Chapter 14
Seraphina
Iwake up in a white room feeling like I’m floating on clouds. The sun is shining through the open windows, the light breeze makes the curtains flutter, and I can just make out shining glass and steel buildings beyond.
Clearly, I’m not in the Catskills anymore.
My body feels weightless, and I wonder for a moment if there is a Heaven after all. But no, I’m not dead. I’m simply lying on the most comfortable bed I’ve ever laid on, the mattress covered by the softest sheets I’ve ever touched.
A jolt of muddled emotion travels through my body as I suddenly recognize the room.
Damien’s bedroom.
A wave of panic submerges me, just for an instant, when I remember he wants to kill me. I hear an electronic beeping near me, and realize that I’m hooked up to several machines. What the fuck is going on?
The door opens and a man enters. I recognize him. Doctor Farley, Damien’s private physician.
“Hello, Seraphina,” he says gently. “I see you’re awake. How are you feeling?”
I run a confused hand over my eyes, then stare at him helplessly.
“I understand you’ve been struggling to speak,” he continues quietly. “But I hope you’re comfortable. We’ve given you some strong pain medication through that drip.” He points to one of the intravenous lines. “We’ve also tended to your…” He marks a pause. “… extensive wounds.”
He sits next to me and squeezes my hand. “I want you to focus on relaxing. You had a high fever brought on by stress, so it’s important that we help you figure out how to work through your emotions.”
A confused sort of anger bubbles up in my chest. I can feel the fury deep in my bones, but I can only vaguely remember its cause. I close my eyes, pretending to be exhausted so he’ll leave.
He stands up. “I’ll let you rest now,” he murmurs. “And don’t worry. You’re in good hands.”
The minute he leaves, I exhale, relieved. I need to be alone. I need to remember what happened, to understand it.
The last clear memory I have is of running in the forest. Of terror clawing at my chest, knowing a killer, sent by Damien, was after me.
No. It wasn’t a killer. It was Damien himself.
He’d caught me, thrown me to the ground, touched me possessively. It was brief—too brief—and then, he’d whipped me and left me there, sobbing on the forest floor, the stench of wet dirt surrounding me. Sending me back to that moment when I’d been buried underground.
And now, somehow, I’m not dead, but lying in a bed, in his apartment.
I can’t understand it.
Then, I think I do.
He hunted me. Whipped me. Left me for dead. And now I’m in his bed.
He’s toying with me. Mindfucking me. Doing what he’s always done, proving to me that he owns me. He can kill me, he can hurt me, he can keep me in his locked room and use me.
No. Not anymore. I won’t be sucked in by his lies anymore.
Suddenly, the door handle twists, and someone enters. I sit up, my heart palpitating, expecting to see him. But no, it’s Logan.
Somehow, the sight of him doesn’t fill me with dread like it used to.
The memory of him whispering, “I’m not going to kill you” supersedes the rest. I’ve reached the strange conclusion that he doesn’t want to hurt me.
I don’t know what it is exactly that he wants, but I have a feeling he isn’t my enemy.
“Doctor Farley said you were asleep,” he says, looking at me in slight surprise.
I stare at him as he walks slowly toward me. He tries to smile, but I can tell he’s upset. I wonder why.
“You don’t have to be afraid anymore,” he murmurs. “Damien’s gone.”
Against all odds, the words are like a blow to my chest, knocking all the wind out of my lungs. I tell myself it’s because I’m angry I won’t get my revenge. But I have the uncomfortable feeling I’m lying to myself.
He raises an eyebrow.
“You don’t seem particularly relieved,” he comments. “Aren’t you happy he’s leaving you alone?”
I stare at my hands, trying to make sense of my contradictory emotions.
“Aren’t you happy?” he insists. “He won’t hurt you. You won’t suffer anymore. Okay? You’ll stay here and get better, and we’ll take good care of you. We won’t abandon you. I promise.”
Each word he speaks falls like a hammer on my body. Pain pulses at my temples, and my throat feels parched. I feel like I can’t catch my breath. Far away, it seems, I hear the beeping of the machine accelerate.
Logan’s eyes narrow in anxiety. “Fuck.”
A moment later, the doctor returns. The exhaustion isn’t a feint anymore.
I’m overcome by it, my eyelids are heavy, and I lower them.
My breath feels like it’s burning me. I’m aching all over, and vague memories of the last time this happened, when Damien cradled me in his arms and put me in his car, drift through my consciousness.
