Page 92 of The Piece You Stole

* * *

Bitter antiseptic.

My eyes flutter but don’t open. It feels like they’re taped shut.

I swallow.

Choke.

I can’t breathe around the thing in my throat.

Whimpering, I struggle, but no part of me wants to move.

I need to tell someone that something is in my throat, that it’s choking me, but I can’t move.

A hand grips my right arm and squeezes lightly. “It’s okay,” a male voice murmurs.

It’s not okay!I want to scream because something is scratching my throat. And it’s choking me.

Hands press me back in the bed, murmuring to me in a voice I should know. Before I can link the voice to a face, the black void returns to carry me away.

* * *

“…for observation. Her arm…”

The thing in my throat is gone, but the mask clamped tight around my mouth blasts cool, strange-tasting air into me.

I stop focusing on the mask and pay attention to what truly matters: The people in my room because the doctor has to be talking to someone, and that someone is not me.

The male voice is crisp and unfamiliar. It’s not one I’ve heard before, but the confidence and the assurance which fills it would tell me where I was if a crisp antiseptic scent wasn’t filling my nose.

Hospital.

And the man is a doctor.

The thing in my throat is gone, and I can’t tell if something is hooking me up to a beeping machine like the last time I woke in a hospital bed.

I slow my breathing and try to hold still in case Detective Ferdinand and Bradley are sitting close by, waiting for me to wake up so they can throw me in a cell. When I think back to the way they looked at me before I left the police station, I know they won’t forget me. Without seeming to even try, I’ve turned them into my enemies.

Someone leans over me.

I hold my breath so they can’t tell I’m awake.

That same someone presses a kiss on my forehead, surprising me.

My eyes fly open.

I blink until my vision clears, but even when it does, I refuse to believe what I’m seeing is true.

Aden smiles, the skin around his warm hazel eyes creasing. “Hey.”

I stare.

This is a dream. This is not real.

It can’t be.

No one is supposed to care whether I live or die. The only one who cared was Simon and he paid for it with his life. Why would… I mentally shake my head… Why would Aden care aboutme?

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