Page 18 of Montana Freedom

She shook her head no. “You don’t understand. I had to leave. I had to leave, okay?”

About ten feet away, I crouched, so I was on her level. “I’m not angry.” I wasn’t sure why those were the words I said, but they felt right. “And I’m not here to drag you anywhere you don’t want to go. I just want you to be well. You’re sick.”

“I have to go.”

“Tell you what,” I said. “When you’re better, I’ll take you wherever you want to go, no questions asked. I promise. All we want to do is help you get better.”

She stared at me for a long time. Long enough the light shifted, everything around us darkening noticeably. Finally, she moved, and I heard a small sound of pain she tried to hide. “I don’t want to die.”

“I’m not going to let you die.” It was a promise as well. “Will you let me help you?”

Emma nodded once, and it was good enough for me. I went to her, still keeping every movement smooth, steady, and visible. Even if she didn’t remember, Emma was reacting to her trauma, and I needed to be careful. The bags of fluids were cradled in her lap.

“I’m going to pick you up and carry you to the truck. Can you put your arm around my neck?”

She did, clumsily. It wasn’t ideal to lift her on the side with her wound, but I didn’t want to risk tangling the tubes she miraculously still had in her arm. Now that she was in my arms, she felt light. Instinctually, she curled into me, and I forgot myself for a moment.

That implicit trust was something I craved. Caring for someone who needed me, in the same way I did at Resting Warrior. But I didn’t interact with the clients much. Emma was far more personal, and helping her was soothing some of the rough edges of my tattered soul.

If things were different, and I were different, Emma was someone I could see myself caring for forever. I shouldn’t notice the way she fit in my arms like she was meant to be there. I shouldn’t notice how beautiful she was when she was so close to death’s door.

But I did notice those things.

“It’s not safe,” she said quietly. “It’s not safe for me. Or you.”

“It’s okay,” I promised. “You are safe. You are.”

“No.” She shook her head, but the movement was barely perceptible. “Not safe foryou.” Her body went limp as she lost consciousness, and I tried not to let the words strike home. She wasn’t thinking straight.

Liam was already on the passenger side of the truck, holding the door open. “She all right?”

“For now. Let’s get her back to where she can actually rest.”

Where she could rest and get better, and I could keep my promise of taking her wherever she wanted to go. It had to end there. Because I already knew myself. And once she was healed, Emma was better off on her own.

Chapter7

Emma

I didn’t run away again. I couldn’t. The rational, non-feverish part of my brain knew if I ran again, I wouldn’t make it. And gradually, as I let myself sink into the bed they gave me, and after some rest, my mind became clearer. I still wasn’t one hundred percent, but I wasn’t dying anymore.

The fact that Ihadbeen dying and stubbornly refused to acknowledge it scared me more than I chose to admit. Was the fear of Simon finding me still present? Yes. Absolutely. But deep in my gut, I didn’t believe anyone at Resting Warrior would turn me over to someone like that.

Especially not Daniel.

There were other people too. I saw the doctor—a kind but stern woman who believed I needed to be in a hospital but relented when I was the one who insisted and not Daniel. The woman who’d been in the cages with me, Kate. I pretended not to remember her either, but that didn’t seem to bother her nearly as much as it bothered Daniel. Her partner, Noah, who Simon had almost killed, stopped by. He seemed like a kind man, and I was glad Simon had been stopped before shooting him.

It was strange how much I didn’t like being still. I’d been still for six months up in that cabin, but that was a much bigger space than this room. I was able to get up and walk around this cabin and such, but I was still too weak to get far. And every hour, it felt like the walls closed in more and more. Soon, I was sure I would go mad.

The only thing that stopped that feeling was Daniel. He’d saved me not once, not twice, but three times now. Every day, he came to visit and sat with me. We talked about everything and nothing, and when he was with me, I couldn’t take my eyes off him.

The way he paid attention to me, like he saw everything, was intoxicating. And after months of imagining him closer than he was now, I found it hard to control the urge to lean forward and touch him whenever he sat on the bed.

Only a few days had passed, but when he knocked on the door softly as he always did, I was ready. “Hello.”

“Hello.” He smiled as he came in. “How are you feeling today?”

“Like I desperately,desperatelywant to get out of this room.”

---