Chapter 34
Rowan
“You’re not listening!” I snapped, clutching the towel tighter against the side of my head. “Eli didn’t do this! He’s not the one you want!”
The officer crouched beside me, notebook in hand, face unreadable. He’d already cut the cable ties from my wrists and passed me the towel for the blood. My hands still shook. My vision was still a little blurry. But I could speak, and right now, that was all I cared about.
“Sir, I need you to slow down,” he said. “We’ll get to all of that, but we're – ”
“Marcus!” I spat. “Marcus did this. Not Eli. Marcus brought the gun. Marcus tied me up. You’ve got it backwards!”
“We have officers on him now – ”
“Yeah, and one of them just cuffed Eli!” I struggled to sit straighter, my heart pounding faster now than it had when the gun went off. “Eli stopped him. He kept Marcus from killing me. And now you're treating him like he’s the danger!”
The officer's brow twitched. He was clearly used to people yelling at him in the chaos, but his calm demeanour only pissed me off more. This wasn’t some misunderstanding in a pub. Eli and I almost fucking died.
“I get that you have a job to do,” I said, voice catching. “But you need to get someone back there and tell them they’ve got it wrong. You need to let him go!”
“I understand.” The officer spoke gently now, like he was trying to talk down a jumper. “But I need your statement so we can sort out exactly what happened. Start from the beginning.”
I opened my mouth, but nothing useful came out. Just the same words, stuck in a loop. “Eli’s not the one you want.”
I could tell I was trying his patience. His jaw tightened in the way people's faces do when they're pretending not to be annoyed.
He wasn't yelling, but he was getting frustrated with me.
And I knew if I kept circling the same sentence, he was going to write me off as hysterical or concussed. Or both.
He was already weighing it. I could see in his eyes that he was trying to decide if I was too wound up to be helpful or if I was just wasting his time. I started to gear up again and was ready to launch back into it –
A voice cut in from somewhere behind him. "Let me try."
The first officer glanced over his shoulder. Then, after a pause, he stood and walked off without a word.
The second one crouched down in front of me and looked me in the eyes. "Hey, Rowan."
I blinked at him. His face wasn't immediately familiar, but the voice was. It took a second, and then it clicked.
Charlie Davenport. We had half our classes together back in school. Always talked about music and shows and how much we hated double periods. He'd been one of Eli's mates, too, and they had a tendency to find trouble.
A faint smile tugged at his mouth, but it didn't last. "Listen, I know Eli didn't do this. But the rest of them don't. All they saw was him holding the gun."
My stomach clenched.
"I need you to walk me through what happened, okay? From the top. Help me give them the full picture, and we can start straightening this out."
My throat felt tight again, but I managed to rasp out, “Okay.”
I didn't start with the kidnapping or the gun.
I went all the way back. To all the red flags I ignored, the financial control, the gaslighting, the beating where Marcus almost killed me, the stalking.
I didn't want to bring up the drugging or the rape yet if I didn't have to, so I skipped over that for now.
I glanced down the path, half expecting to see Marcus somehow still slinking around in the dark even though he'd already been taken away in an ambulance. "Today, I was walking home from the school, and he jumped me. I must've blacked out."
Charlie stayed silent and let me talk without interruption.
I lifted the towel slightly, grimacing at the blood that had soaked into it. "When I woke up, he was pulling me out of his car down at the park entrance. He dragged me up here and threatened me with that gun."
His eyes sharpened with sudden interest. "He parked at the entrance and brought you up here on foot?"
"Yeah. And then he called Eli to bait him."
He leaned back to look toward the road, then turned his attention back to me. "Does he drive a silver Mazda?"
I nodded.
He stood up fast and flagged down the nearest officer. "Hey, hit up the place on the corner. Ask to see their CCTV from the last couple of hours. Look for that silver Mazda parked on the street."
The other man gave a quick nod and hurried off.
Charlie crouched back down. "That might be what we need to get Eli out of that car."
I exhaled a shaky breath and pressed the towel back to my head. "Good. Because he doesn't belong there."
"Do you have anything else that could back all this up?"
I hesitated. My brain was working slower than I wanted it to, but eventually, I nodded. "There's a camera at my front door. It's caught Marcus trying to get me to let him in more than once. Caught the first time he went after Eli, too."
My thoughts started to trip over themselves, so I had to take a second to straighten them out. I was starting to think I'd gotten another concussion when Marcus pistol-whipped me. "But I – I don't have my phone. I think I dropped it somewhere."
Charlie frowned. "Can anyone else access the feed?"
"Eli can."
"Good. We'll get to that."
"And - " I winced. "My neighbour, Mrs Cavanagh. She knows what's been going on. She saw what Marcus did to me a few months back, and she's been helping out since."
He gave a quick nod. "Alright. I'll give her a ring. I'll be back in a few minutes." He stood and walked off, already flagging down another officer on the way.
I sat there, alone for the first time since leaving the school, and I finally noticed how cold I was.
