19. River
CHAPTER 19
RIVER
I ce-cold dread slithered through my veins as consciousness slowly crept over me. I didn’t want to open my eyes and find myself lost in the dark, even with my eyes open like the lingering memories from only hours ago. The stinging burn of glass sinking into my shins was at the forefront of my mind, even though it felt like I was lying down. Maybe my mind had finally reneged on me and this was what death felt like. I didn’t know, and I wasn’t sure if I wanted to know the truth, either.
After working up the courage, I finally opened my eyes, squinting against the bright light. A pained groan rumbled in the back of my throat, and I screwed my eyes shut as an aching agony sparked through every nerve in my body.
“Welcome back, handsome,” a gentle voice said. I turned toward the sound, but my eyes refused to open again. “Here, you’re probably thirsty.”
Before my mind could work out what the feminine voice was saying, I felt a plastic straw push between my lips. I gratefully swallowed down some lukewarm water, the liquid reviving my parched, aching throat.
“I’ve rung for the doctor to come and check on you now you’re more awake. He’ll be here shortly. Can you tell me your name?”
My head rocked slightly from side to side, as much as the growing pain in my neck would allow. It felt like my chest was being crushed under an almighty weight. My fingers clawed at the sheets, something sharp catching on the back of my hand.
“Hush, hush, now. Don’t hurt yourself, okay? Just listen to me and take a slow breath for me.” A warm hand wrapped around my wrist, grounding me. “That’s it. Breathe in one… two… three. There you are, your heart rate is slowing. Keep it up for me. One… two… three… four. Good boy.”
Her grasp loosened, and a whimper slithered through my parted lips at the loss. The sound of something being dragged was so loud, my ears felt like they were about to burst.
“I’m not going anywhere. I was just getting a chair, as my old legs don’t hold me up as long as they used to. I’m Marianne, by the way, not sure you remember from when you first opened your eyes.”
Marianne chattered away, trying to calm me down. Slowly, the high-pitched beeping receded. I assumed I was in a hospital, although I had no recollection of how I got here, and I didn’t feel comfortable enough to ask.
“Do you think you can open your eyes now?”
I must have drifted off as my racing heart finally steadied. When I opened my eyes, the hazy world around me sharpened. The once-blinding light overhead had softened, and the blinds were drawn, blocking out most of the daylight, though a faint glow seeped around the edges. The sharp scent of antiseptic and bleach burned my nose, anchoring me to the sterile space. Slowly, Marianne’s figure solidified in front of me. Her brown hair, streaked with gray, framed softly aged features, but her golden eyes gleamed with a surprising vitality that seemed almost out of place in this washed-out room.
A cool cloth dabbed my flushed face before she brushed my hair back from where it clung to my forehead. “You’re back again.” She chuckled. “Do you think you can tell me your name?”
My eyes darted from side to side, and a wave of nausea rushed over me. I pitched forward automatically, my free hand going to my stomach as it churned. Black dots spotted my vision as the pain increased.
“Stay still. You’ve been hurt quite badly, young man. We had to give you a sedative so the doctor could treat you and clean you up.” Alarm must have shone in my eyes, and my lips pinched into a tight line. “You weren’t bad enough to need surgery, but your legs needed a lot of attention. It took a couple of hours to get all the glass out and dress them. You were very lucky. There should be very little scarring.”
Her words triggered a flashback of me kneeling on shattered glass as a figure loomed over me.
“Do you think I don’t know where you’ve been? Hmmm?” Booted feet stood on my legs, forcing me down into the glass. “I’ve known your every move, River.” Fingers sunk into my hair and wrenched my head backward. “I’ll let you live to serve as a warning.” Fists crashed into my chest. “Others won’t be as lucky, but I think your life hanging in the balance will be enough of a warning.” A heavily ringed hand backhanded my face, the metal clasps peeling off my skin. “Tell Benson this is his only chance.” Her hot breath ghosted over my face, and it took everything in me not to throw up. “If he keeps coming for me…” Her sinister smile shone in the darkness. “I’ll tell the brothers where you are and let them enact their fantasy.” She pinched my cheek, making blood spill from the wounds. “It’s only been my word keeping them from fulfilling it. I know they told you what they wanted to do. I’ll let them if he doesn’t stop coming for me. Then I’ll tell them to end him, too.”
