Chapter 33
Lena
The persistent, steady sound of beeping is the only thing that penetrates the silence of Cole’s hospital room.
That, and the sound of my heart hammering in my chest, and the shallow breaths I take as I approach his bedside.
Wires snake around him like vines as he lies motionless.
Today is the first time I’ve been allowed to visit since he was admitted two days ago.
His condition wasn’t stable enough until now.
After hours of surgery to fix the crack in his skull and to help with the swelling on his brain, the doctors put him into a coma, one they say he will wake from soon. Most likely today.
Rex, Doc, and Judge are also in the hospital.
They had various injuries from Zeke’s sadistic torture.
They were also severely dehydrated, so the hospital decided to hold them all for a couple of days, much to their annoyance.
The doctors are planning on discharging them today.
I imagine they’ll come straight here to see Cole, too.
We’ve all been worried sick about him, but the doctor assures us he’ll make a full recovery.
However, he’s got a long road ahead of him.
Luckily for him, he’s got a big family ready to ride every mile by his side.
I’ll be forever grateful that Mia was left unharmed, but I know the experience was traumatic for her.
I’ve left her fast asleep in her stroller in Rex’s room, it’s the first time I’ve let her out of my sight since I got her back.
Rex has recovered enough to take care of her, and he wants to get to know her.
I don’t want Mia to be afraid of men because of Zeke.
My once-independent, bossy two-year-old is now clingy and fearful, and it breaks my heart.
But it’s good for her to be without me, even if only for an hour.
It’s good for me, too, I don’t want to leave her any more than she wants me to go.
Thankfully, the doctors and therapists assure me that once she feels secure and safe again, she will grow out of it, and that the memories will soon fade. I wish I could say the same for myself.
The hospital almost immediately discharged me that first night as I walked away with only some bruises from Zeke’s attack on my final night. Other than that, he didn’t harm me, not physically anyway. However, I’ll bear the mental scars for life.
Thankfully, the police seem to be buying into our version of events.
That the compound blew up by accident and we were lucky enough to escape alive, as we were on the basement levels in a separate wing, far away from the blasts and fire.
Apart from the deaths of Zeke and his men, we told the truth, so it made it easier to believe.
If they suspect there’s more to the story, they aren’t pursuing it.
It also helps that there’s plenty of evidence to support our story.
After all, there’s footage of my kidnapping and dozens of witnesses to the explosion at the Soaring Eagles clubhouse, and of men coming to take Judge and Doc.
They also found Mary Beth and her sister’s bodies in shallow graves on the property.
I was saddened to learn that Mary Beth’s sister was my old colleague, Trish, and to hear how her life turned out because of the Iron Vultures.
Had the Soaring Eagles not turned up that day, her fate could have been mine.
I shake myself from my memories. Zeke has taken enough from me and I refuse to let him take anything further by thinking about the past now.
For my own sanity, I have to move forward.
While the memory of killing him is ingrained in me forever, like a carving on a tree, I don’t regret it.
I’d do it again if it had the same result.
The people I love are safe and never have to fear him again.
With that in mind, I turn my focus back to one of those people—the one who the Iron Vultures harmed the worst, the one they tried to break, wanted to break the most, as he’s their leader, but couldn’t.
They weaned him off sedation yesterday and Cole no longer has the breathing apparatus attached and is breathing by himself, which is a good sign.
The doctors said it could take anything from a few hours to a few days for him to fully wake.
I walk over to his side, taking his warm hand in mine, and sit beside him, watching the slow, steady rise and fall of his chest, like the constant ripples of the ocean.
I tell myself he’s coming back to me, a sailor returned from a long, dangerous voyage.
“Hi Cole, it’s me, Lena,” I tell him, keeping my voice to a low whisper since I’m not convinced he can hear me anyway.
If I thought shouting would bring him back to me, I would.
But I’ve heard that you should talk to coma patients like normal, it can help wake them up.
I know that he’s going to wake up anyway, but I’m impatient to have that confirmed, to see his blue eyes, bright like a summer’s day, like a calm, cool ocean you sink into.
I tell him what I know he’d want to know, how the guys and Mia are, how the Soaring Eagles are doing.
“Tank has pulled through from his injury and is staying positive even though the doctors amputated his leg. He told Amanda, who has been a rock to all of us, that he couldn’t get down on one knee now, but would she marry him?
She said yes. So you have to get well enough for the wedding.
” I don’t mention those we lost. He can find that out later.
A wave of hopelessness washes over me. I don’t know what I expected. That I would say hello, and Cole would immediately wake from his coma and say hi back, bright-eyed and the same as he was before? This isn’t the movies.
“I’m so, so sorry, Cole. If it weren’t for me, none of this would have happened. Just please, please come back to us,” I plead, my tears landing on the bed as I hang my head.
Like a miracle, I feel his hand move in mine. It’s so small that for a moment, I think I imagined it. That’s my wishful thinking that conjured it up. But then he moves again.
“Cole?” I exclaim in a sharp expulsion of air.
I see his eyelids flutter, and then I feel as if my heart will explode from my chest with joy as his eyes open.
“You’re awake! He’s awake!” I cry out—I don’t know who I’m telling as it’s just me in the room, but I want to shout it out to the world.
I’m just overwhelmed with happiness. Cole opens his mouth, confused, as if to speak, but I know, from what the doctors told me, that he can’t—not yet.
“It’s okay, Cole, you’re okay. Everyone is alright.
You’re in the hospital. I’m going to get the doctor now. ”
I press the call button, and the doctors scurry into the room to run their tests, then usher me out with the assurance that they will come to get me the second he’s speaking.
I race down the strip-lit corridor to find the others.
