Page 9 of Drag Me Up

I feel the bed dip next to my hip and look over to see Shiloh perched warily on the edge of the mattress. He doesn’t look at me before taking my hand in both of his and says, “It’s never hurt you like this before. This time could have taken you from us.”

I sit up to try and reassure him, but he shakes his head violently still staring at a spot on my wall as if he’s seeing something that isn’t really here.

“No one knew where you were last night,” he says with more force than I’m used to hearing from him. “You were assaulted. You were choked out.”

I must have made some sound of denial because he levels me with a glare full of guilt and rage that I have never seen from him.

“I’m not a fucking idiot, Eric,” he snaps at me causing Lucky to flinch and start typing away on his phone. “I’ve seen those kinds of bruises before – on myself and others who weren’t so f-for-fortunate. You could have f-fucking died last night! Who would have known, huh? We would have just b-been sitting here waiting for you to c-come back to us, never knowing what happened.

“I would wait forever if it meant you came home…”

I watch as the anger in his eyes bleeds away to pain and fear. This is no longer about me. I never knew the extent of what happened to our shy kitten before the incident that brought him to our door, but if it put that look on his face, I don’t want to know or for him to ever remember again.

I pull him to me, not caring about the discomfort my ribs are giving me with the added pressure. Shiloh is clinging to me like I’m going to disappear if he lets a single millimeter of space between us. His sobs and screams are almost incoherent, but I recognize one word before he hyperventilates and passes out…

Mama…

I barely have our kitten tucked in under my blankets when I hear what can only be a herd of elephants thundering up the front stairs. I chuckle softly while Lucky crosses the room to open the door, causing a panicked Toby to fall face first onto my shag rug. As our resident little helps the pup to his feet, he doesn’t take his eyes off the young man sleeping in my bed.

“His mom?” he asks, brushing his fingertipsdown Shiloh’s cheek. He glances up at me when I nod before returning his gaze back to the man who obviously holds his heart.

I bask in the excess love radiation pouring from the two of them for a minute before Toby’s head shoots up to look at me again. He lunges for me, grabbing my face in both his hands and yanking me in every possible direction to get a good look.

“What the fuck happened to you?!” he practically shouts in my face before releasing me and hurrying back to comfort Shiloh who whimpers in response to his tone.

Once our kitten settles back into a peaceful sleep, Toby looks up at me with a rare serious look on his face. “Never mind what happened. You’re fine, right? You always just say fine so I don’t know why I bother asking.”

I nod and he seems to think of something because he rushes over to my vanity and starts grabbing random things. I hurry to stop him from destroying over a thousand dollars worth of beauty products and hear what he is mumbling, “Gotta cover it up before the other guys come back over. The professor didn’t have as much shit as expected so it won’t take that long to unload…”

Snatching my good blending sponge out of the pup’s grasp, I push him aside and take a seat. It’s not a bad idea to try and cover up as much as I can just in case, but I wasn’t planning on leaving my room for the rest of the day.

“This is just precautionary,” I tell the men who are smirking at me as I begin my full facial routine. They’ve listened to many a rant about fashion and celebritygossip while I’ve done this on practically any other day. My makeup mirror is my soap box, and my audience is always enraptured. As I feel the soft bristles of the brush glide across my cheek, my soul feels lighter than it has since before the show last night. My makeup, my mask, is my freedom.

8

MATT

Mom took it better than I did when I called to tell her I found a place this morning. I told her I would wait until she was back from her girls’ weekend to move out, but she insisted that I pack my shit and get a life as soon as possible. Her words, not mine. I guess my thirty something ass is cramping her style living at home.

When we got to my mother’s house, Jackson and Eli helped me pack my meager belongings from the house into my Elantra and then followed me to rent a moving truck. I wanted the smallest size they carry because I honestly don’t have all that much stuff in my storage locker. I never bothered to buy much more than a futon and a bed when it came to big furniture because I figured Sylvia would be bringing the stuff from our apartment in Boston when she moved down. Unfortunately for me, they only had the mid-size truck available, the one with enough space to pack up a small house apparently.

“I think it’s going to be a tight squeeze tofit it all,” Jackson laughs out when I pull up the rolling door on my storage unit. Most of the unit is taken up by the pieces of my king size storage bed and dresser. My bedroom is the one area I refuse to cut corners in. I’ll have milk crates for chairs, but if I’m getting a bed, it is top of the line.

“I told you I didn’t need the big truck,” I mumble as I start grabbing the boxes and smaller items to load up while Eli and Jackson continue to crack jokes about how my style is bachelor chic or something.

“Oh my God, can you imagine what Sassy would say about this stuff?” Jax says as he pulls out a framed piece of art that hasn’t been on a wall since before I met Sylvia. It was one of Eric’s sixth grade art class projects and his mother threw it in the trash right in front of him. He was so proud of the “A” he received on it, and rightly so. I’ve had art majors compliment me on such a unique find over the years, but for me it reminds me of that little boy’s electric smile. I will never forget the look on his face when he saw it hanging on the wall of my bedroom. It was one of the last times I got to see him smile.

Yanking the frame out of his hands, I place it carefully into my car. I’m not going to hide it away anymore, but I don’t trust my idiot friend to not break it accidentally. Coming back to the unit, I see that Eli and Jackson finished packing the truck and are waiting on me to head out to the trailer.

“I sent out a message in the kink manor group chat asking for helpers before we got here,” Eli says as he steps up to climb into the cab of the truck. “If everyoneshows, this will take maybe fifteen whole minutes to unload.”

Laughing, he pulls the door shut and starts the truck. Jackson pulls out in front and Eli follows him. I wave them off and head into the office to fill out the paperwork to cancel my lease of the storage unit. After about forty five minutes of unnecessary sales pitches to try and convince me to keep renting an empty unit, I finally am able to head toward my new home.

As I make the turn at the top of the hill to head into the trailer park, I see a man who looks like one of my students racing across the grass toward the big manor house on the other side of the street. That is where Eli and Jace live with a few other people according to the brief rundown they gave me on the ride back to my mom’s house this morning. I guess that is another one of their roommates.

Pulling into the small driveway behind the trailer, I see a handful of guys going in and out of the unit while a couple of others are handing them things from the truck. When I approach, I can see that everything is pretty much out of the truck but my seventy inch flatscreen. I’m about to jump in and help when Jace runs over and grabs it by himself to carry inside.

Since the truck is empty, I turn back to my car and start pulling things out of there. A tap on my shoulder has me turning around and I’m greeted by a man who could play a live action Kronk. His whole look screams muscle for hire. I’m not a tiny guy, but on looks alone, this guy could probably squash me like a bug.

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