Page 65 of Red Rabbit
He reached out a hand and I trembled. There were lash marks all over my body. Most were angry red welts but some cutinto my skin. The worst ones were the two cuts that ran along the side of my hip. I risked a look down at him. His face was a storm of fury and misery for my pain. He lifted my shirt up my stomach a few inches and an angry growl escaped when he saw the cuts and welts that extended up further. My body was a molted collection of bruises and knife wounds. He grabbed the first aid kit and fiercely got to work. His touch was gentle but he was anything but calm. I could feel the rage as it rolled off of him in waves.
“I didn’t realize—” he said darkly. “I would have killed him slower.”
He did his best to be gentle and keep me from hurting but it was impossible to negate the pain entirely and soon I was shaking and gripping the sink with one hand and his shoulder with my other. Despite my best efforts my lip quivered. Everything was rushing back to me.
It was all too much.
The pain cut through my carefully constructed walls of survival and I abruptly couldn’t breathe, my chest hurt and my vision became blurry. A sob escaped my lips and I released Graham to clasp a hand over my mouth.
I couldn’t stop it. The tears streamed down my face.
Graham stood up and grabbed my shoulders.
“Breathe,” he said. “Just breathe—”
“I can’t—I can’t—” I sobbed.
He pulled me into his chest and I fell apart. He wrapped his arms around me and held me. I felt as though he was the only thing keeping my shattered pieces together. I felt hollow.
It was like all of my stress and grief from the plane crash and survival was flooding out of me. I hadn’t dealt with any of it out here, just pushed it back and focused on one foot in front of the other but now it was overwhelming me. I couldn’t carry it all anymore.
When I finally could stop crying, I felt empty and numb. He finished bandaging my hip and helped me pull my pants back up.
“We have to move,” he said, looking at me in concern. “Can you make it?”
“I don’t have a choice,” I said.
24
GRAHAM
“Where are we going?” Kaelin gasped from behind me.
We’d been running for a while. I could hear the pain in her voice. Cooper would be hot on our heels soon and I didn’t want to stop and give up our head start but I knew she couldn’t go much further without a break.
“I saw a map in the Warren and there should be a ranger station not too far from here.”
“How far is not too far?”
“A week.”
“What?!”
“Maybe more.”
All I could hear was her ragged breathing as she came to terms with our situation.
“Can—can we elude Cooper that long?”
“He’s a better tracker than I am,” I admitted grudgingly. “But I think we have a good shot.”
I was trying to be optimistic for her but I knew Cooper wouldn’t stop. I recognized the look in his eyes: obsession. He wouldn’t stop and he would throw all of his available resources into finding us—finding her. If she was high up in Phox, that alone made her valuable but when she said she couldtheoretically develop the tech he was working on, that made her priceless to Cooper.
As much as I would have liked to stop the horrible things that happened to us all those years ago, I couldn’t quite bring myself to that level of depravity. My own indiscretions had been out of revenge and desperation, not just to hurt someone because I could—although I supposed Cooper was telling himself the same justification. Either way, it involved Kaelin now and I wasn’t giving her back.
She was mine.
As soon as the thought crossed my mind, I knew there was no going back.