The blood on the towel was starting to freeze, and my hands wouldn't stop shaking.
Not from fear anymore or even the adrenaline.
Just the come-down. The kind of trembling that takes over when your body finally catches up and realises it survived something.
I stared blankly at the space ahead of me. The spot where Marcus paced. Where Eli almost got shot. My stomach lurched, and for a second, I thought I might throw up. It didn't feel real. Any of it.
The pain filtered in next, slow and creeping. My head pounded with a low, punishing throb, and my neck ached. I winced as a fresh wave of dizziness rolled through me. I had to close my eyes to keep myself steady.
I heard movement somewhere next to me. Maybe another officer or someone else. I didn't know. I didn't look up.
"You need to be looked at," he said gently. "We can drive you to A&E. Someone'll go with you."
"No."
He paused. "Sir, I really think – "
"No! I'm not leaving until Eli's out of that car."
"We can sort that while – "
"I'm not leaving. He saved my life, and you people threw him in cuffs."
I knew I was being stubborn. Maybe a little stupid. But I didn't care. My legs felt like they'd buckle if I tried to stand, anyway, so I stayed where I was. I refused to move, and eventually, the person backed off and left me alone.
I could only guess how long I sat there.
When I finally tested opening my eyes, what was left of the late afternoon light had faded into twilight.
For the moment at least, the sick feeling in my stomach had gone away, and the world wasn’t rolling upside down.
I checked my head injury and was relieved to find it had stopped bleeding, so I tossed the towel aside and let my head rest back against the stone wall.
At some point, I heard fast footsteps coming up the path. I cracked an eye open.
Charlie was heading in my direction, his pace quick and focused. I sat up straighter and tried to read his face, but he didn't give much away. My chest tightened again.
He stopped in front of me and held out a hand. "Can you stand?"
I didn't answer right away. I just looked at him, searching for some hint about what was going on.
His eyes were calm and steady, but that could've meant anything.
So I took his hand and let him help me to my feet.
My knees wobbled at first, but they held.
Most of the adrenaline had burned off, and with it, the worst of the trembling.
I didn't even try to hide the urgency in my voice. "Where's Eli?"
Charlie didn't say a word. He just turned and nodded for me to follow.
I kept close behind him as we made our way down the path, slower than I wanted to move. The moment we rounded the bend near the entrance, my heart skipped.
Eli was out of the car. He stood a little hunched over as the officer behind him unlocked the cuffs. I heard a faint click as they came off, and Eli immediately shook out his wrists with a visible wince.
Relief crashed over me. And I was moving before I realised I'd taken a step. I didn't slow down. Didn't think about how fast I was moving. I just barrelled into him.
He brought his arms up in time to catch me but still staggered back with the full force of it and slammed into the side of the car. The officer behind him barely made it out of the way before he got caught up in the fray.
Eli let out a grunt and a somewhat pained laugh. "Bloody hell, Ro."
But his arms still locked tight around me. I buried my face in his shoulder. I didn’t care who was watching. Didn’t care how much I was shaking. He was solid and warm and real, and I needed that right now more than anything else in the world. I was so damn tired of feeling cold.
Things went quiet for a second. Then I heard Charlie call out, "Get a room, lads!"
Eli didn't even look up. "Fuck off, Charlie!"
That actually got a laugh out of me. A short one, but real all the same. I finally eased back to look up at him. His face was scraped and smudged, and he looked exhausted. But he smiled when his gaze locked onto mine.
His hand came up and brushed gently through my hair, sweeping it back so he could get a better look at the side of my head. His fingers hesitated near the edge of the wound, careful to avoid touching it. "You okay?"
I gave a small nod. "Yeah. Yeah, I'm alright."
His eyes searched mine like he didn't quite believe me, but he didn't push, either. I leaned in, meaning to kiss him. I didn't care that we were still standing beside the police car or that officers were only a few feet away. I just needed him close.
But the world suddenly tilted under my feet. The dizziness hit so fast that it stole my breath. My knees buckled, and I swayed.
Eli's arms instantly tightened around me to keep me upright. "Whoa, easy. You sure you're okay?"
I couldn't answer him right away. My face pressed into his shoulder again, and I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to stop the spinning sensation. "I... I think I'm going to be sick. And my head fucking hurts."
"We can give you a ride to A&E," someone said.
This time, I didn't argue. I just gave the smallest nod I could manage.
Eli kept an arm firmly around me and murmured something I didn't quite catch as he guided me carefully into the car. He helped me into the back seat with a gentleness that made my chest ache, and he didn't let go until I was settled.
Once he was sat beside me, I buried myself against his chest, closed my eyes, and tried not to throw up. His arm curled around my shoulders again, and his other hand moved in slow, calming circles up and down my back.
I felt the car roll forward, but I didn’t lift my head. I stayed still, letting the warmth of his touch and the low hum of the engine settle some of the chaos still buzzing around in my head.