Chapter 27 – Ava Jade
AVA JADE
W e left Grey alone at the makeshift command center he’d set up in Becca’s hospital room, closing the door behind us. I’d wanted to check on her again, whisper to her that she was stronger than whatever was keeping her down. She was stronger than she ever gave herself credit for.
I needed her to wake up.
I needed her .
And selfishly, I wanted to rid myself of the added guilt on my conscience. If she woke up, I could let at least a small part of that crushing weight roll from my shoulders before I bought her a one-way ticket as far away from Thorn Valley as she could possibly get.
But I didn’t get to whisper sweet nothings in her ear today. It was clear my and Rook’s presence was distracting Grey from his work. His steady key-clacking on the keyboard balanced across his lap stuttered, the tension in his jaw spreading down to his neck and shoulders.
He wouldn’t say it, but I knew he wanted us to leave.
Wanted me to leave.
I couldn’t blame him.
Greyson Winters, known for being the hottest guy at Briar Hall. A heartless playboy with golden hair and a winning smile who could snap his fingers and have any girl naked and dripping for him.
But he wasn’t that anymore. I’d disfigured him and even if I thought the black eyepatch he wore made him look somehow better than he did before, he clearly didn’t think so.
I hadn’t seen him smile once since I got back, and aside from the short embrace he gave me on that backroad outside of Lennox, he hadn’t touched me, either.
I’d apologized a thousand times on that road. And a thousand more times between there and the hospital, but it was like he couldn’t hear me.
“What is it, Ghost?” Rook asked, his fingers twining with mine as we made our way back toward Corvus’ room. “Nervous about the meet?”
I snorted, shaking my head, happy for the excuse as to why I was so clearly sulking. “Which one?”
Grey would be meeting us in Corvus’ room in an hour.
It was finally time for me to go over, in detail , everything Drake did to me as well as anything I could remember about the underground shelter he’d kept me in.
They’d waited patiently for almost two whole days, but both them and Diesel were getting restless.
Right after I went over the nauseating details with them, Grey and Rook and I would be going to meet with Diesel at Sanctum where we hoped to figure out some form of attack plan from my intel.
Except… I didn’t have much.
Nothing that I thought would help. But a fuck ton that I knew would only hurt my guys to hear. I was already pulling apart all the details in my mind, trying to figure out what might be helpful and therefore worth mentioning and which parts I could omit for their own sanity.
“I know what you’re doing,” Rook muttered. “But you can’t protect us from it. We need to know, Ghost. There might be something we can use that you don’t think is important.”
I bit the inside of my cheek.
“Besides,” he continued without missing a beat. “I need to continue developing the plans for his… execution. If your intel isn’t good for helping us find the bastard, then at least it’ll help with that.”
“You have plans?”
He lifted his brows, as surprised as I was. “Shocking, right? I don’t do plans, but this piece of shit has me making sketches and a detailed schedule of events for his disassembly.”
My lips twitched into a half smile that he returned, giving my hand a squeeze. “It’s going to be fine.”
“How do you know?”
“Because we’ve all faced wicked trials and twisted games, Ghost. We’ve survived the ugly and made a home in the darkness. We can handle your truth, because you handled ours.”
His words spoke to the deformed parts of me, making me think their sharp edges could be forged into something new and beautiful.
“Okay.”
I spotted the nurse from my testing and cleared my throat, untangling my fingers from Rook’s. “Go ahead,” I said, indicating Corvus’ room down the hall. “I’ll catch up. I wanted to ask the nurse something.”
The shadows over his eyes darkened, but I gave him my best everything’s fine smile. “I’ll literally be twenty feet from you. Just go.”
He rubbed his thumb over his lip ring as he considered the nurse in a way that had me fearing for her immediate safety. “You do you, Ghost. I know you don’t need a babysitter.”
His expression was at odds with his easy tone, but he walked away, adjusting his jacket across his shoulders as he did. I noticed his limp was getting better and sighed after him.
I swallowed, turning to lean on the high desk of the nurse’s station.
“Excuse me,” I called over it, watching several nurses’ heads turn in my direction.
No doubt they’d all been told to give me everything and anything I needed.
Just as the hospital security seemed to also be watching my every move, judging every other person in my immediate vicinity for threats.
Rook may have said he knew I didn’t need a babysitter, but it seemed to me someone thought I did.
…or they’re just trying to protect you, my rational mind tried to remind me. Because they love you.
It’s not as impossible as you think.
“Nurse Fellows,” I amended. “Can I ask you something?”
The other nurses went back to their quiet chatter, going over files and keying information into the computers while Nurse Fellows abandoned the file she was going over and plastered on a polite smile.
“Is everything all right?” she asked, and by the empathy clear on her face, I knew she’d been briefed on all my test results. She knew I wouldn’t ever have kids.
I pushed the thought from my mind, hating how my mood instantly soured. I’d been trying hard not to think about it, but there it was. The one thing that might make my guys reconsider wanting me as their one and only.
