Chapter 54
SLOANE
Nate’s good moments came in small windows.
His vitals would stop jumping at every sound. His eyes would stay on mine long enough that I could breathe without counting the seconds between each rise of his chest.
Then the window would close again, and he’d drift, exhausted, leaving me with the ache of wanting more than he could give.
On the fourth day, he asked for toast. Such a small thing that shouldn’t have mattered, but it did.
I watched him chew slowly, carefully, wincing when his split lip pulled. He looked fragile in a way that made my hands itch with uselessness.
“You don’t have to watch me eat,” he murmured, voice still rough.
“I do.” I tried to smile.
He gave me the faintest version of a smirk. “Control freak.”
A laugh caught in my throat and broke in half. “That’s rich coming from you.”
His expression softened. For a second, the pain disappeared behind them, and I saw my brother. The one who used to steal my fries just to irritate the hell out of me. The one who would sit too close on the couch in a foster living room because closeness meant safety.
Nate took another bite and swallowed hard. “You’re still mad at the world.”
“I’m always mad. It’s my thing.” I gave him a half smile.
He huffed a breath that almost passed for a laugh. It hurt him. I could tell. He pressed his tongue briefly against his split lip, then frowned at the pain.
I waited.
A nurse came in to check his oxygen and his chart, smiled at him the way nurses did when they could see progress, then left again.
When the door clicked shut, Nate’s gaze drifted to the window. The sky beyond it was pale and indifferent, the same as it had been every day since he’d arrived.
Ryker. He was somewhere I couldn’t reach.
Did they have a plan? Were Sebastian and Kip already moving? Not knowing was a horrible kind of torture I had no name for.
“I keep thinking that I’m going to wake up and it’s going to be that room again.”
“You’re not.”
He didn’t look at me. “How do you know?”
I reached for his hand and carefully laced my fingers through his. “Because I’m here. And you’re here. If they try to take you again, they’re going to have to come through me.” Hopefully my new friends too.
He looked at me, and something unsteady moved in his expression. “You shouldn’t have to.”
“I know, but I will.”
He stared at me for a long moment, then looked at our hands. His thumb moved once over my knuckles, a small gesture that carried more weight than any words.
“Roof,” he murmured.
I swallowed. “Starlight.”
His eyes closed briefly, like the word was a door he could step through. When he opened them again, the panic had dulled around the edges.
We sat in the quiet for a minute. Letting the machines hum. Letting time pass without forcing anything.
I let the silence sit. In the stillness, Ryker pushed through my mind again. Was he hurt? Was he cold? I told myself I’d feel it somehow if he was gone, the way you feel a storm before it arrives. I held on to that thought like it was fact.
Then I felt the air shift.
“You asked me about college.”
In my head, I’d asked him a thousand times. I’d asked him while he was unconscious. I’d asked him through the years while he was missing.
Why did you leave? Why didn’t you tell me? Who got their hands on you?
Now he was here, and the questions felt dangerous.
“I’m not trying to interrogate you. I … I need to understand the part that was yours. The part before they—”
His jaw tightened. “I know.” He took a careful breath. “It started … it was stupid.”
That word—stupid—was pure Nate. A shield. A way to shrink something that seemed big enough to kill him.
I kept my voice gentle. “Tell me.”
He stared at the blanket for a moment, then spoke in pieces. “There was a guy from one of my classes.”
My pulse ticked up, but I managed to keep my face neutral.
“He talked to everybody,” Nate continued. “Not in a slick way. He just got along with everyone.”
I waited for him to continue.
“He noticed I didn’t socialize much.”
My heart split open. He said it like it was an obvious truth. Like he’d accepted it long before I ever could.
“He started inviting me places. Group stuff. Parties. Game nights. People who laughed and had fun. People who weren’t looking at me like I was a foster kid they didn’t want to be around.”
My fingers tightened around his hand. “You wanted to feel normal.”
Nate’s mouth pulled tight. “I wanted to feel wanted.”
The honesty of it punched through me. “I get it.” My voice was thick with emotion—regret, loneliness, longing.
“It wasn’t all bad at first.”
Of course it wasn’t. Traps never were.
“It was easy and fun. I made money helping with little things too.”
“What kind of things?”
He hesitated.
I added quickly, “You don’t have to tell me the details. Just … enough for me to understand.”
His gaze flicked to mine, then away. “Errands. Deliveries. I didn’t think about it. It was money and favors for my friends.”
My jaw tensed, but I didn’t react. I wouldn’t do that to him. Not now. Not when shame already lived inside him.
“I thought I was fitting in.” His voice was so soft I almost didn’t hear him.
“You were. We were finally doing more than surviving.”
Gratitude and pain tangled in his expression. “It changed. Not all at once. It changed a little at a time until I didn’t know where the line was anymore.”
I could hear the fear trying to creep back into his breathing.
