Chapter 61
sixty-one
Pretty sure I died and went to heaven.
There are a few ways I know it is an ethereal plane of otherworldly goodness. The first is the distinct smell of my very favorite candle mixed with my very favorite tea and a very new book.
The second is the warmth. The type that only comes when someone holds you. The sensation of affection internally warming your body the same way the other person’s presence heats your skin.
Even better—the warmth moves. It cups my cheek—or, you know, where I used to have a cheek—and strokes the place where I once had hair. It’s nice, I think idly, that I still feel like I have a body, even though I’m some wandering collection of soul dust.
The last clue isn’t the voice. Although the voice is very good—a perfect imitation of the one I love most in the whole world, quiet enough to feel intimate but loud enough to hear with perfect clarity.
No, the voice is good… but what really sends the whole thing into heavenly territory is the absolute filth it recites. Top-tier smut through and through. All wrapped in my preferred package of petticoats and dashing lords.
That’s how I know I’ve actually died and somehow wound up in heaven. Because if heaven isn’t the sexy love of your life—who never actually loved you on Earth, but who cares, now?—reading an amazing smut book while he cuddles you and brews your favorite tea… then what is it?
Sighing with all the contentment unfurling where my chest used to be, I float closer to the voice.
Which suddenly… stops reading?
“Alice?” My name is a hushed, hopeful breath. “Baby, can you hear me?”
The warmth moves again, shifting all around me. How is that possible, I wonder. How can it be under me and over me and against my sides? Is it more heavenly magic?
“Mmm,” I reply, surprised to feel a vibration where I once had a throat.
A sharp intake of breath and more shifting. A buzzing noise that does not, in my opinion, belong in heaven. But then the voice comes back, and I forget to care.
“Alice? God, I hope you can hear me. And if you can… I love you, Alice. I love you so much. And I thought you were going to die not knowing that I—that you’re everything to me.”
Is it normal for my thoughts to be slower in heaven? I think it must be, because I can’t grasp anything the voice told me. It touches my consciousness and then slips right over it.
I try to concentrate. This voice sounds like Marco. And it’s telling me… he loves me? No, not possible. But it also said he thought I was going to die, which means… I didn’t? If that is true, how is he here with me?
There’s a sudden burst of shuffling and low, tense mutters I don’t catch. The warmth all around me shifts too much, peeling away from my body. When cold tingles over my senses, I whimper, bereft.
Maybe this isn’t heaven, after all. Maybe hell gives you everything your heart desires and then rips it away over and over again.
A woman’s tenor interrupts my morbid musings. “Alice? Alice Moore? Can you hear me? If you hear me, try to answer, Alice.”
She has an insistent way about her that makes me want to obey. I go looking for that vibrating sensation where my throat once was, but I can’t find it.
“She’s frowning,” the copy of Marco’s voice murmurs, urgent with hope. “Is that good? Is she in pain?”
The tenacious woman ignores him. A burst of red suddenly streaks in front of me. Then another. “Alice? Do you see the light? Open your eyes if you see the light moving.”
Is that a flashlight? It looks more like a flare. But it’s there. I see the color and feel the heat of it on my—
Eyelids. I really have eyelids.
Which means…
I put every bit of focus I possess into fluttering the lids open. Blinding yellow light instantly assaults me and I cringe, another odd sound reverberating up my vocal cords as I try to recoil.
That’s a mistake.
Good Lord, everything hurts. My back, my front, my chest, my shoulders. A pained noise flies out of me as I squeeze my eyes closed, willing myself to go back to the semi-conscious state where I heard my favorite voice.
But then, it speaks to me again.
“No, Alice, no,” he whispers, desperate. Large hands fold around the sides of my head. “Please don’t leave me again. I know it must hurt, but try to stay with me, sweet girl.”
Sweet girl.
Somehow, those two words are my undoing. I blink, needing to see if he’s really there or just a figment of my imagination.
His handsome face looms over mine, dark eyes tense and excited all at once. The set of his square jaw tells me he is barely holding himself together. His perfectly sculpted lips part, releasing a quiet breath of awe.
“Your eyes,” he murmurs while his swim. “I thought I’d never see them again.”
Oh God.
I am alive. I am awake. And that means…
Was all of that real? Was any of it?
