Chapter Fifteen
Ow.
Ow.
My head.
I reach to touch the side of my forehead where the pain is searing and it feels hot and sticky. I pull my hand away and my fingers are slick with blood. My wrist hurts and I can see that there’s blood there too.
A lot of blood.
Jesus.
I got kidnapped and climbed over a wall.
I’m lying in a field. I blacked out and I’m bleeding.
I’m bleeding a lot.
The delicate skin of my inner wrist is cut. Deeply. It’s exactly the kind of cut you’d make if you—
If you wanted to kill yourself.
Which I really, really don’t.
I take off the jacket I’m wearing and I wrap it around my wrist, doing my best to tie it as tightly as I can.
I need to find help.
Should I go back to that house?
Am I dying?
I don’t feel like I’m dying. I feel light-headed and dizzy and I have a terrible headache. But I’m outside the wall.
And I don’t want to risk getting locked up again.
I need to find Kade.
I need to make sure he’s okay.
I try to stand up. It takes me a minute to find my balance—my equilibrium feels off—but I finally do.
I start walking across the field.
The woods aren’t too thick and the night is clear so I can see enough to make my way through. I listen for the sound of cars or a road but I can’t hear anything.
I keep walking for what might be a half hour. Or an hour. Or two. It’s hard to tell.
The woods start to clear out into an open expanse of field.
My headache feels like it’s going to bust my skull open and the jacket tied around my wrist is now dark with blood. I touch my head and the bleeding there seems to have slowed but the side of my face is sticky.
I just need to keep walking.
I hear something.
My heart skips a beat because I’m alone in the wilderness. The scene is like something straight out of a horror movie and I no doubt look the part. But I stop walking and listen to the sound.
It’s a car. In the distance.
I’m getting close to a road.
I keep walking and practically faint with relief when the stretch of road becomes visible.
God, my head is spinning. But I have to keep going.
I get to the road and I look both ways, and there, maybe around a hundred or more feet to my right, is the neon sign of a gas station.
It takes me a long time to get there.
It’s open, but there are no cars.
It must be very late.
Where are pay phones when you need them? In the movies, there’s always a pay phone outside the gas stations where the people in trouble can call whoever they need to and they know their phone numbers. They have quarters in their pocket or they make a collect call.
There’s no pay phone.
And I don’t know his number.
I go into the gas station. The bright fluorescent lights hurt my eyes.
As I approach the counter, the guy sitting behind it stands up. He’s young, maybe a few years older than me. His eyes get wide.
The look on his face shocks me.
Do I look that bad?
“Excuse me,” I manage to say. “Can I use your phone? I don’t have mine. I need to call someone.”
“Uh ... s-sure. Shit. Are you okay? You’re bleeding.”
I feel strange. Like I’m viewing this scene from somewhere outside my own body. “Do you have a phone?”
He pulls one out of his back pocket. “Here. Use mine.” He keys in the passcode and hands it to me.
“Thank you.” I take the phone and stare at it for a few seconds. I so desperately, desperately want to call Kade. But I don’t know his number. I don’t want to call my parents. They’re too far away and it would only worry them. The obvious choice is 911. But then I remember something.
My number’s easy to remember. It’s 615-565-6565.
Sam.
Sam has Kade’s number.
God, my fingers are slippery. Why is there so much blood?
I key in the number and hold the phone up to my ear.
He answers on the third ring. “Hello?”
He sounds like he just woke up and I’m sorry about that but I say, “Sam? It’s Stella.”
I half expect him to say Who? or Why are you calling me?
But he doesn’t. He says, “Stella. What’s wrong? Are you okay?” Maybe he can hear in my voice that I’m not.
“No.”
There’s a brief, electric pause. “Stella, where are you?”
“I’m at a gas station. I need help. I need you to call Kade and tell him to come get me.” I glance up at the guy, who’s watching me with concern. “Where are we?”
The guy tells me the address and I tell it to Sam and the place is really starting to spin. The guy takes the phone and he’s helping me to a chair by a table. “She needs an ambulance,” the guy is saying to Sam. “Yeah, definitely. She just wandered in here. We’re a few miles west of town. Yeah, okay. I’m going to hang up and call 911.”
Time passes and I weave in and out of consciousness.
The guy who’s with me—his name is Billy, he tells me—holds my head and gives me sips of water. He lays his coat over me and tells me I’m going to be fine. They’re on their way, he says. He can hear the sirens.
I don’t want sirens, I tell him. I just want Kade. I want to tell him I love him.
I’m crying because I want to live. I want us to stay in our writing room and have our baby. I don’t want him to worry. I want to give him everything he needs. I want to take care of him.
“You going to do all that,” Billy assures me. “Here they are.”
The sliding doors of the gas station open and the wild relief slays me. There he is.
God, I’d forgotten how big and how freaking glorious he is.
He sees me and he looks more than shocked. He looks worried and sad and furious, all at the same time. He comes over to me and he kneels beside where I’m leaning against Billy on a hard, plastic bench.
“Stella.” Kade sort of gasps my name and he sounds edgy as fuck. And wild with a quiet storm of emotions.
I don’t want him to be sad. Or mad. I try to tell him this but I can’t quite figure out how to form the words. I’m too dizzy.
Someone else is with him who looks a lot like him and I guess it must be his other brother. Travis. But then the room spins again and I need to close my eyes or I’m going to be sick.
With infinite care, Kade lifts me and he carries me to the door, where an ambulance is pulling up.
He climbs inside the ambulance with me and there are people around me but I cling to Kade’s hand with everything I have.
Someone pokes a needle into my arm and there’s a cool wash of numbing comfort.
Wait, I want to say.
I want to tell him I love him.
I have so much to tell him.