It’s so cold in this dreamland. I don’t like it, and the sunlight turns to night, the stars fall out of the sky, and the garden withers.
I’m so sad.
When I open my eyes again, everything’s white, and there’s beeping and humming and weird puke-colored walls.
A hospital. I’ve never been inside one, but I’ve watched my fair share of House and Grey’s Anatomy to recognize one.
And Matt is here, asleep in a plastic chair, his hair falling in his eyes. I’m hit with a need so deep and urgent to hug him that I sit up and throw my legs off the bed, to get to him.
The IV in my arm tugs, startling me, but I just can’t let it stop me. I stand up on shaky legs, take two steps and stop, staring at his face.
Something’s different. It’s him, and not him.
His beard is gone.
He has shaved it off. His face is smooth, his jaw angular, his mouth soft. He looks so much younger than before, it’s disconcerting.
Fascinating.
God, he’s beautiful. So achingly handsome. There’s something boyish about him now, and it’s touching. It makes me want to kiss his eyelashes, his cheekbones, his chin.
Makes me want to cry.
I must have made a sound because he starts awake, eyes wide and unfocused. I’m still drinking him in. It’s as if he’s some enchanted prince, turned from a beast into a handsome young man, and I don’t even know what magic accomplished that.
So I lean in and kiss him, to seal the spell.
He shaved the beard off for me. He’s done hiding.
I love him.
“Tay.” He pulls me down to sit on his legs, pulls my arms around his neck. He’s staring at me as if memorizing my face, and his mouth trembles. “Jesus.”
“Morning,” I whisper and kiss his mouth again, and his cheek and chin, because I can, dragging my lips over smooth skin and light stubble.
He crushes me to his chest, burying his face in my neck, his whole body shaking. I don’t know what happened, can’t remember much of anything, but it looks like I scared him.
I rub his back and kiss his neck, and his tears soak into my skin, hot and magical. Binding me to him. Freeing me from the last threads of the nightmare.
“Please,” he says, a hitch in his deep voice, lifting his face to look at me, his dark eyes glittering. “Please, Tay, don’t ever leave me.”
I kiss him again, unable to help myself. “I’m not planning to.”
The circle of his arms is where I belong, and I never want to leave.
Turns out I was in the hospital for hours before I woke up. Jeff Adams injected me with an anesthetic repeatedly after he kidnapped me, and the doctors were afraid of serious side effects like damage to my organs, or even respiratory failure.
So they kept me for observation even after I woke up.
Today, I am finally discharged. My mom, Gigi and Merc are there, and Matt is holding my hand, his mom and his brother holding the kids. I met them briefly, and they seem super nice.
I also met Zane and Rafe who have already left. Nice guys, and I’ll never forget the role they played in finding me.
The story Matt told me is crazy. How they looked for me. How they broke down the door and discovered me in the ice cream shop.
Jeff Adams was captured trying to drive out of town. He’s now in jail, awaiting trial, and the truth has come out.
This year was the tenth anniversary of his sister’s death.