Page 94 of Through The Woods

Chapter Twenty-Six

“Here, I got you.” Doc offered me his arm and helped me out of the backseat of the truck. The very same truck Joker had used to get me to the hospital.

We’d only taken a few steps when I looked up and saw the spot where Axel had taken his last breath. The ground was still red. A small cry escaped my lips and my legs gave out.

“Easy, Neve.” Doc kept a tight grip on me and directed me toward the house. The minute we crossed the threshold, memories from the assault came flooding back and I fought back a sob as I looked at the coffee table and relived Blade slamming my face into it. Even though the floor was now clean, I could still see white powder mixed with blood near the doorway.

This house had been my sanctuary—how could I stay if it was now full of nightmares?

“Doc,” I called out a warning before my vision swam and everything went dark.

When I came to, I was lying on a bed in a dark room. Charm’s room, to be exact, yet he was still nowhere to be found. I’d worried that it would come to this. It was only a matter of time before he looked at me and saw his sister.

I’d seen his sister, hadn’t I?

My biggest dilemma was in trying to sort fact from fiction—there was no rational explanation for why I’d been able to see Axel. This wasn’t The Sixth Sense. If I was in a coma, then I shouldn’t have been able to walk the halls of the hospital—which meant that what I’d seen was nothing more than a drug-induced hallucination.

But, Charm had been there—I had the mistletoe to prove it.

The bedroom door opened, but I stayed as still as possible on the bed, suddenly afraid of what was to come. I heard the lock turn as the door closed, but the lights remained off. Charm rounded the corner and jumped back when he saw me.

“Jesus Christ, Neve. What are you doing here?”

I pushed myself up into a sitting position against the headboard, clutching my sore ribs. “I’m sorry—I woke up in here. I can go back to my room. Sorry—”

With an aching throat and on the verge of tears, I forced my legs over the side of the bed and stood up with a groan. Charm reached me in two strides. “Stop. What’d I tell you about apologizing for everything? I thought you were still in the hospital. Nobody told me otherwise.”

I tried to step around him to leave, but he held me by the shoulders, forcing me to look up at him. That was when I noticed that he was covered in blood.

“Oh my god—you’re bleeding!” I tried unsuccessfully to pull his cut-off away from his body, but he stopped me.

“Neve, stop—it ain’t my blood.”

My hands dropped back down by my sides. “Oh…right. All that blood—it really brings out the color of your eyes.”

Charm cocked his head to the side and chuckled. “I swear to god, honey. You say the strangest things when you’re nervous.”

“So, Blade—he’s dead?”

He nodded and took a step back. “He’s gone. You wanna tell me what happened to you?”

I sat back down on the bed with a sigh. Here it was—he was either going to believe me or I was going to end up sleeping in the forest again. He leaned against the wall and gestured for me to start talking.

“I didn’t relapse—I swear to you.”

He nodded, but his jaw remained set in a hard line, so I elaborated. “Blade showed up at the house—I thought that Twitch and Joker had gotten back early. Turns out, Blade had broken in and I’m not going to lie to you, seeing the coke laid out on the coffee table like a Christmas present was tempting. I couldn’t do it though. I saw your face—I saw all of your faces.”

A lone tear trailed down my cheek, but Charm kept his focus on a spot somewhere above my head. “How’d the drugs get into your system?”

He didn’t believe me.

I took a deep breath. “Blade said he was there on business— said you were going to meet with him. I told him to leave because the deal was off. He hit me and the next thing I knew, I was on the floor with him on top of me.” I squeezed my eyes shut as the images assaulted me.

Charm knelt near my feet and gripped my knees. “Jesus, I shouldn’t have pushed you. You don’t owe me an explanation.”

I shook my head and forced myself to finish. “I—I tried to fight him off, but he was so much stronger. He pushed me onto the coffee table and I tried not to, but I inhaled some of the drugs.”

The whole thing sounded unbelievable. People didn’t get forced into using drugs; that was just some lie we were all told growing up.

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