"What is it?" I ask aloud, unable to cope with the built-up tension he's brought into the room from the moment he entered.

I don't think he has even heard me. He doesn't make a single notion that signifies he did. He's still pacing. Back and forth, from one end of the living area to the other, over and over again.

"Gray," I say gently as I walk over to him, placing myself in his line of sight. I don't want to startle him.

Despite how much he's attempted to hide it, it's clear to me that he's been as much of a mess as I have since the moment I woke up. He's had to be here and endure it even longer than I have.

He stops abruptly in front of me, looking at me, into my eyes, as if he's searching for the answers to so many unheard questions.

"I don't know if it'll work. I hope it does, but if it doesn't, it'll get worse," he says before taking a step around me as he continues pacing.

It will get worse? The only thing worse than what I'm currently living through is being out there, and even including Liam’s many, many flaws, I know for certain that he would do anything to be sure that I didn't end up out there. But that doesn't mean that he can't hurt me. He knows, as well as everyone else being aware, that to get to me or Gray all you have to do is threaten the other. We're each other’s downfalls in this wretched place.

"Do you mean a way out?" I wonder, the hope I meant to keep tucked away now firing through every nerve ending in my body.

I hope like hell that's what he's talking about. What else could it be? I can handle things getting worse so long as we know that we've tried, but then the more I think about it, the more I realise that it's not just me that has to be willing. It's Gray too. Am I willing to put him in danger to attempt an escape? I don't think I am, and that thought terrifies me because that's probably exactly how he feels about me.

Gray continues his obsessive walking, thinking over whatever it is that has him so desperately consumed.

"The less you know, the better, but I managed to contact Dad. He can get us out but they need more people, they'll get butchered otherwise. They'll be here in five days," he pants out as he stills and hovers in place, his fingers tapping his thigh again as his head flits left and right, paranoid of anyone overhearing us.

We can get out. As much as I want to know every detail, I couldn't care less about the nitty gritty of it so long as it means that we can leave. I can go home, and that thought fills me with as much dread as it does excitement. Now that the prospect is genuinely a possibility, the option of going home, the thought of being anywhere but here, makes me realise how much I've undoubtedly changed in such a short space of time.

I know they'll want to know everything, and I know that even if I refuse to tell them that they'll have a pretty good guess going off the sight of me now in comparison to the last time they saw me dressed up ready for what now seems like the most silly night. All of this because I wanted a night out. A night to go out with my friends. I could have stayed at home or at Victor's and none of this would have happened. Or, at least if it had, then I would have had so much more protection around me in an attempt to stop it from occurring.

I hate that I question whether they blame me. I had to convince both Crow and Victor to let me go that night, and look at what happened. Look what happens when I get what I want. I'm completely transformed. I left my father childless and alone all because of my selfish wants and needs. It was bad enough that Gray had already disappeared, but to have both of us gone must have been heartbreaking.

"Do you think they blame me?"

Gray stops, his brows creasing together as he looks at me.

"Blame you for what?" he asks, the confusion evident in his tone.

"For this," I say as I wave my hands around the space we're in. "I'm only here because I wanted a night out." I laugh bitterly.

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