Chapter 19 Red
Chapter nineteen
Red
Whatever drugs the Omega Center put me on after my collapse, they have me high as a kite.
It’s kinda similar to when another version of Red takes over, in that I feel distant from my true self and unable to make decisions.
As for what got me into this state, I remember opening the car door and throwing my phone, but that’s about it.
I’m so far gone, I don’t even scream when I finally recall the chilling message from Ray.
That bastard dug sharpened hooks into me, and every time he tugs, I rip a little more. Will I ever be free of Ray’s cruelty? I tuck my feet up under me on the window seat, staring out at the misty rain, thinking of everything and nothing.
“Red?” Rickon whispers, touching my shoulder.
I turn toward his voice. His scent fills my nose, but I can’t see him. Even though his fingers press into my shoulder, it’s like he isn’t standing in front of me. I’m not a ghost, but I’ve crossed into some other realm where I can’t respond.
“Bloody hell, Red,” Rickon says, sounding broken.
He sets something down on a side table, and then maneuvers me until I’m sitting in his lap.
The first vibration of his purr on my back makes my breath catch.
A brittle strand connects my realities, anchoring me to my alpha’s world.
This fragile human charger powers my batteries enough for me to whimper.
“Rickon?” I murmur, leaning into him.
“I’m here, Biscuit. Fuck, I’m so worried about you.”
His concern thrums through the bond, but the cotton-cloud prison deflects it away. Rickon picks up a mug, wrapping both my hands around it and helping to lift it to my mouth. Peppermint.
“Drink, baby. If you get dehydrated, they’ll need to put you back on the IV.”
The warm tea coats my tongue, clearing a little of the fog. After swallowing, I ask, “Where’s Zack?” My callous tone betrays me, sounding disinterested, like I couldn’t care.
Callisto answers, his sultry voice coming from the other side of the room. “He just got out of solitary confinement. I have an appointment to see him first thing in the morning.”
“Oh.” I turn back to the window. My alpha’s alive, but my heart doesn’t even jump for joy. Deadened.
I think I’d prefer to scream ferociously. At least that would communicate what’s inside. Or maybe I truly no longer care, and Ray can claim his victory for breaking me completely. How do you know if your soul died while your body still lives?
Callisto crouches beside me, his hazy form taking a moment to make sense. “Stay with us, Red. I promise you’ll see your alpha soon.”
“Sure,” I mumble.
The two guys exchange glances over my head, but I can’t make myself care. I’m as lifeless as the water droplets sliding down the glass panes in chaotic patterns.
“What’s the news about her phone?” Rickon whispers.
The reflection shows Callisto rising and moving to the bench seat beside us, running a hand roughly through his black hair.
“The tech team got the message off the card, and it isn’t pretty.
He’s demanding we drop the charges. I got a replacement phone with a new number for her this morning so it doesn’t happen again. ”
Although I’m watching the rain, I can’t help studying the lawyer’s transparent face in the glass.
His usually trimmed beard has grown out an inch, and dark marks shadow his eyes.
The familiar uncertainty that plagues me in his presence isn’t here now, but I don’t know if that’s the drugs stripping my emotions or something else—something our friendship has overcome.
Whatever weirdness happened between him and Rickon doesn’t seem to exist in this space either, but even that can’t give me peace.
I stare mindlessly for too long, and Callisto catches my reflected gaze. “Red?” he murmurs, pain in his voice.
I set my mug on the windowsill and hold my arms out in silent request.
His gaze softens, and he scoops me up, settling me onto his lap. “I’m not as good as Rickon at the purring,” he says. “But I’ll try.” He leans his cheek on my head, and a vibration shivers through his shirt, right into my chest.
He’s correct. His purring’s rougher, more like a growl, but given my frozen state, it’s grounding. I go limp in his arms, shaken like I’m in a personal massage chair.
“She’s lost weight.”
“Because she won’t eat anything,” Rickon says, passing me the mug of peppermint tea before draping a blanket over me.
I drink a little to please him. My darling Rickon hasn’t left my side since I broke down in the parking lot.
But I can’t force much down. What’s the point when it’s all going to fall apart?
I know I agreed to the calmative medication after that episode, but how am I supposed to put the shattered pieces of myself back together when my brain’s stuffed with cotton wool?
At least the meds blunt the painful edges a little.
Or a lot.
