AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Try to get some sleep. You’re safe now,” he murmurs, squeezing my hand gently. A single tear rolls down my cheek. I don’t feel safe, I want to whisper. But I don’t. I don’t say anything. I just close my eyes and try my hardest not to sink back into the living nightmare of being in that room again. Nathan’s hand helps a little, anchoring me to the present. Reminding me that I am in a safe place, even if I don’t really feel safe yet.
There’s no sound from the door or the hall for so long that I almost drift off to the whir and beeps of all the machines. The sun sinks lower outside the window, bathing everything in a golden glow. It’s almost peaceful, the way it warms my face. When I finally open my eyes, Nathan is gone.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
AVERY
After two weeks of bleach-stinking hospital sheets and too-mild painkillers, the doctors set me free. Not exactlyfree, I guess. They hand me over to the care and custody of my family. All the family that’s left. My aunt. My uncle. Nathan. I haven’t seen Jennifer again, not since the first time I woke up in the hospital, and she was out in the hall. I haven’t even spoken to her since the night my father was shot and everything went to hell. Her absence hurts, honestly. She’s my best friend. I need her. But aside from a few texts back and forth, it’s like she doesn’t exist. Or maybe it’s like I don’t exist. Every time I ask Nathan to bring her by the hospital, he shrugs and tries to make an excuse for her. Eventually I stop asking. Sometimes these things have a way of showing you who your real friends are.
Nathan assumes control of my wheelchair when it’s finally time to leave, and my doctor has signed the official discharge paperwork. Eliza fusses over me, making sure my hair is brushed, my large sunglasses are intact, before the three of them–and a bodyguard–accompany me from my hospital room into a waiting service elevator and down to a private entrance in the basement parking lot. I have to work to steady my breath as the elevator sinks down, down, down toward the basement. The last time I was in one of these, the doors opened to a clusterfuck of gunfire and two kidnappers shoving a bag over my head. Enzo puts a protective arm around me as I rise from my wheelchair on shaky legs, like a baby deer making its way into the wilderness for the very first time. He bundles me into the back of a limo, where my aunt scoots close and takes my hand. It’s too much. Too suffocating. The air is thick down here, and all I can smell is Eliza’s overpowering Chanel perfume and the rot of stagnant puddles in the parking lot.How did rain even get in here?I think to myself. It’s completely underground.
“Listen, Avery.” She’s using the same soothing voice I’ve heard her use on agitated party guests a thousand times, if not a million. It’s fake as hell, and I hate it. “You shouldn’t be alone during this time. Your father wouldn’t want it. We’re going to be here for you.”
“Oh, thanks.” The trip down to the parking lot and into the limo was more exhausting than it had any right to be. “I knew I could count on you guys.”
“She means literally here,” Nathan chimes in from the other side of the limo. He meets my eyes over the top of his phone. “We moved all our stuff in two days ago.”
I blink at him. “To my house?”
“That’s the one.” He flips his phone over and grins at me, and for a split second in time, none of this happened, and we’re just a couple of kids being dragged along in yet another limo by our parents. “It’ll be just like old times, Aves. Like a sleepover.”
I smile faintly, recalling simpler times when Nathan, Adeline and I would sneak out of the house during one of those “sleepovers” and generally cause mayhem. The lastsleepoverwith Adeline and Nathan was the night she died. The thought of her limp body floating in our pool snaps me back to reality, my smile vanishes, and there’s a bitter taste on my tongue all of a sudden.
“We’re a little old for sleepovers. But I appreciate the offer.”
“It’ll belikea sleepover, honey.” My aunt pats my hand. “But of course we don’t need to sleep in your room.”
She didn’t get the joke, if there’s a joke to get in this situation. The real joke is that she’s never figured out how often we did actually sneak out of the house under her watch. Pills and wine will do that to you.
My bed is a welcome relief. As soon as I get home, I melt into it. And for a while, my bed is enough. Can you even imagine what it’s like to lie in a real bed after you’ve been on a bare mattress in hell for weeks? If Rome were here, it would be actual heaven. Clean sheets. Soft blankets. They don’t smell like plastic or blood, and nobody comes in during the night with a knife.
