Chapter 22
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
EMMA
I woke with a start, my breaths coming in heavy pants as I shot up in the bed, sweat soaking my body and the sheets around me. Anxiously, my head darted about the room.
“Emma, you’re awake. Are you okay?” Alex asked with concern from the corner of the room.
He was sitting in an armchair, looking a little dishevelled, like he’d slept there.
“What the fuck did you do to me?” I snapped, fear and anger fusing together to create a storm of fury inside me.
I pressed my hand to my neck as my mind replayed scenes I didn’t want to recall. But as my fingers probed and pushed at my skin, I didn’t feel any soreness. There didn’t seem to be any bruising. I didn’t feel like I’d been choked to unconsciousness.
“You’ve been unwell,” Alex stated, and I lost it.
“I wasn’t fucking unwell. You fucking drugged me.”
He shot out of his chair to come and stand over me by the bed, then sat down on the mattress beside me and said, “I didn’t drug you. Why would I do that? I would never hurt you, Emma.”
“I don’t believe you,” I hissed, scrambling across the mattress to put distance between us. “You stalked me, tracked me down in the fucking street and then demanded I get into your car. And like a fucking fool, I did. You wanted this all along, to force me here and drug me so you could do whatever fucked-up shit you wanted.”
“I wouldn’t have forced you to do anything,” he replied, looking at me with stunned wide eyes. “I didn’t want you getting ill in the rain. I wanted to help you.”
“And let me guess, you think that’s what this is? Me getting ill from a bit of rain. Or at least, that’s the story you’re going with to save your fucking ass.” I huffed, sneering at him as I shook my head. “I didn’t pass out and end up in this fucking bed over a bit of rain. You did this on purpose.”
Alex dropped his head. “I’ll admit none of this is right. It all feels off. But the doctor said you’d be okay. He said there wouldn’t be any lasting effects after whatever you’d taken had cleared your system.”
So he was admitting there was something in my system that shouldn’t be there. My guard grew even higher.
“Doctor? What doctor? I don’t remember seeing a doctor. I remember seeing a lot of other things, though. Who else did you invite into this room while I was unable to consent to anything?”
“No one has been here,” he replied, urging me with his eyes to believe him as he frowned and shook his head. “I called the doctor because I was worried. But he was never alone with you. I was here. I was always here.”
Alex started to explain that after I’d passed out, his private doctor had come to check on me and that, yes, they couldn’t rule out that a drug was in my system. But he’d refused to let the doctor take my blood to check it without my consent. Alex was convinced I’d had an allergic reaction to something Alma had put in the tea. But I knew that was bullshit. I bet the doctor did, too.
“Was it arsenic she put in it?” I hissed, but Alex ignored me, fixating instead on something else I’d said.
“What do you mean you saw other things? What other things?”
I wasn’t sure how much I wanted to divulge. I wasn’t convinced I could trust him or anyone else in this house. I needed to leave and get myself to safety.
“There were... people... here, in this room.”
His eyes bore into mine with so much concern that it made me doubt myself for a split second.
“I promise you, with my whole heart, the only people that’ve been in here are me, the doctor, oh, and Alma. She came in to take you to the bathroom during the times you were a little more lucid. But nothing underhand happened. You were always safe and being cared for.”
“I don’t remember any of that.”
“But you think you saw someone else here?” He reached forward to touch my arm, but I moved it away before he could, and sighed. “There was no one else. You had moments where you became distressed as you slept. You thrashed a little in the bed, but I did what I could to calm you.”
“What did you do?” I asked, glaring back at him.
“I stroked your hair and placed a cold, damp cloth on your forehead to try and bring down your fever. You were having fever dreams, Emma. And I know how scary that must’ve been for you, especially being in a strange environment. But that’s all they were... dreams.”
I was still confused, but what he said did make sense. A fever dream that’d felt so real it had twisted my mind, pulling nightmare images from my brain, and using them in the worst way.
“I want to go home,” I stated plainly, intent on getting my things together and leaving within the hour, sooner hopefully, regardless of how sick I felt.
“I’m not sure leaving now would be a good idea,” he replied. “You were running a temperature for a lot of the time you were asleep. You’re still going to be weak.”
“Drugged you mean,” I snapped back. “I wasn’t asleep.”
He didn’t respond. He wouldn’t admit to it.
And as I started to shift my body, trying to move off the bed, horror hit me once again.
“If I was safe here, then where the fuck did my underwear go?”