Images of the concern in his eyes as he took care of me flit before me.
Maybe he does care about me after all.
No, impossible. He left.
Stop believing his lies, I tell myself desperately. He wants to kill you. You need to hurt him. Stab him. Get away. You’ve killed two men. You’re a cold-blooded killer. A polar bear.
But beneath all the confusion, I have one conviction. I don’t have what it takes to kill him.
I still love him, and I fucking hate myself for it.
“Fever spiking,” I hear distantly.
“I don’t get it. We thought, with Damien gone… He’s her main source of stress…”
“We’re going to need to figure something out. She’s already very fragile with the weight loss. I don’t know how long her body can handle such a high fever.”
I blissfully lose consciousness.
__
The following days pass in a haze. I drift in and out of sleep, but the pain is so great when I’m awake that I welcome the comatose state in which I invariably find myself falling back into.
Physical pain, first of all: burning, aching skin, a head that feels so heavy I can’t stand to move it, a throat so swollen it wouldn’t let me speak even if I remembered how, cold sweat coating my body in a thick sheen.
But the emotional pain is worse. The horrific fear squeezing at my lungs, a fear I can’t fully understand.
The anger that feels more and more like a lie.
The unutterable sense of loss that pervades my every pore.
I could stand the physical pain. It’s the secret pain that makes me welcome sleep, if only to escape it for a short while.
In the rare moments when I’m both conscious and alert, I wonder what all this means. Sleeping in Damien’s bed, when he’s nowhere to be found; Damien was gone, Logan told me. He’s leaving me alone. Why?
Doesn’t he care enough to come kill me himself? I find myself daydreaming of his touch, of his scent, of experiencing him one last time before he kills me…
I would welcome that, now. The anger is gone, replaced by an all-consuming thought that fills me with dread. He’s gone. I’ll never see him again.
__
I’ve long ago lost track of the days when a voice pierces the thick shroud of my slumber.
“He’s back.”
Logan’s speaking.
“Obviously, he’ll leave her alone. But he came back when he heard of her state. He’s staying in the fourth-floor apartment. That way, if she… she dies, Damien can be here for the final moments. But as long as there’s hope, he’ll stay away.”
Damien.
With more strength than I thought I could exert, I open my eyes and struggle to sit up. Both he and the doctor, whom he’s been speaking to, look at me in surprise.
I need to see him again. I need to feel his touch, just as much as I need oxygen. Without him, I will choke to death. I know I will.
I open my mouth a few times before I manage to find my way through the layers and layers of sadness that have laid heavy over my voice for the past eight months.
“I want to see him,” I croak, the words sounding loud and strange in my ears. “Please tell him. He can kill me… I just want to see him first.”
Exhausted by the effort, I lie back down, noticing, before I close my heavy eyes once more, the shock on the doctor’s face.
“Kill her? What the hell is she talking about?”
But I’m too tired to care.
I barely have time to realize that I just spoke for the first time in eight months before I drift off into a dreamless sleep, feeling more at peace than I have in a long time, now that I’ve said the words that have been gnawing at my chest for so long.
__
I don’t know how long I stay unconscious, but the first thing I’m aware of, before I even open my eyes, is the feel of a hand threading its way through my hair.
I moan slightly, and it travels from my hair to my cheek, stroking it, passing a thumb over my lower lip, slipping a lock of hair behind my ear.
I know it’s Damien. I’d know his touch anywhere. His scent. I must be dreaming.
I open a glazed eye and see him, but his body is filtered, distorted in my vision. I turn away so that I won’t let myself fall for this mirage, this beautiful illusion.
“Look at me,” his voice growls.
I shake my head, a tear spilling onto my cheek.
He grabs my chin and turns my head so that I’m facing him. I keep my eyes down. It’s a dream. Only a dream. Don’t believe it, or it will destroy you.
“You wanted to see me,” he says, his voice gentler.
I shake my head again, and manage to force out, “You’re not real. I don’t think you’re real.”
Once again, the voice that’s lain dormant for so long sounds strange in my ears.
But he’s heard my words. He lets go of my chin and chuckles softly. “Want to punch me and find out?”
That settles it. He’s a dream. The real Damien would never let me strike him.
It feels like only a little while ago that I would have welcomed the chance to hurt him. But now, the anger’s gone. All I feel is a hopeless sort of ache.