Page 3 of Signed For Him

I watch in utter confusion, the pain ebbing to the background as I look around and try to work out my surroundings and why I'm here. Why I'm not home in my bed.

I just want to go home. The anxiety in my stomach rolls and shifts, waves of nausea hitting me at the uncomfort. Not just the physical discomfort but the idea that I have no idea what is going on or why I'm not where I'm meant to be.

It is a hospital room, though I don't feel that I'm in a hospital. I'm not sure why, but I'm certain I'm not safe. I don't feel like I'll ever feel safe again.

As my head slowly turns, looking around the room, my eyes connect with a monster. Not a new one but one that does make the fear that lingers rise to the surface.

I spent so many years looking up to him, thinking that he would be my saviour, my family forever and yet the last time I spoke to him, I knew. I knew there was a deeper and darker part to his soul than I had ever realised or wished to see.

"I'm not going to hurt you," he says as he takes a few tentative steps closer to me. His presence is as overpowering and outrageous now as it ever had been and when I'm feeling most vulnerable, it terrifies me.

"What's happening? Where am I? Why are you here? Where's Dad? And Crow? And Victor?" I ask, my throat dry and my voice hoarse. I feel the tears rising to the surface, though I do my best to blink and blink, to make them go away.

Make them go away.

"Please take me home." I turn to Gray, unsure that I can trust him but knowing that I hold more trust in my brother than in the monster on my other side.

Gray dabs at his eyes as he lifts his face, his eyes still filled with a mixture of guilt and remorse as he shakes his head at me.

"I can't leave, let alone take you home," he tells me sadly.

I fight through the pain consuming my body, shifting so that I'm sat up in the bed, pulling the blanket with me to cover the hospital nightgown underneath.

Who changed me out of the clothes I was in? Who saw the damage that I knew was done to my body? I didn't need to see myself; I could feel the bruising and stiffness in my very bones to know that I was inexplicably and fatally changed.

"Why can't you leave?" I ask him, my eyes alternating between him and the monster beside me, unwilling to turn my back on him for the fear of what he may do.

"They promised that if I stayed, they wouldn't hurt you. They wouldn't take you but now that they have you, if I try to leave or help you leave, they'll hurt you even more," he wrenches out, his face looking like he's about to sob in my lap at any given moment.

I think through what he's said. They? Who are they? The same they from the letter he left me? Just sitting up in the stiff bed has my body and muscles aching, I'm certain I don't have the energy to escape, let alone ask the questions I want to right now.

"Can you take me home?" I ask quietly as I turn to Liam. The monster. No doubt the devil behind all of this.

He watches me, his eyes filled with nothing but darkness.

"I can't. I can demand that you're mine though. No one else will hurt you then."

A laugh gurgles through my dry throat, a sound that resembles a choked sigh more than the sarcastic laugh that was intended.

"Right. Then only you could hurt me," I say.

I'm trapped. One way or another, whichever way I go, I'm trapped. I can't move. I can't leave. I can't get off this bed. There are monsters everywhere. I want to curl up in a ball, close my eyes, and not open them again until I'm in the arms of safety. Until this is all over and someone wakes me from this nightmare, telling me that none of it was real, that everything will be OK, but I'm not sure that anything will ever be ok again.

I want Crow. Despite my care for Victor, it's not him I crave. I want Crow’s warmth, his laughter, his reassuring smile. I want his arms around me and his voice whispering in my ear, telling me that everything will be OK. I want him to hug me and hold me and carry me home.

"I'll take care of you. I may be the villain in your story but I promise you, I won't hurt you."

I inwardly cringe at the statement, the irony of his insistence on keeping me uninjured when I'm sitting in a hospital bed feeling more physically and mentally drained than I ever have in my life.

I had been hurt in every way before from different things, whether that be illness or heartbreak; from those I love dying or leaving; and yet the pain I'm in now doesn't even come close to comparing. It's a situation I never envisioned being in and one that everyone warned me of. You never think it will happen to you until it does, that's the saying, right? I can't count how many times I was told that when I was younger when Nina, my best friend, and I wanted to go out alone.

Liam looks at me with a hint of what looks to be shame or remorse in his eyes, but I dismiss the notion that he could possibly feel bad for this situation or for me when I have no doubt he was at least a part of the reason I'm here.

"How long have I been asleep?" I ask Gray, not wanting to spend any more time than necessary looking at Liam’s face or thinking about the implications of what I assume he's done.

"The doctor put you into an induced coma to let your body heal. You've been out for just over three weeks," he tells me, his voice gentle and hushed.

Three weeks.

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