Just as I was about to surrender, the world around me brightened at the edges. The feel of something firm but smooth beneath me. The quiet inhale and exhale of someone else’s breath. And then pain. It went off like a camera’s flash and shot me above the surface.
The men. My hell. It all came pouring over me as the darkness receded, further and further away by the second. No, don’t leave. I wanted to reach for it, to follow it down, but it was too late.
I didn’t open my eyes. Maybe he didn’t know I was awake yet. A few more seconds, and it wouldn’t matter. He would take what he wanted. I’d long since accepted it. There was no sense in fighting it. I couldn’t fight it. But I could have these few seconds. They were mine. At first, I’d used them to dream, to imagine an escape, like the blissful nothingness death, could bring. But it never came, and even the dream of it had become a torment. So no more dreams. No, these few seconds weren’t for dreams anymore. They were just seconds. Precious seconds before the torment began anew.
But seconds passed, and then a minute. Two minutes. Something was wrong. Different. He had to know I was awake. Why was he letting me lie here in bed?
A bed. No cold, stone floor beneath me. I was in a real bed.
Derek’s image flashed behind my eyes. Not an image I’d called up before. This was different. He was angry. No, not just angry. Crazed with fury. His movements were swift and sure as he…
It all came flooding back. Derek was alive. Alive. He was alive, and there in my hell. His fury-filled face had been the most beautiful sight I’d ever seen. But I didn’t want him there. It was too late. Far too late. And yet, he’d ignored my protests. Those men—my tormenters, the stranger…my father…they’d all died.
I’d killed the man who I’d called father for twelve years. It hadn’t been because of what he’d said. Not the discovery that he was the one responsible for my hell. He’d aimed a gun at Derek, and I’d had enough. He’d taken everything from me, everything that had made me…me when he’d had me ripped away from Derek to destroy me. He couldn’t have Derek. I wouldn’t let him.
And then Derek had carried me out of hell. Just put me back, my fractured mind had cried. It was still crying. I didn’t want him to see me, not like this, not ever again.
He was here though. The scent of him wafted toward me and I couldn’t stop myself from breathing him in. He was close. So close.
“Open your eyes, Scar,” his deep, sure voice spoke, and my eyelids fluttered open, mindlessly obeying him.
My eyes drank him in greedily, roaming over every inch of his face. I’d thought he was dead, but he was so very alive, so very like the image of him I’d clung to. All of him the same…except for his eyes. They were red-rimmed like he’d been crying, and they seemed to lack the confident light that usually glowed in them. He was hurting. He was hurting because of me, and it made my heart ache because he obviously didn’t realize I wasn’t worth the trouble. If he knew…
I looked away. I couldn’t look at him anymore. There was too much emotion there. Emotion I didn’t deserve.
“Scar, you need pain medicine.”
I glanced back but focused my attention on the glass of water and the pills in his hands. He held the pills to my lips and I opened my mouth, and then I swallowed the water he gave me. And then I did what I knew needed to be done. There was no point in putting it off. I rolled onto my side, facing away from him, “You should go now,” I said in a voice so hoarse it had long ago stopped sounding like my own.
“No fucking way.”
And when he stood up and came around to the other side of the bed, it was impossible to hide the tears streaming down my temple. He sat down on the bed, his back against the headboard and his long legs stretched out in front of him. He didn’t touch me. Of course, he didn’t. How could he possibly want to? I would have escaped my own skin if I’d been able.
“I can’t undo what…happened, but I’m here now Scar. Whatever you need, I’m here.”
He took my hand in his and just held it, his warmth surrounding it. It was the first kind touch I could remember since waking up in hell, so it caught me completely off-guard when deep, wrenching sobs rose up from my chest and wracked my whole body.
He dragged me onto his lap with a strangled noise in his throat, and wrapped me in strong arms I’d thought I would never feel again. He held me as my body spasmed through its grief. He held me so close it was as if he was clinging to me too.