But as soon as the sun goes down and the room gets dark, I’m frozen with fear, unable to move or call out for someone to help me. A part of me is embarrassed to be so damn needy.I don’t need anyone to come and rescue me from my own fucking bedroom,I tell myself, sitting up in my bed and letting my feet hit the hardwood floor. There is no monster under the bed, or in the closet, or down the hall. I don’t really believe it, but I grit my teeth and make my way slowly to my en suite bathroom.A shower under the bright heat lights will warm me up and make me feel better,I decide. I’ve showered a few times at the hospital, aided by a nurse, standing under a thin trickle of water with barely any pressure. My own shower, in comparison, is luxurious, even by Capulet standards, double rain shower heads and jets that spray water sideways from the tiled walls. I can’t even look at the clawfoot bathtub, and the memories it brings back of being pushed down under the water.
I turn the shower on, mesmerized as the water pounds down onto the stark tiles below. The lights overhead flood the room with brightness and warmth; the underfloor heating, barely used, is heaven on my bare feet. I tentatively unbutton my pajama top and let it fall to the ground. It’s not my usual style, but since it’s still hard to reach my hands over my head, button-down pajamas are much better than having a nurse assist me in getting dressed and undressed multiple times a day. I slide out of my pajama pants and step into the shower, letting the water wash away the darkness. It works, for a few moments, being warm in the bright room. I squeeze an obscene amount of shampoo into my palm and lather it through my hair, wincing as it stings some sores on my scalp I didn’t even know I had.Everything heals slowly after an ordeal like that, I tell myself.It’s okay.I open my eyes and look down at the water swirling down the drain. Dried flecks of blood are like rust from old pipes as I scrub them from my scalp. I’m horrified that even after this stretch of time out of that hellhole, I’m still washing away the remnants of what happened. The worst part is, I don’t even know whose blood it is. It could be mine, but through my many injuries, my scalp remained pretty much unscathed. No, I have a suspicion that this blood is the fallout from the girl who was shot at point-blank range right in front of us.Penny. The girl who Rome was forced to rape as she prayed to a God that surely doesn’t exist, because if he did, how could he have let those depravities happen to her? To any of us?
The dried flecks of old blood circling the drain set off a chain reaction, as more memories assault me. My knees are suddenly too weak to stand, so I end up sinking into a sitting position in the bottom of the shower, my knees tucked up under my chin as water beats down relentlessly on me. I’m the stereotypical rape victim sliding down a wall in a daytime television movie, but nobody’s here to yell “cut” once I reach the hard tiles and lower my forehead to my knees.
Everything slams into me like a freight train at full force.Breaking up with Will. The embryos Enzo accidentally revealed to me. The engagement party. My father getting shot. The elevator ride surrounded by bodyguards. That fucking bag over my head. And after. Every wretched thing that came after I woke up tied to that chair with a knife against my skin.
And now. Rome in prison for the second time.
Because of me.
Sobs wrack my body, and I can’t stop them. I can’t stem the flood of tears from my eyes, nor calm the violent shaking of my body. I cry and I cry, a dam bursting, a tsunami of pain and trauma with no end in sight.
I can’t breathe.I can’t breathe.
“Avery.”
The water stops. I raise my head slowly, everything impossibly heavy and weak. Tears obscure my vision, but I can still make out the blurry figure in front of me. Nathan is crouched down in the bottom of the shower, his eyes full of worry. He has a white towel in his hands, an ashen expression on his face. “Here,” he says, draping the towel around my shoulders and drawing it around my knees like some kind of protective shroud.
“I tried to kill myself in that place,” I whisper.
He nods, his jaw tensing. Suicide is always a risky subject around Nathan after Adeline killed herself.
“I’m glad it didn’t work,” Nathan says emphatically.
“It would have been easier if I’d just died,” I confess.