“Dr. Morris is on his way. I’ll wake you when he gets here. Just rest for now.” I’m not sure if I dipped my head to my chest or not before I was floating again.
When I next opened my eyes, the golden light surrounding the window had deepened to an orange hue that made me think of sunsets and lakes, the wind on my face, and muscular tattooed arms wrapped around me. Of harsh kisses that melted my bones and bruised my lips. Of safety and desire.
The sound of a softly murmured discussion reached my ears, but I couldn’t turn my head enough to see where the sound was coming from. I vaguely recognized one of the voices, but I was too spaced out to work out where from. The voices grew louder, footsteps on the hard linoleum floor echoing in the silence of my room. A sharp inhale made me freeze like a statue as Montoya’s face appeared in front of me, her lips pinched in a tight line, her brows furrowed.
“You have got to be fucking kidding me. He’s going to be pissed when he sees you, kid. They gave you one hell of a beating, huh?”
What the hell was she doing here? I had no idea what was going on, and I couldn’t even ask, since my voice was trapped in my head again. Inside, I was screaming, clawing at my skull, but nothing but a wobbly breathy exhale left my lips as words died on my tongue.
“He’s going to lose it when he sees the state you’re in. Fuck.” Her eyes ran over every exposed inch of me, cataloging a multitude of injuries I couldn’t feel right now. It transported me back to a night I was paraded around naked and plugged, while men touched, slapped, and groped me. I was just a toy for them to play with.
Hearing Montoya’s voice in the background as the images played in my mind fucked with my heart. I sucked in a shuddering inhale, pain seeping through my veins like mercury. I blinked up at her through a glassy haze as a loud sound threw me back into the room. She sighed heavily and plopped down on the chair next to me, staying in my field of vision. Her elegant hand ran across her mouth like she was thinking about what to say as resignation swam in her weighted gaze.
“I know you don’t like me, River, but please listen to me. I know Benson well…”
The fond familiarity in her voice was like a blunt knife to my humiliated heart. A tear slipped from the corner of my eye and down my cheek at the mention of his name. My chest squeezed tight as memories of the last time I saw him assaulted me. She looked at me with sympathy in her dark brown eyes, like there was some kind of kinship between us. I hated her for every minute she had gotten to spend in his presence that I hadn’t over the years. I’d rather gouge her eyes out with a rusty fork than willingly listen to her, but I was trapped in the bed, unable to move or breathe.
“I know he fucked up.”
Not where I was expecting her to go with this. She smirked at me. The look on my face must have given me away.
“Yeah, I bet you thought I was going to tell you to stay the fuck away from him, right?” She shook her head. “He’s like a brother, always looking out for me. He told me everything.” My eyes widened in alarm, and she waved me off. “Well, not every-everything, but enough. He knows he fucked up. Benson doesn’t always think before he speaks, especially where his heart is concerned.” She chuckled. “He’s a good guy, and what happened between you two messed him up, big time. But not in the way you’re thinking.”
My breaths shallowed, coming in short, sharp pants. She reached over, taking my hand in one of hers before wrapping the other one around it, cocooning me in her hold. I wanted to hate it on principle, but I felt her sincerity in the gesture.
“Stop whatever you’re thinking.”
I screwed my eyes shut, pushing more tears down my cheeks. My lips trembled. I wanted her to beg him to come back to me and not throw me away. I’d been discarded like trash too many times and was terrified the only person who had ever felt safe—like home—wanted nothing to do with me.
“River, stop,” she ordered. “He’s not angry or disgusted with you. He feels like he fucked up. Like he used you, just like every other guy has in your life. It’s eating away at him. He’s had a shit forty-eight hours. This, coupled with the case we’re working on.” She shook her head, her thumb rubbing soothing circles across the back of my hand. “He’s sorry, alright? Just hear him out, kid. Please.”
I chewed on my bottom lip as her words rolled around in my head. Bane felt guilty? Like he’d used me? It just didn’t make sense. What did he have to feel guilty for? All I was good at was giving pleasure to others; it was all I had to offer. I’d only wanted to make him feel good, like he did for me, but I didn’t know how else to show him.
All I was good for was being a hole, so that’s what I did.
I’d heard him groaning and calling out my name while I laid in my bed, and it was like an unconscious tether pulled me toward him. There was a need to make the things he voiced real, because I wanted him to feel good. Bane deserved everything good in this world. He was a one in a million kind of guy, and I was… I was nothing. A no one. I had nothing to offer him. I wasn’t normal.