They’re all gathered in the reception area, finalizing their discharges.
“He’s awake! Cole’s awake!” I exclaim again, feeling like Scrooge from A Christmas Carol, just discovering that it’s Christmas Day.
Now Cole is awake, everything feels right with the world. I know that together we can make it through anything. The guys are as overjoyed as I am, and we rush to his room.
After spending hours by Cole’s bedside as he drifted in and out of consciousness, the hospital staff finally kicked us out. We go home together for the first time since all of this began, feeling elated rather than sad that Cole isn’t with us because we know he will be soon.
***
A week later, Cole has improved leaps and bounds, his speedy recovery nothing short of a miracle, and the hospital discharges him.
We all knew he would, though—he’s too strong and too stubborn to stay down for long.
However, he still has a long way to go before he gets back to his old self.
Finally, we can all go home together as a family.
We’ve barely been back since the day Mary Beth helped kidnap me and Mia, only to grab some sleep, shower, and change, and take care of Mia.
And never more than one or two of us at a time, the rest of us taking shifts to be with Cole, constantly.
We’ve been in the hospital a lot, worrying about the guys.
It feels surreal but lovely to be here, like coming home after a long vacation, albeit not a good one.
It’s funny how the place that was only supposed to be a temporary safe house now feels like home.
We’re all a little uncertain, unsure of how to act around each other after such a monumental event, all worried that the others are too traumatized for normality.
However, we slip into our typical roles, the guys making a late-night snack and helping Cole get comfortable on the pull-out couch, where he’ll sleep for a few nights before tackling the stairs, while I put Lena to bed.
When I return, they’re sitting in the living room, having already eaten their sandwiches.
I wolf down the grilled cheese they’ve made for me in record time, too.
After the hospital food, it tastes like heaven.
With our basic needs met, we finally talk. We talk without judgment, without anger, without resentment, only truth and love. They explain everything that happened to them, and I do the same. We offer words of support and comfort as we tell our tales of woe, and I feel only love for these brave men.
When they admit that, for one moment, they all believed what Zeke was saying and how I was acting was true, I tell them I don’t blame them and explain why I did what I had to do.
Their compassion and understanding blow me away.
“Of course you did, Lena, you had no choice.” “You did the best that you could in a horrific situation.” “You saved yourself and most likely kept us alive with your lie.” Doc, Judge, and Cole each tell me.
Rex hesitates for a moment, looking humbled.
“I have to admit, I believed it longer than the others. I think a part of me always worried that you couldn’t possibly love me back, that what we have is too good to be true.
I believed it and treated you terribly even before Zeke took you.
The guys were always trying to convince me otherwise, but I didn’t think it until that night.
I spent too long punishing you when I should have been showing you how much I love you. Can you ever forgive me?”
“There’s nothing to forgive,” I tell him, going over to sit on the armrest and wrap my arms around him, kissing him softly on the lips.
The kiss deepens, reigniting the flame that always burns in me for him. I let out a gasp of pleasure and surprise as I realize I’m ready, that I want to reconnect with my men physically as well as emotionally.
Rex mistakes my gasp as the opposite and pulls back. “I’m sorry, it’s okay if you’re not ready for… well, for anything.”
“Yes, take as long as you need,” Doc interjects gently.
“I can’t do much other than watch anyway,” Cole quips with a wink and a smile that makes him grimace from pain and discomfort. I’m awed at his resiliency.
“No… no, I am…” I assure them.
“Are you sure? Because after what Zeke… I mean, what he must have done…” Judge says carefully choosing his words.
“We know that you had no choice, that he made you do whatever he did to you… It doesn’t change our feelings or mean that we don’t want you like that,” Rex is quick to clarify, babbling slightly as he tries not to make things worse with a poor choice of words.
I realize then that they believe that I purposely omitted some details from my story, that Zeke forced me to have sex with him while he held me captive, and I don’t want to tell them.
The irony that this time I’m not doing that, but before I was, isn’t lost on me.
“No, I mean, Zeke didn’t do anything other than what I told you.
He tried to on that second night… the night I…
” I stop short of saying the words ‘killed him’; we’ve all agreed we should never say that out loud again, even to each other.
I continue, “He didn’t rape me. Not then anyway.
I’m so sorry I lied to you before, that I hid it from you all, but the reason Zeke believed Mia was his was because he did rape me that night, the night I escaped and met you, Rex.
I don’t know why I didn’t tell you. Lots of reasons, shame, fear you would pity me or see me as damaged goods, and because I didn’t want to admit it to myself, I wanted to be the version of myself I created, one who fought back and escaped.
” Tears stain my cheeks as I finally admit my secret.
“It’s why I couldn’t let him touch me again. ”
Cole speaks gently, his warm blue eyes soft and sad. “We knew all along, Lena, or at least we suspected, especially after we heard he thought Mia was his.”
“We would never see you as damaged goods or pity you,” Rex adds, wiping my tears away. “I knew, and I loved you from the moment I saw you.”
Judge speaks firmly, and I see the anger toward Zeke simmering beneath the surface. “None of what happened is your fault, only his. He deserved what he got and more.”
“We love you, Lena, no matter what,” Doc adds.
I’m overwhelmed with love for these men.
The horrors we’ve been through have only made us stronger and brought us closer together, and right now I simply feel lucky to have them, to have found this sort of love with not one but four incredible men, each of whom understands me and fulfills me in different ways.
“I love you all, and I need you to make love to me right now,” I tell them, slowly removing my shirt.
My men don’t need further encouragement. They make love to me tenderly as we show each other what words cannot fully express. When we’re finally satiated, we hold each other close and discuss our future. One where we can live together as a family. A future filled with love, laughter, and peace.