After that, I have no more energy, and my muscles shake from the effort, but I feel cleaner, and some part of my mind unbends at the small victory. Movement from outside the door catches my attention, and I turn to find Enzo at the threshold, but I don’t have the energy to cover my body, and frankly, I don’t care.
He steps forward quietly and kneels beside me before brushing his hand over my wet hair and asking, “You ready to get out, baby doll?”
I nod, and he reaches behind him, pulling two towels down from the counter before picking me up with little effort and wrapping a towel around my body. After, he sits me on the closed toilet seat and wraps my hair in the other towel. It’s lopsided and feels like it might fall at any moment, but I ignore it because I’m listing to the side in exhaustion as it is.
Kneeling before me, he takes another towel and dries my exposed limbs with slow, sure motions as he mops up any moisture before grabbing an oversized shirt and pulling it over my head. Next comes the sweats, men’s sweats that don’t come anywhere near to fitting me but are pulled up between my legs and under the towel, which he then grabs and lays over the side of the tub.
Now dried and dressed, he picks me up and brings me back out to the bed, freshly changed, before laying me down. I don’t say anything, just watch his methodical movements while he cleans up any remaining wetness on the bathroom floor before placing the towels on the tub.
After, he approaches with a grim smile before kissing me on the forehead and saying quietly, “Rest, baby doll. I’ll bring in food in a little while.”
He leaves the room quietly, closing the door, and I want to ask where Cole is. I want to ask if Shepherd knows where I am. I want to ask what we will do next, but I’m too damn tired, and my eyes slide closed before I can open my mouth.
???
The next few days fly by. I mostly sleep, interrupted by either Marie or Enzo, who feed me, check my vitals as best they know how, and help me to the restroom. I don’t see Cole, but I don’t have the energy to think about it.
My body is slowly finding its way back to health, but the journey is exhausting, and by about the fourth day, I’m finally able to sit up in bed and eat the soup provided without assistance. My arms no longer shake with the effort, and my stomach doesn’t rebel as much at the food, to which I’m relieved because at first, I threw up anything I put into my stomach.
Thankfully, persistence and taking everything slowly won out, and I’m finally able to keep things down, but everyone was worried for a while there. I’m slowly progressing with easy foods, though, like soup and primarily liquids.
Today is my first day of real food, dry toast, and I eat it delicately, taking small nibbles. I’m unwilling to make my stomach upset after so much effort over the past few days.
I’m mid-bite, chewing ever so slowly and miserably while I fight the urge to vomit when Cole comes ambling in, and I almost choke.
I haven’t seen him since he pulled me out of that hole, and in some ways, it feels like a dream or something that happened to someone else. He looks good, his hair freshly trimmed, his arms bulging with muscles, and his tats on full display in the short-sleeved shirt he’s wearing. I freeze with the toast halfway to my mouth as he grabs a chair and turns the back toward me before straddling it.
With a calm I don’t fucking feel, I set the bread carefully down on the plate in my lap and consider him. He’s always been beautiful and strong, my peace in the storm, but at this moment, I am overwhelmed with emotion. He found me, took me out of that hellhole, and there is nothing on this earth that I will ever be more thankful for.
“Thank you,” I whisper, and his face twists before he takes a deep breath and drops his gaze away.
The loss hurts my soul, but I ignore it because it doesn’t fucking matter. I almost died. This—it doesn’t matter, and I have to see my way past it, whether I like it or not.
“How are you feeling?” he asks.
“Better, much better,” I say, swallowing nervously because even now, my stomach aches with a thousand butterflies swirling through me.
“Good,” he grunts.
“How long was I in there?”
He looks beyond me, staring into nothing before shaking his head and saying, “I don’t exactly know. After I realized you were missing, it took me a week to find you.”
After he realized I was missing, because, of course, he wouldn’t have known right away. I avoided him like the plague, and I no longer worked with Marie. Which means no one, not even Enzo, had been keeping tabs. It had been almost too easy for Shepherd. The fucker.
“I’m sorry, Lo. I’m so sorry,” he says, his voice thick as he raises his beautiful stark eyes to mine.
“For what?” I ask softly.
“I should’ve realized sooner; I should’ve—fuck!” he exclaims before rising from the chair and pacing away.
“No, Cole.” I swallow. “This isn’t your fault. It just is. How could you have known?”
For a moment, I’m overcome with a deep sense of déjà vu, and my heart clenches with a painfully sweet feeling at the remembrance of Cole’s devastation after I was forced to defend myself against my uncle. He said just about the same thing then, and I responded then too by telling him there was no way he could have anticipated what was about to go down.
“No! I should’ve been watching out for you. If I had been, this wouldn’t have happened,” he growls, running his hands through his hair.
I watch his pretty arms bulge with the movement before shaking my head and turning away because I no longer have the right to gaze at his body, to admire this work of art before me. And it’s why I say in a painful whisper, “Cole, I’m not your responsibility anymore.”