Page 36 of Catch My Fall

“Any news on Sloane?” I ask Max who’s on speaker phone in Gage’s office. I lean forward with my hands flat on the desk with Gage sitting in his chair opposite me.

“Seems he’s gone underground. No recent sightings of him, but we’ll find him. It’s only a matter of time before he makes a reappearance,” Max replies.

Since everything went down, Max and his team have been working around the clock to find Sloane and shut down his operation. I spooked him that night I came for Sierra, I took him by surprise which is why I found her the way I did. Discarded like a piece of trash that didn’t matter.

I hate that she was left that way; battered, bruised and bleeding.

“It makes me nervous. He’s not in hiding, because pricks like him love making a show of themselves. He’s plotting something,” Gage says, running his fingers over his jaw.

“We have to be ready when he decides to show his face. He’s not one to just give up, he’ll come for her.”

He steps closer to me. “Alec, I know you’d do anything for her, which is why I’d like you to watch over her. Where she goes, you go. Protect her with your life.”

“It goes without saying, Gage. I’ll always protect her.”

Gage opens his mouth to say something else when a piercing scream echoes through the house and I’m running before my brain catches up with my feet. I take three steps at a time as I rush towards her room, tearing down the corridor before crashing open the door to her bedroom.

Sierra’s curled up in a foetal position on her bedroom floor, the same position she was in when I found her that night. She’s dressed only in a pair of grey leggings and a white bra, discarded clothes strewn all around her. She’s stopped screaming, but now a hysterical sob wracks through her body, a sound that shakes me to my core.

I drop to my knees beside her trembling form, and as soon as my fingers brush her arm, she recoils away from my touch. “Princess, it’s okay. It’s Alec.”

Heavy footsteps pound down the hallway as Gage comes into view in the doorway. “Is she alright?”

Della slams to a halt beside her husband, her eyes teary as she takes in the sight in front of her. “Oh my God,” she gasps.

“I’ve got her,” I assure them.

Gage nods reluctantly and I can tell he doesn’t want to leave, but after a moment he ushers Della away and closes the door behind him, leaving Sierra and I alone.

I sit back against the side of her bed and stretch out my legs. “I’m not going to hurt you, princess. It’s just me. I won’t touch you, but I’m not going anywhere.”

She sniffs, wiping at her eyes with the back of her hand. Her back is to me, and marring her perfect, creamy skin is a cluster of pink scars ranging from the area between her shoulder blades all the way down to her tailbone. Many are in excess of four inches long. It’s as if someone has whipped her, whatever they used to hurt her biting deep into her beautiful skin.

My teeth grind at the thought.

She pulls herself up and slides across the floor to sit beside me, her bare shoulder brushing mine.

I grab the fleece blanket from the foot of her bed and drape it around her body and she glances up at me with a teary smile, a silent thank you.

We sit in a comfortable silence and she makes no move to speak, and I don’t press her to.

I can’t imagine what she’s going through—or maybe I can to a certain extend. She’s clearly suffering from post-traumatic stress, a disorder I know all too well with everything I saw and did in the Marines. The shit that stuff does to your mind… It’s no wonder it fucks people up.

I’ve never been in her room before, but it’s exactly how I imagined it to be. Decorated in blush pink, dove grey and floral patterned wallpaper, decked out with girly things like handbags and makeup that sit on top of the dresser.

“I can’t take it anymore.” Her voice is weary, her eyes cast down to her hands where she picks at the skin next to her thumbnail.

“Take what?”

“Everything. It’s all just too much. I have nightmares, bad ones. Some nights I wake up soaked in sweat, convinced I’m back in that basement because they feel so real. Sometimes I’m afraid to fall asleep. Then today… the new clothes I bought, they all show my scars. I’m never going to be able to hide them, and they’re never going to let me forget.” A tear tracks down her cheek. “And what with Theo crying… Yet another reminder of what I’ll never have. I just couldn’t take it. It was like this… this volcano building up inside me, waiting to erupt and today, it got too much.”

“Everyone has bad days, Sierra. You wouldn’t be human if you didn’t.”

Her eyes snap to mine. “But every day is a bad day. There’s rarely a minute that goes by that something doesn’t remind me of what happened. I thought that by coming home that I’d get better, that I’d feel better but it’s the complete opposite. This house suffocates me and I can’t stay here a day more. I need an escape. I need to get out of here.”

“Name a place and I’ll take you there. We could just drive around or—”

“No, I mean indefinitely,” she cuts me off. “I need a break, some time away from here.”

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