Not worthy of him.
And I never would be.
“I can see you’re thinking it over. Just let me send him in and… and let him talk.” She choked down a sound trapped in the back of her throat. “You’ve never spoken in front of me, but he tells me you can when you feel safe enough. He’s that for you, isn’t he? Your safe place?” I nodded slightly, or at least I tried to, and grimaced as I bit back the wave of pain that washed over me. “Good. Don’t let that go, River. If he lost you, I don’t think he would survive. You’re, as far as I know, everything to him. He’s never...” She tapped her lips, silencing herself like she was holding back something she knew. “This is all new to him, too.”
My eyes tracked her as she left me alone, the door snicking shut behind her. I didn’t know what to make of everything she said. I was everything to him? Why? How? What does he see when he looks at me? I wasn’t a person anymore; I didn’t know how to be like everyone else. I should take this opportunity to push him away, save him from me, before it was too late.
Look at what happened the one night I tried to help him. All I’d succeeded in doing was bringing the devil to his door, and Bane was the kind of guy who would ride to certain death if it meant saving someone he cared about. How he could value my worthless life over his didn’t compute. He was a million times the person I could ever dream of being.
I was a rogue shadow, a memory that would fade with time. Footsteps in the sands of time that would be washed away.
A mistake.
That was what he’d said, and he wasn’t wrong.
When he lost control of his cast-iron emotions that morning, Bane saw the truth that his pure heart blinded him to. I had to prove to him I wasn’t worth his time, no matter how much my soul cried out for his. He was safer without me. He would be better off without me. I belonged to the dark. It was where I was reborn.
I didn’t need psychic abilities to know he was standing on the other side of the door. I felt him. It was a physical reaction I had any time I was in his proximity. The air thickened, and electricity danced across my skin. The small hairs on the back of my neck and my arms stood on end, and goosebumps prickled across my skin. I was attuned to him so well, I’d be able to find him even if I was blindfolded. I could crawl across burning coals to the edge of the world without deviating course. He was my center, my true north. My internal compass would always lead to him.
Because Bane was my heart. Without him, nothing else existed.
Blood rushing through my ears masked the sound of the door opening. I couldn’t swallow, because I felt paralyzed by his presence. I was fighting an internal war, and there would be no victor. To save him, I had to sacrifice myself. I wasn’t a martyr; I was a realist.
“Oh, fuck.” His broken voice tore through me, wrenching the still-beating muscle from my chest as he collapsed on the floor with a heavy thud. The sound reverberated through the room, a painful echo of that first moment he laid eyes on me just weeks ago. Exhaustion weighed down every part of me, pressing like a shroud, and I couldn’t summon the strength to turn and face him. If this was my last breath, then let it be.
“River?” He sounded closer, but I couldn’t feel his looming presence sucking the air from my lungs like it so often did when he towered over me. Was he crawling to me? How I wished I had the strength to move to see him. My eyes searched, even though it was futile. “Angel?” He gasped. “Fuck! Please, a-angel.” His cracked voice shattered me. “I-I’m…” The bed dipped, and a chair scraped across the floor. My fragile heart fluttered in my chest, as delicate as fractured glass that a breath of wind would turn to dust.
Cedarwood and leather surrounded me. His scent called me back from the ledge where I stood, my toes over the precipice. Strong arms wrapped around me and pulled me back just as I pushed myself over and into the void of no return.
“Don’t leave me, River. I couldn’t survive without you, angel. I said things I didn’t mean. I-I wasn’t thinking, I was…” Hot tears hit my skin like acid as he confessed his sins against me. “I failed you, a-and now…now you’re in here because of me. You’re h-hurt because of me…my actions.”
No! I screamed internally as my trauma locked my voice deep inside my mind. No, Bane. You have never done anything wrong. I was wrong to touch you without your consent. I was wrong to take something from you that you weren’t willing to give. I never asked.
I’m sorry. I’m sorry.
I’m so, so sorry for coming back into your life.
“River…” His large hands cupped my face, his rough skin grounding me as his thumb cleared the torrent of tears off my cheeks. “I never should have walked away. I should have stayed and explained why I jumped away from you.” I shook my head in tiny increments, pushing through the pulsing ache in my neck. I’d suffer for him, to bring him a momentary reprieve from his self-flagellation. An inhuman sound pulsated from his chest into me; it sounded like failure. It tasted like regret. A shattered future that had never had the chance to have life breathed into it.
