Page 31 of Voracious

Her bottom lip trembles, a tear slipping down her cheek as her focus comes back, yet her pupils are dilated so badly that I can’t see the beautiful winter forest in her eyes.

“K-Kade,” she whimpers, another tear slipping down her cheek. “Kade.”

“It’s me, Freckles.”

She collapses in my hold, and I hug her to me. “Fuck. Are you hurt?”

She shakes her head. “I needed you to s-see me. The song. I… didn’t know if you re-remembered it.”

I close my eyes and rest my chin on her head, tightening my arms around her. She’s taking steady breaths now, each one rattling in her chest. “I heard it. How could I ever forget that?”

“I… I m-missed you.”

Fuck do those words feel like she just drove a blade through my heart. Words I can never do anything with.

She pulls her head back and looks up at me with glazed, bloodshot eyes, her pupils the size of a fucking planet.

“They drugged you.” It’s not a question.

She swallows, and I can tell she’s not feeling too good.

I shrug off my suit jacket and wrap it around her, covering her ripped dress, then I gather her in my arms and pull her off her feet. Her face is stained with red splatters, and there’s a gash in her palm from where the blade must’ve cut her.

Stacey buries her head into my chest as I hold her, unable to do much else but whisper my name repeatedly. Barry is already making calls while the girl I sent away nearly three months ago to keep her safe, keeping me anchored in this world without even knowing, slowly goes limp in my hold.

The hotel room is ruined. She must’ve smashed a lamp over one of their heads too, and there are handprints on the walls from them trying to get away from her.

She’d been here for less than five minutes before we got here. My girl just fought for her damn life, and now I can tell she needs sleep, but not with whatever is in her system.

I kick open the adjoining bathroom, lower to the ground with Stacey in my arms and push up the toilet lid. “I need to make you sick, okay?” I tell her softly.

Barry tells someone to have a car wait out back and to have a medical kit ready.

I shove my fingers down her throat, and she vomits all over my hand and into the toilet bowl. I do it again, forcing her to bring up what’s in her stomach until she slaps at my hand to stop.

As I wipe the blood from her face with tissues, the concealer she was wearing comes away too. She has bruises on her face, her throat purple from someone strangling her.

These aren’t all fresh – though one on her cheek I can tell just happened. One of them punched her.

I wish my impulsiveness won sometimes, so I could’ve walked over to the booth when I saw them and beat the shit out of them one by one. But Barry is right – causing a scene would have drawn Bernadette’s attention from the other room, and then Stacey would’ve been on her radar. She would already be strung up somewhere, and I’d need to watch her being tortured.

Barry takes the cup from the sink and fills it with water before handing it to me.

“Drink this,” I say, tipping her head back and pouring little bits into her mouth at a time. “Swallow. That’s it. You’re so fucking strong, Stacey. You’re a fighter. You’re okay. You’re okay.” I think I’m saying the last part to myself more than anything.

“Make sure that bastard downstairs doesn’t leave. I want him interrogated.”

Barry chews his lip as he glances at his phone, searching through CCTV footage. “He already left. I can have him tracked in the car he got into, sir.”

Gritting my teeth, I lace my fingers with Stacey’s and nod once.

As a little bit of life comes to her, she slouches in my hold, and I brush strands of hair from her face. She’s looking up at me, and somehow, her dimple dents as she manages a smile. “You’re alive.”

“I am,” I reply. “I’m kind of hard to kill.”

“I w-w-was so worried. Did they…” She gulps, takes a second to breathe then continues. “Did they hurt you?”

I shake my head. “No,” I lie. Unless you count unlimited beatings and forced hard-ons.

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