Chapter 33
Chapter
Thirty-Three
THEA
Everything hurts. My arms and my legs sting like I’m being dipped in acid.
I feel like I’ve been on the receiving end of an MMA fight that I didn’t sign up for.
I don’t think anything is broken, but I don’t think I’ll be able to move well anytime soon, either.
Shivers run up my spine and I wonder momentarily if I’m dying.
Your body gets cold when you die, right?
But if I was dying I wouldn’t feel all of this pain, would I?
Unless I got sent to hell. Please tell me I didn’t get sent to hell.
“You’re not in hell, baby,” a low voice whispers to me as more shivers crawl up my spine. “Go on, open your eyes for me.”
My eyelids feel heavy, like someone glued them shut. It takes me a few seconds to work them open and I’m blinded by an overhead light that makes me hiss. “Nice and easy, I got you.” The voice starts to register, and I immediately recognize it as Nathan.
“C—co—cold,” I chatter through my teeth.
Nathan adjusts me, going to lift me up out of the now murky water, and I realize that the shivers I was experiencing were secondary to being in the bath.
“You’re just in shock. You…your body…it went through more than it should’ve.
” His voice is quiet, like he’s ashamed.
“I should’ve never let you go in there.” I realize then that he is ashamed as he wraps a towel around me and picks me up like a newborn carrying me to our bedroom.
I don’t know what to say, so I just stay quiet.
Partly because it feels like it’ll sap the last of my energy from my body, and partly because I know it won’t matter what I say. He’ll blame himself regardless.
He sets me down on my feet at the foot of our bed, making sure I’m steady before drying me off, tugging one of his shirts over my head, and pulling on a pair of his sweatpants that are way too big on me.
Quiet voices sound from somewhere else in the house but Nathan turns my head back so I’m looking at him.
“Just…rest. We’ll have time to debrief later.
” I want to fight him but even now I can feel my eyes getting heavy again, so instead I let him pick me up and tuck me in, his arms curled around me until I drift off.
Sunlight is fading through the blinds when I wake up again.
I’m still very much sore, but I’m at least feeling more coherent, and a little more lonely.
Nathan is no longer in bed with me. I somehow got through the night without nightmares, too.
Luck or drugs? I’m thankful either way. Pulling myself up so that I’m sitting with my legs over the side of the bed, I rub my eyes before assessing what time it is.
Seven P.M. How long did I sleep for? I take my time standing, not wanting to aggravate my wounds too much, nor draw so much attention that I focus on them too much.
Cracking open the hallway door, I follow the sound of voices into the living area where I find Dylan, Fletcher, Claire, and Nathan. Dylan is the first to see me, her expression unreadable before it transforms into sad relief and she rushes over to me before wrapping me in a big hug.
“Oomph,” I release as she squeezes me, pain radiating through my back and torso before she realizes and lets up.
“Fuck, I’m sorry,” she says as she pulls away. “I’m just so glad you’re okay. When Fletcher told me what happened I just about castrated him for keeping me in the dark while you were locked up.”
I catch Fletcher rolling his eyes as he stands up to approach us.
“You threaten that every time you’re mad, but we both know you’d regret it the second you cooled off.
” He wraps his arm around Dylan’s waist, making her look small in comparison to his overbearing frame. “I’m glad you’re awake, Thea.”
I look between them then, observing how they made it out on the other side of what happened to Dylan.
She spent a week in captivity, facing the most depraved assaults one could imagine at the hand of none other than a family member.
A week holding on to hope that someone would save her.
And she’s spent every moment since then continuing to crawl out of that darkness I know threatens to swallow her whole.
But standing here she looks just like she always has to me, like the girl who never quite learned how to break.
Not after growing up without a mother figure, not after losing her father just before meeting Fletcher.
Sure, she isn’t untouched. Unscarred. But she could fool anyone into believing that she’s unbroken.
Even if most of us in the room know better.
And yet…I can’t see anything but her strength and beg like hell I can be half as strong as she is.
“Thea?” Dylan asks, breaking me out of my thought process.
“Sorry…I just. Thank you for coming back, Fletcher,” I mumble.
He knows words don’t amount to much in situations like these so he just nods and gestures toward the couch where Nathan hasn’t moved.
He hasn’t even looked at me. I can’t help the side of me that trembles in fear that he doesn’t want me anymore, after finding me however he found me.
Without the confirmation of whether or not I was…
raped. And could I blame him? I’ve been a failure throughout every other aspect of my adult life.
My body feels like a betrayal, a ledger of every failure I’ve ever endured.
