Chapter 30
Lovelyn
I’d never tried the sedatives I’d been prescribed a year ago, never wanting to block out the feelings that felt so real to me, and which needed honouring. Tonight was different. I’d popped a pill as soon as I got home then let it chemically lull me to sleep.
A cop-out, but a failed one.
Sleep didn’t come.
Only a hazy half-life where I was neither out of it nor alert. It didn’t help the pain or the memories. I was right back in the hospital wing, crumpled over a bed, inconsolable and so, so lost.
Through my half-open eyelids, the darkness in my bedroom shifted. I couldn’t tell how long I’d been home. I couldn’t tell anything. I was adrift. Untethered.
Scared.
Someone rang the doorbell, but I couldn’t raise my hand to check the cameras on my phone.
A low-level dread churned in my belly, the registering of a fear I couldn’t ignore. What if the guy who’d threatened me showed up? Kane was away. He couldn’t help me. Only watch whatever happened.
And in my need to check out of the world for a few hours, I’d drugged myself.
I could do nothing but lie here. It wasn’t supposed to be like this.
I should’ve been unconscious. Unable to feel or be scared.
Yet this house wasn’t the safe haven I’d needed when I’d walked out of the warehouse on autopilot.
I couldn’t summon my arms to lift or do more than speak a few words into the dark, stuck in a hell of my own making.
I’d hit a new low.
For another couple of hours, I lay there in the same state. Nothing changing but the depth of the shadows. It had to be the early hours, and still I could do nothing but curse myself for being so stupid.
An engine roared down the street, then a car door cranked. Boots drummed my path.
A new pulse of panic infected me.
Someone beat at the door. “Lovelyn?”
Kane? How?
Emotion choked me.
The thumping came again, urgency in his need to wake me. If only I could. Desperation broke in waves. I wanted him with me. On me. Inside me and here to stay.
Another voice pierced the night. “Who’s there?”
“Kane Ryan. Sorry if I disturbed ye, Mrs Hampton. I got off work late, and Lovelyn isn’t awake.” Tension and strain laced his voice.
A pause followed, then my neighbour said, “You’re bleeding.”
“Occupational hazard.”
He was bleeding? Why? I fought harder to stay conscious.
“She shouldn’t be alone. Not today.”
“Agreed, but I can’t get to her,” Kane replied.
Mrs Hampton rattled something, and I pictured her stick out the window. “The key is under the second plant pot. Treat her well, and mop up that blood.”
“I will.” He thanked her, then came the grate of terracotta on concrete, followed by the key sliding into the lock.
A tear of happiness and relief eased down my cheek.
Kane’s footsteps pounded the stairs, then he was there, in my room and kneeling on my bed. Urgent fingers touched my face. “Lovelyn, wake up.”
At last, and with the worst possible timing, the drug stole my consciousness, a dip into sleep I no longer wanted but couldn’t avoid.
I couldn’t force my mouth to reply.
Only my heart to feel all I’d tried to hold back.