But even if I can’t care, my instincts still demand I save Zack.
I close my fist in Callisto’s shirt. “Reverse the charges. None of it matters if Zack—” My mouth dries up, refusing to finish the thought. If Zack dies, I die. End of story.
Callisto flinches. “Red . . .” He hesitates, thumping heart speeding up under my ear. “I can do that, but then he walks free. And we don’t have any guarantee Zack or you will be safe after that. He deserves to be in prison for what he’s done to you, Red.”
A sob bloats my throat, but I can’t cry or swallow it down. It lodges there like a heartburn that won’t go away.
He clicks his tongue and tightens his hug. “I’ll protect Zack. I’m making a deal with his cellmate to watch his back, okay?”
Nothing’s okay until I have Zack back in my arms. I return to watching raindrops, exhausted.
Samantha materializes like she’s walked through a teleport and clears her throat. “You have a visitor, Red.”
My brain comes up with three reasons not to move from Callisto’s lap, but strangely, my body moves automatically. Probably a vain hope that somehow Zack’s here.
But it’s not Zack sitting in the cozy meeting room the nurse leads me to.
It’s the liar. Dr Leanne Gunry.
Her frizzy hair catches white highlights from the ceiling lights as she sets up two desk easels and lays paint tubes out on the plastic-covered table.
Dr Woods sits to one side, legs crossed as she worries a finger across her bottom lip.
“I don’t think she’s ready, Leanne—” She snaps her mouth shut as we enter.
It’s ridiculous, looking at my two therapists in the same room, one resembling a boardroom director in a silk blouse and pencil skirt, and the other broken free from a high school drama class. A laugh rises in my chest but can’t break through the numbness.
“Hello, blessed girl,” Leanne says in her usual cheery way, ignoring the other psychologist. “Will you come have a chat with me? Your alphas and friends are welcome as well.”
I walk over to the table, drawn by a compulsion I can’t explain. My hand drifts across the line of paint tubes, itching to neaten the uneven row. Perhaps Rickon is rubbing off on me more than I realized.
Instead, I pick a tube up, uncap it, and then lift it high. I watch with a dissociated disinterest as my fingers squeeze, creating a wriggling, falling line of paint, right over Leanne’s head and shoulders. Rickon gasps behind me.
Her smile doesn’t falter. “Prussian blue. Nice choice! Does it remind you of his eyes?”
I twitch. After staring at her for a moment, I mutter, “You lied. I wasn’t doing good.”
Leanne takes the dented tube from me, grabs my hand, and runs it through the paint dripping down her neck. “Get some of this on your canvas. We’re going freestyle today.”
Someone ties an apron around me, and when I sit, Rickon’s beneath me on the chair. He wraps his arms around me like a seat belt and purrs faintly as Leanne strokes my flesh paintbrush across a canvas.
“Beautiful, isn’t it? The contrast between white and blue. Like innocence and experience.” Leanne resettles her easel beside mine, and then grabs a paintbrush and dips it into her hair. “I want to show you something, Red.”
With a few expert strokes, she creates a blue mountain, the white canvas spaces giving the impression of snow among blue lines and patches of shadow. “Ever seen big mountains?” she asks as her brush whiskers over the grainy surface.
“Only in pictures,” I murmur, sticking and unsticking two paint-covered fingers together.
“Mountain climbers get lots of praise for scaling these heights. And sure, they’re doing an amazing feat that requires training and experience. And help from others. But not everyone can be a mountain climber. Because . . .”
I watch, entranced despite the mental fog, as her brush moves down, coaxing a handful of pine trees in the middle ground, and then dipping to the front right-hand side with a series of tight, jagged lines to create a ravine.
“It’s just a quick sketch, but hopefully you get the idea,” Leanne says as she leans back.
Her five-minute artwork is good enough that anyone would want to hang it on their wall. This time, the dry laugh bubbles through my lips. Sounds more like a scoff, but I’m a little pleased something made it through the numbness.
Leanne smiles at me, as if she understands the joke, and then taps her paintbrush in the ravine’s floor.
“Some people can’t climb mountains because they don’t start on level ground like everyone else.
They start in the bottom of a dark hole.
But climbing up to sea level is as great a feat as any climber reaching the mountain summit. ”
My gaze catches on the shadowed depths near her paintbrush, and the one tiny dot she just placed. Me. I’m the dot. I never got the chance to start on a level playing field, so my good will always be behind.