Not just what happened to me, but everything I could not protect, could not give life to.
The silence between us is unbearable, thick with all the things left unspoken.
“Do you guys mind if we have a moment alone?” I ask. But when I look at them, they’re already retreating to the other side of the house.
I sit down next to him on the couch, facing him.
But he refuses to meet my eyes. “I—” I try, and my voice cracks, a fragile whisper of a sound.
He doesn’t answer, only shifting slightly, and I realize that maybe he’ll never look at me the same way again.
I try again to meet his eyes, to search for the man I love beneath the shadow of his own shame, but he won’t let me.
A cold and familiar feeling settles in and I quickly understand what’s happening.
He isn’t shutting me out because he doesn’t want me.
He’s shutting me out because it’s his defense mechanism when the world gets too heavy.
I remember it all too well from when Miles died, and he abandoned me.
It’s easier than facing the truth. The truth that he couldn’t protect me from what happened, just like he couldn’t protect Miles from the accident.
He’s treating me like my pain is a mirror for his own failures. And that’s the cruelest part…
Because I understand. But understanding doesn’t make it hurt any less.
It only makes me ache harder because I’m on the wrong side of a wall that I can’t climb, watching him fold in on himself the same way he did before.
Hot and silent tears begin to roll down my face, not because of what happened to me, but because the love that we had built back up feels trapped behind a wall of his shame and my fear.
“Please…please don’t shut me out again,” I whisper.
It’s a plea. A bargain. A lifeline I pray he grabs onto.
Because this isn’t just about him or I anymore.
What happened, happened to both of us, and I refuse to let it ruin everything we’ve come so far to build.
He sighs and I can tell he’s fighting whatever words claw at his throat. “Talk to me.”
His voice is strangled when he speaks. “I…I’m scared,” he admits. “Scared that I’ll fail you again. Scared that I can’t fix this.”
“You didn’t fail me, Nathan,” I remind him. “We knew the risks…We knew what could happen.” He just shakes his head, grinding his teeth as anger spreads across his face. “Not that I know exactly what happened…”
“That’s exactly my point!” he bursts out, standing and running his hands through his hair.
“You don’t know what happened to you because I didn’t protect you from them!
They got their hands on you and carved into you like you were nothing but a fillet of steak they were preparing for dinner!
They hurt you until you could no longer stand the pain and passed out from it, and they just kept going!
All because I believed the lie of a monster.
All because I believed you could handle whatever… ” He trails off, looking at me.
“I’m not fragile, Nathan.”
“You know that isn’t what I meant…I just, you were never supposed to be a part of this world.” He sits back down, forgiveness begging in his eyes.
“But I am now, and there is nothing we can do to go back and change the past.” I’ve learned that lesson the hard way more than once, and as much as I’d have liked to stay there, it wouldn’t change anything that’s ever happened to me. “We’ll get him, Nathan. Together.”
He lets out a shaky breath. “I don’t want you anywhere near it.”
“You don’t get to make that decision for me.”
“I do if it keeps you safe,” he retorts.
“There is no safe anymore,” I snap, the heat in my voice surprising even me.
“Not after what they did. Not after what I do and don’t remember.
You think shutting me out is protecting me, but it’s not.
It’s just leaving me alone with it. You want to stand there and tell me to stay out of it?
Like I don’t deserve to face the thing that—” my voice breaks “—that broke me? Do you have any idea what that feels like? To not even remember all of it, but know it was bad enough that your body just decided to sign off instead?”
“I never said you didn’t deserve—”
“That’s exactly what you’re saying! You’re deciding I’m too fragile to stand in the aftermath of my own pain.
But what you don’t realize is that I’m so fucking sick of being fragile because it’s all I’ve been doing since Miles died!
Every second you push me away,” I continue, my voice trembling now, “you’re choosing your guilt over us.
And I can’t compete with that. I won’t.”
He looks like he’s been struck.
“I just don’t want to lose you,” he says as he reaches for my hand.
“You’ll only lose me if you continue down this path.”
“I don’t know how to help you,” he says, his voice hollow.
“I’m not okay,” I admit. “I’m not strong right now.
I’m angry. I’m scared, and I feel…violated in a way I can’t even fully understand.
” My hands shake, and I don’t bother hiding it even though I know he can feel it.
“But shutting me out doesn’t fix that and I don’t need you to fix me.
We’re not okay,” I say, meeting his eyes and forcing him to stay there with me.
“And we’re not going to be for a while.”
He nods once, like it costs him.
“But if you shut me out again,” I add, my voice becoming even, “that might be the thing we don’t come back from.”