“Are you listening to me, angel? Please, please look at me. River, please!” Panic rose in his voice, and it felt like ice coating my skin.
Confused, I blinked up at him through water-logged lashes. When did my eyes close? I didn’t remember. I didn’t… I didn’t… I was struggling to grasp what was real and what was a figment of my imagination.
“Shhh, Riv. I’m here. I’m not going anywhere. I won’t let them hurt you again. You’re safe.”
Bane’s voice faded away, and I gave into the oppressive bleakness of my broken mind. I found myself in that special place where I’d sent myself so many times before to save myself from reality. The place where the guy of my dreams held me like I was a person. Someone he loved, who was whole and fully formed. He smiled at me like he loved me, and I loved him in return. Eyes I could get lost in looked at me like I was the sun that chased the darkness away.
But now even this world was tainted, cracked and broken. Rotten to the core. I was an infection that needed to be terminated. I hurt everyone I came into contact with. Even in the elysium my mind had created to keep me safe, I still destroyed the one soul I’d ever loved. His fingers slipped from my cheeks stained with blood, agony etched into his face. Was this how it ends? My blood on his hands would destroy him.
“I’m sorry I failed you, angel. I promised to keep you safe, b-but when you needed me, I wasn’t there for you. Why did you leave? Was it because of me? What I said? What I did?” His pained cry sliced me open, revealing my rotten core. I hated that I was causing him pain without saying a word.
I forced my eyes open, and they locked on his. One a brilliant sky blue, the other the darkest depths of the forest, wild and free. They glistened like a fractured mirror, reflecting the maelstrom of emotions inside me. Pain and regret. Shame and guilt. Love and hopelessness. So much fucking pain it filled my lungs and drowned me.
My lips tasted of betrayal and salt. Here he was, begging for my forgiveness, when I was the one who’d put him in the most compromising position. “I-I…m… I’m…s…s-sor?—”
Bane’s lips brushed mine, silencing the words I tried to breathe life into, but they were barely audible even to my ears.
“It wasn’t your fault. I-I—” he started.
I bit my tongue hard enough for the metallic tang of blood to burst across my taste buds and forced my arm up so I could cover his mouth. Bane deflated against me. His eyes fluttered shut, and he moved until he could nuzzle against my hand. My heart stuttered in my chest. Soft kisses whispered across my palm and onto my knuckles as he took control of my appendage and kissed my fingertips.
“Angel.” He cleared his throat like he was about to make a proclamation that would change the course of history. “I. Love. You.”
Who knew three words had the power to destroy me? A fresh wave of tears spilled from my burning eyes. It was too late. I was too late to save him from my cancerous self.
“N-n-n-no.” I formed the word with trembling lips, but they were nothing but rasping air.
A watery smile lit up his face. “You don’t get to tell me how I feel, Riv. You need to listen to me right now. No, you don’t get to hide from this.” He pulled my arm away from my face where I’d thrown it over my eyes.
“It’s my truth, and I’ll tell you every day until you believe me. I love you.” He expelled a powerful breath. “I know I left things in a less than desirable way, and I will spend the rest of my life making it up to you, but the god’s honest truth is I freaked the fuck out. I wanted you. I need you.” His lips brushed over mine. “I was dreaming about you. I have dreamed about you since I brought you home. And waking up to you doing exactly what you were doing in my dream was heaven and hell, all rolled into the most devastating explosive experience I’ve ever had. I’ve never felt for anyone else what I do with you. But, even though I felt like I was floating among the stars, I also felt like I’d broken your trust. You were living with me for your protection. You were finally free, and I turned you back into an object.”
“No.” The word punched past my lips with a rawness that shredded my vocal cords, but I didn’t care. I refused to let Bane make himself into my villain.
He was my protector.
My home.
My safe place.
“But—”
“No… y-ou…s…sav…ed…m…eee.”
“I will always save you, angel, because I love you—whether your heart and mind can accept that or not. I’m irrevocably in love with you. Words might not mean much to you, but there are many ways I can show you what you mean to me when we get home.”
He sniffed, wiping away his tears with the back of his hand before his red-rimmed eyes fell on me again.
Home.
One syllable that meant as much to me as love. Bane was offering me everything I’d ever deluded myself I could have. But was I really worth it?