It didn’t matter that procreating was the absolute furthest thing from my mind… If I couldn’t give them that, then would they want to find it somewhere else?
I swallowed, my grip on the counter tightening. “I’m fine,” I blurted. “Well, maybe not fine, but, I…”
I trailed off, gaze lifting to the others within earshot.
“Would you prefer to speak privately?”
She waved a hand to a small exam room down the hall, and I nodded gratefully.
“Just let me grab your file.”
I waited while she dug it out of a locked cabinet and led the way to the exam room, shutting us inside.
“Have a seat.”
I shook my head, shying away from the exam table. “No, it’s not—I mean, I’m fine. Physically.”
“Oh.”
I realized I was about to worry a hole through the hem of my shirt and made myself stop, stuffing my hands into my pockets instead.
“Are you having negative thoughts, or?—”
“No, it’s not that. It’s…”
Jesus fuck, just spit it out.
“Can sedatives cause hallucinations?”
Her face pinched in confused worry. “Perhaps some very specific types, and only in large doses, though it’s not common.”
I nodded, more to myself than to her, ready to admit to myself what I feared since the first time I heard the whispers in my head. I’m crazy.
The hallucinations seemed to be petering off since the guys found me, but maybe that was just because I was under less stress. Maybe all the drugs Drake pumped into my system unlocked something that’d just been waiting to be set free and there was nothing I could do to lock it back up.
I’d always felt like there was something separate to myself deep down. The darkness. A mirror self. A broken part of me that hungered for violence, thrived off bloodshed, lusted for pain.
Hearing voices shouldn’t have been a stretch.
“So then I’m fucking crazy.”
As if on cue, Grey’s voice whispered from beside me, as if he was standing right there. “All the best people are.”
My heart began to pound in my chest. A bubble of manic laughter only to be choked off in my throat. This wasn’t a laughing matter.
I was broken in more ways than one now. Not just physically, but mentally, too.
How could they want me now?
“Ava Jade, are you suffering from hallucinations?”
I blinked, peering from the corner of my eye to see if this hallucination was auditory only or if I was going to be graced with another full blown spectral vision of one of my guys.
The area to my right was empty, and I sighed. I hadn’t seen them like that, as a hallucination, since the forest.
That was something at least.
“Hmmm?”
I couldn’t remember what she’d just asked me for all the thoughts racing in my head.
“Are the hallucinations visual?”
I moistened my dry lips. “Not always. Mostly, it’s just hearing things.”
She nodded, flipping a couple pages in the file. “The doctor should have spoken to you about the possible side-effects.”
“Side-effects?”
“Of the Haldol in your system. Ah, here it is.” She passed me a sheet of paper covered in a graph with numbers and short name code I didn’t understand.
“What am I looking at?”
“You see this, here,” she pointed to a particularly high spike on the chart.
“That’s the level of Haldol that was in your system when you arrived at the hospital.
And this here, that’s the amount of Klonopin.
That’s ketamine. Not to mention a veritable cocktail of other narcotics of the legal and illegal variety. ”
“What does this mean?”
She took the sheet of paper back, tucking it in the file.
From the lack of judgment in her eyes, I knew that despite Diesel’s deal with the guy on the hospital board to keep things hush, at least this nurse and the doctor were made aware of where I’d been.
They would have had to have been to know what to look for.
Heat flushed my cheeks, but Nurse Fellows didn’t have pity in her pale green eyes, only a deep understanding that made me wonder what drove her to a profession as a nurse.
“It means that if you weren’t hallucinating, I’d be more concerned.”
I sagged against the exam table.
“Doctor Henry really should’ve gone over this with you, but it must’ve been missed given the rest of your exams.”
“No shit.”
She closed the file and came to lean casually on the edge of the exam table next to me. “You should also be aware that you could have some withdrawal symptoms given the amount of drugs that were in your system. From my understanding it was several weeks of usage?”
I nodded, still trying to reconcile everything she was saying.
“So symptoms such as headaches…”
Check.
“Nausea…”
Check.
“And anxiety…”
Check.
“Are all completely normal and to be expected for the next week or so.”
“And the hallucinations?”
“Those should taper off naturally. I’d expect them to be gone entirely in the next few days.”
“And if they’re not?”
She gave me an understanding smile. “They will be. You’re not crazy, Ava Jade. At least, not the kind of crazy that needs to be locked up in a psych ward.”
I snorted. “You sure about that?”
She pursed her lips, shrugging, her gaze lifting to the small window in the door, and Rook’s black eyes staring back at her through it. She shuddered, rising to unlock the door.
“Yeah, I take it back. You are crazy.”
Nurse Fellows opened the door and dipped her head as she squeaked out an excuse me and slipped past Rook into the hall, making her escape.
“Get what you needed?”
I pushed myself back to standing. “Yep.”
“Mind if I ask what that was?”
I winked at him as I exited the exam room, purposefully brushing against him as I passed. “Wouldn’t you like to know,” I teased, in higher spirits than I’d been in days.
So, maybe I was crazy, but at least it was the fun kind.