I glance up at the therapist. The blue paint globs in her hair and smudges down her neck, but she looks strangely wonderful. Pretty sure I love her and hate her at the same time; it’s a new experience for me.
Leanne touches my shoulder lightly and another faint energy connection floods into me. “You are doing a good job, Red, even if you can’t see it. But your good won’t look like anyone else’s. Terrifyingly bad things happen in life, but that doesn’t make it your fault.”
My breath catches, and a tremor runs through my stained hands.
Her message is obvious, light shining through dark storm clouds.
I glance down at the blue on my fingertips and try to rub more off on my canvas.
When I’ve wiped my hands clean, Leanne slides more tubes beside my canvas.
I pick up the red tube and squeeze a dollop onto my finger.
It swishes across the blue smears, creating purple hues in the thickest parts and crimson scratches elsewhere.
My life in two dimensions. A jagged breath works through my chest, making me heave and I pause, letting the oxygen work into my paralyzed lungs before reaching for a turquoise shade.
Rickon joins the painting in softer thumb strokes, edges feathered.
And Callisto? Black lines at the bottom, like Leanne’s shadows, touching the other colors at points, but uncertain.
A tear trickles down my cheek, as cold and uncontained as the rain outside. Must be the meds.
I slump forward, and the easel clatters as it falls.
Even if my decisions led Zack to prison, I’m the one who got him out originally. And I did that because I had a clear goal. I wanted to be an actress and find my alphas, and ever since I did, I’ve been drifting in survival mode. And that was all I could do—sometimes survival is enough.
But I’m a woman who functions best with a plan, not with this mindless wallowing.
For someone like me, climbing out of a cavern, and then climbing a mountain, is harder than for any regular mountain climber. But haven’t I been climbing this entire time? I’ll only fail if I stop.
If I can’t break Zack out of prison by infiltration because everyone knows my face, then I’ll put my fame to good use.
I straighten, staring at the four hues on my canvas.
“We’ll go to the press,” I declare. My voice sounds thin behind my icy shell, but it cracks enough for me to reclaim a hint of myself.
“Rickon. Get me a tent and a sleeping bag, ’cause I’m gonna camp outside the prison.
Calli, go see a judge. Make it look like you’re appealing.
” Warmth burns in my cheeks, the first I’ve felt all day.
“I mean appealing the case or overturning it, whatever. Because, uh, yeah, I wasn’t referring to your looks.
” Fuck my stupid tongue. He’s attractive enough without trying.
Callisto grins and nods. “I’ll buy us some time.” The suave alpha comes over and rests his ass on the table, taking my blue-stained hands in his. “We’re all here for you, gorgeous. You and Zack.”
“Thanks.” I roll my lip through my teeth as I consider. “Not just Zack. All the ferals. They need a different justice system.” I point to Leanne’s painting. “Because they’re climbing out of canyons too.”
“That’s—” Calli pauses, blinks twice and makes a sharp noise in the back of his throat. “—so true.”
I nod and collapse back onto Rickon’s chest.
His arms tighten around my waist. “I’ll draft the media statement, Biscuit. Don’t push yourself. All we need to know is that you haven’t given up.”
I tuck my head into him and stroke his slender hands. I guess between my heat and my meltdown, I really frightened him. “It’s hard to think,” I admit.
Leanne hums and eyes me up and down before turning to Dr Wood. “I think we have a few things to discuss, like reducing Red’s dosage. Don’t you agree?”
Yeah, definitely leaning more toward love for this crazy lady.
I reach out mechanically and grab the packet of wet wipes on the table, passing them to Leanne.
It’s as much of an apology as I can muster right now.
She smiles and drags her chair over. “Can you help me with the cleanup, since your hands already have paint on them?”
I snicker and sit up while she tips her bird’s nest hair forward. Can’t believe she just did a therapy session with this much paint running across her scalp.
I’m on my eighth towelette, wiping Prussian Blue off her neck, when a staff member pops her head around the door. “So sorry to interrupt, but I’ve got an urgent message for Callisto Wren. His office is trying to track him down.”
Calli dives a hand into his pocket to grab his phone, and his face pales as he reads his messages. When he looks up, I tense, waiting for the sledgehammer to knock me down again.
“Zack’s in the hospital.”