The pain pulsing through every part of me sharpens while my lungs push and pull, trying to gather air I can’t collect. Some monitor beside my bed goes haywire. Marco’s focus flies to it while two nurses rush forward, each gently maneuvering him away from me.
“You need to step out, Mr. Amir,” one says. “Miss Moore will call you back if she wants to.”
The no-nonsense doctor explains that I’m likely having a panic attack and asks if I’d like to be sedated.
She tells me that they’ve already sedated me a few times, and it’s taking longer for me to wake up after each dose.
Because this is the first time I am lucid enough to give consent, they want my feedback before continuing to pump me full of whatever has kept me calm all week.
All week? I think, blinking back the last of my tears.
“N-no,” I croak. “I—I want to b-be awake.”
The barest layer of sympathy covers the doctor’s face. She nods, assessing me carefully. “Alright. Try to stay calm, then, Miss Moore. You’ve had surgery. Raising your blood pressure right now will only put you at risk of complications. Do your best to relax, and I’ll call your emergency contact.”
I can’t focus long enough to wonder who that might be, but a horrible thought suddenly occurs to me. I try to lurch forward before falling back. Face twisting with fresh pain, I pant, “W-what happened to Esme?”
The sympathy on the doctor’s face doubles. “The woman you were found with? I’m sorry, but I don’t know. I understand your boyfriend is her son, though. Would you like me to send him back in?”
I really don’t know how I will stay calm if Marco comes back in, but I have to know if all my efforts to keep Pierce’s hands off Esme succeeded. “Okay.”
The doctor leaves, and Marco strides inside barely ten seconds later. He comes straight for me, only hesitating when he gets close enough to touch. I flinch away, and he takes the hint, dropping into the chair at my bedside without even grazing the bed sheets.
Floral bed sheets.
It finally occurs to me that my room doesn’t look like a hospital room at all. It has the high ceilings and sterile white walls one would expect, but the rest seems… homey.
The bed isn’t a lumpy cot—it’s a full-sized double bed with sunny daisy sheets and an array of sky-blue pillows.
Those match the painting proudly propped up on the counter beside a sterile sink—one of my own pieces, in shades of sunshine and tangerine.
Both pair with the rug filling the space where the speckled laminate floor should be.
There are miniature versions of my favorite candles burning on a small antique side table. A romance book is laid out beside them. And an electric kettle quietly steaming on the windowsill.
Marco watches my wide eyes sweep around the space and gives a small, apologetic smile. “I may have gone overboard. I wanted you to have your favorite things here when you woke up.”
It’s a lovely thought. One that would have made me swoon, before. Now, though, my heart aches just as fiercely as the rest of my body.
“Where’s your mom?” I whisper. “Is she okay?”
Intense emotion fills Marco’s perfect face. His hands fall to mine, scooping one up and burying his face against my fingers. “Yes,” he husks. “She’s okay. Because of you.”
He swallows as he lifts his head, meeting my eyes with his haunted gaze.
“She told me what you did. How you tried to save her. How you tricked him. How you refused to scream for his video so you wouldn’t traumatize me.
Alice, he tortured you for over an hour before you passed out.
They’ve done so many surgeries to try to—to—”
At a loss, he grips the top sheet lying over me and peels it back, showing me the crisscross of stitches covering my upper thighs. I know there are more cuts on my abdomen. I remember each of them with horrifying clarity.
My vision blurs while new tears gather there. Marco makes a small, comforting sound, covering me back up and swooping for my hand again. His lips brush over my knuckles while he speaks.
“Don’t worry about the scars. I tracked down the best plastic surgeon in New York for you. Most of them are on your body where no one can see, but he promises every scar will fade into invisibility within six months.”
His eyes make a liar of him, jumping to a few spots on my face that, I figure, show the remnants of my scarring.
I wait for self-consciousness or anxiety to trickle in, but neither does. If I have scars, so be it. If I look even worse than I ever did before, that’s fine.
I no longer care.
I’m alive. I survived and saved the woman who raised the man I love. I will never regret that.
I remember every taunt Pierce threw at me as he tried to slice away my will to live. They were all cruel, vicious jeers, designed to carve internal wounds matching the external ones he created. But none of them hit me, because I chose not to hear them.
It never occurred to me to just… choose not to listen. In all the years I’ve been teased or criticized, I never tuned it out. Now that I have, I can face anything.
I know who I am. I like how I look. And as long as I’m okay with both, who cares what anyone else has to say?