Page 68 of Rescuing Micah
Everything was blurry, almost as if she were underwater, only she knew that she wasn't.
When she went to lift her hand to rub her eyes, attempt to clear them, and found that she couldn’t move it, she realized with a horrible sort of sinking feeling in her stomach what had happened.
Abducted.
Again.
The trafficking ring’s ploy to get to her by setting off the fire alarm at her building had worked. Someone had drugged her, pulled her away from Micah, thrown her out a window, and then put her in a van.
She would have sworn that she’d heard Micah calling her name right before she was passed off to someone in the van, but maybe that was more wishful thinking than anything else.
He did know she was gone, though, she remembered hearing his voice through the phone. He’d likely been not far behind her but not close enough to do anything to prevent her from being taken.
A heavy amount of fear pressed down upon her, but there was also a whole lot of anger.
A ton of it.
More than she would have guessed.
If asked, Teresa would have believed that terror would be the dominant emotion flooding her system, but she would have been wrong. It was definitely there, and she knew that at any moment it could spike and take over, but the anger was so much stronger.
Anger that these people put money over human life. Anger that they took advantage of desperate people who were prepared to do things they normally wouldn't to save their life or the life of a loved one. Anger that they believed they could just snatch innocent people off the streets and cut them open to sell off their organs.
And anger that they’d ruined her second chance with Micah.
Even though she’d told him she couldn’t make any promises about the future, the more time she spent with him, the clearer that future had become, the easier it had been to see past all the pain and betrayal. To see that as she peeled back the protective layers she’d used to bury her heart, love still hid beneath them.
Micah Hart wasn't just her first love, he was her only love because he was her true love.
It was crazy to think that while she’d spent the last decade hating him for leaving her when she needed him the most, the love she’d once had for him was still there. It hadn't gone anywhere, it had just been buried too deep to find.
If it had survived everything she’d been through, and if she could see it peeking its way back out, finding its strength again with each apology Micah offered, each small thing he did to try to make amends, then she owed it to herself to see it through. To open her heart again, let Micah in, and see if there was still hope for them.
Now these people were trying to ruin that.
They had the worst timing. She was only just realizing that she did want to at least try with Micah. If things didn't work out, then they didn't work out, but she didn't want to go through the rest of her life with regrets.
For so long she’d just been playing things safe. Always trying to look at things logically and weighing up the pros and cons to make the most informed decision she could possibly come to.
But love wasn't logical. It didn't make sense. It wasn't something you could arrange neatly in a box.
It was wild and messy, but it was in that wildness and messiness that it found its beauty.
Love couldn’t be controlled, and it couldn’t be caged.
When it came down to it, even if it was the scariest thing she would ever do, she wanted to give Micah a chance. He was trying to fight for her, trying to show her how much he still loved her and how sorry he was. Even though they couldn’t go back, they could go forward.
Ifshe could get out of this alive.
“I hate you all,” she yelled out as loud as she could. Her voice was a little scratchy from being drugged, and it wasn't quite as strong as she would have liked given the sincerity of that sentiment, but it felt good not to be passive.
Just because she couldn’t save herself didn't mean she had to just lie there and take whatever they dished out. She hadn't last time, and it had felt great to fight back however she could, and she wished she’d bitten clean through that doctor’s finger andsevered it completely. If she got another chance, she was going to do whatever damage she could. They had her, they could operate on her again, they could even kill her, but they couldn’t break her.
Nobody got to do that.
The only one who could break her was herself, and she had no intention of breaking.
So far in life, she’d survived a lot, but somehow, she always managed to come out the other side. Battered and bruised, not quite the same as she’d been before, but still there, still standing.
