The coffee table.
The blessed - yet wretched - unconsciousness.
A part of me wanted it back, wished I could live in that swirling void forever, a place where there was no pain instead of this stark reality where the screaming of my head, my brain, my ankle made my belly revolt, made it churn and threaten to empty its contents.
But then again, the unconsciousness meant I had no idea what happened after my head collided with the coffee table.
Had Kingston come at the last possible moment? Had he tried to save me? Failed? Paid for it? With his life?
My heart exploded into pain, the intensity of it stronger than any that had been assaulting my body before.
No.
I couldn't let my mind go there.
Kingston was fine.
Worried, sure.
Likely turning over every rock in Navesink Bank to try to find me.
But fine.
Breathing.
But he wasn't here.
I was.
I had to focus on me. My breathing. My life.
Clearly, these men weren't opposed to hurting women. And while, sure, I couldn't really blame my ankle on anything but my body's own inability to land a jump ever, I was choosing to blame it on them.
They were, after all, why I needed to take a flying leap off a king-sized bed and into the hallway in the first place.
I had no idea where they stashed me.
Had I been in a trunk? Like some silly crime movie?
Maybe it wasn't silly. I figured they got their information from somewhere. And if you were carting someone against their will around town, well, you wanted them to stay hidden.
I'd been unconscious. They wouldn't have needed to put me there. But then again, I'd been bleeding all over.
My DNA would be in their trunk.
That was an important fact, right? If I got out of here. If the police found them. The DNA was evidence. That and the slice I took out of that one guy's palm.
A small, satisfied smile pulled at my lips. At least if I had to be in pain, he would be in some too.
Taking a deep breath, I slowly opened my eyes, just a sliver at first, not wanting anyone to know I was fully awake if they were in the room with me.
Judging by the fact that I was still fully clothed, that horror hadn't happened to me while I was unconscious, but there was no saying that it wouldn't happen once I was awake.
So the longer I could keep them from knowing I wasn't happily locked away in the blackness of my own head, the better.
There were no voices. And, from what I could tell, no lights.
The world outside my eyelids was just as pitch black as the one within.
My hand pressed into the floor, meeting cold and unyielding concrete. A basement, maybe?
I rolled onto my back, looking the other way, meeting a wall.
Not cinder block.
But it still could be a basement.
Or a storage room of some kind.
No windows.
One door.
My luck, it seemed, did not run toward multiple methods of escape.
If I could even drag myself off the floor, that is.
With the throbbing in my ankle, it seemed unlikely. But if I could find a back exit, I could drag my battered ass out if I had to.
I couldn't just lie here and wait for them to come find me, hurt me, kill me.
Decision made, I turned back over to my side, pressing my hands onto the cement, pushing my weight up while cocking my bad leg high enough to prevent it from hitting the ground.
I couldn't have known that any motion, any motion at all, would send the pain shooting through my body again, the intensity of it making my weakened stomach roll, churn.
I barely had time to register it happening before the bile worked its way up and out.
If there was a way to be sick quietly, I did not know it.
There was a lot of noise as I retched, couched, spat the taste out of my mouth.
Taking a steadying breath, not even bothering to try to wipe my 'eyes water when you puke' tears out of my eyes since the pain was simply sending new ones there to be blinked away, I moved.
One inch by one inch, away from my sick, careful only to gently press my knee to my bad ankle down, not slam it, not let more pain ricochet up my leg. Though, right then, thanks to the throwing up, the pain in my leg was fully eclipsed by the sensation of the hemispheres of my brain attempting to rip apart from each other.
Deep breaths, closed eyes, inch by crippling inch, I made my way across the floor, a sweat breaking out across my forehead, my neck, chest, down my back, something that only made the cold somehow seep in more.
By the time I reached the door, I was out of breath, drenched, shaking with the chill and the pain at the same time.