I leaned in. “Starlight.” Just one word. A tether for him to hold onto.
He nodded faintly. “They asked me to go to a party. This one wasn’t at the college, and it wasn’t like the normal parties I was used to.”
My pulse hammered. “What kind?”
Nate’s stare went fixed, as if he was watching it play in his head. “There were rules. People dressed nice. Like people with money.”
I let him talk.
“And there was a room.”
My pulse skipped a beat. “A room?”
He swallowed hard. “They said it was for a tattoo.”
Every nerve in me snapped to attention.
Nate’s hand tightened around mine.
“I wasn’t even drunk,” he whispered, and that sounded like a confession. “I wanted to remember it. I wanted it to feel real. Like I was part of something.”
“What happened?” My chest hurt, but I wasn’t sure where else to hold the anger and fear in my body.
Nate’s attention drifted toward the corner, unfocused. “The door shut.” He took a shaky breath. “It was too clean.”
Fuck. I’d heard those same words from Ryker. I kept my expression steady even as my mind screamed.
“There was a chair, and a table.” His voice dropped lower. “Everything was laid out.”
“Laid out how?”
His brows knitted together. “Like a clinic.”
The word hit like a slap.
He blinked slowly, and he looked at me as if checking how much I could handle before the truth broke me.
“He wore black gloves.” His nostrils flared. “They smelled sharp. Like that soap surgeons use.”
I rubbed my free hand along my jeans. I knew that damn smell. I’d smelled it on Ryker’s skin when he’d been talking. I’d smelled it on a hundred patients in my old life as a detective walking through hospitals and exam rooms.
Chlorhexidine.
Nate’s grip tightened again. “There was music outside the door. It wasn’t loud, but enough to pretend it was still a party. And the guy wasn’t friendly anymore. He was quiet. Focused.” He glanced at me before he continued. “He told me to sit down.”
My fingers went numb around his. “And you did.”
“Yeah. They wrapped my arm.” He pointed. “Here.” His gaze dropped to his lower arm where the blanket covered it. His mouth tightened.
I leaned closer. “Nate.”
He blinked hard, then said, “They held it out.”
“Held what?” I asked.
He glanced down. “My arm.”
A chill threaded through me.
“Then the needle turned on.”
The words tightened the air in the room, and my heart dropped into my feet.
“The sound,” he said. “That buzz.” His breathing sped up.
I squeezed his hand. “Starlight,” I said gently.
Nate blinked several times and tried to keep going anyway, stubborn even now. “It wasn’t pain. Not really. It was the sound. The vibration. Then—” His paused. “Nothing.”
I held completely still.
Nate stared at me with fear and a sick kind of certainty. “I don’t remember leaving that room. I don’t remember walking out. I don’t remember the drive. I don’t remember anything until I woke up.” His voice cracked. “And the tattoo was there.”
My attention dropped to his lower arm.
“Can I?” I asked quietly.
He hesitated, then agreed.
My hands shook as I pulled the blanket back slowly, exposing his forearm.
The mark was small and clean, inked with precision.
A rabbit, the exact same that was on Ryker’s arm and that was in the photo with Nate and me before he went missing.
It didn’t look changed from the first time I’d seen it, but I had to make sure.
I didn’t touch it. I just looked, studying it with a new lens now that I’d gathered more pieces of the puzzle.
Nate waited for me to respond.
I forced my voice steady. “Did they tell you why?”
“No. They didn’t tell me anything.”
My forehead creased. “Did they say who they were?”
Nate shook his head once. “No names.”
I kept my voice gentle. “Did anyone say anything? Anything you remember?”
Nate stared at the rabbit mark for a long moment. “They said I was lucky.”
My stomach turned. “Lucky?”
Nate’s mouth tightened. “Lucky I’d been noticed.”
A chill spread under my skin. I wanted to ask a thousand questions, but I didn’t. I pulled the blanket back over his arm and tucked it around him like he was a kid again and I could fix anything with careful sheet corners and a soft voice.
Nate stared at the ceiling for a long moment, his breathing steadying again. Then to me, confused. “How am I here?”
The question knocked the air out of my lungs. I swallowed hard, my grip tightening around his fingers. I could have lied. I could have said the hospital found you, or you got out, or anything easier than the truth. But Nate had earned the truth.
“You didn’t get here by yourself.”
His brows pulled together. “Slo…”
My voice shook. “I didn’t stop searching. Not for one day. Not even when they told me to move on.”
Nate’s eyes glistened, and he glanced away fast, as if tears were a weakness he couldn’t afford without shattering into a million pieces.
“And,” I continued, forcing the words out past the ache in my chest, “there was a man.”
Nate’s gaze snapped back to me.
“A man I love,” I said quietly.
He went still, trying to read me through the exhaustion.
“He didn’t know you. Only what I shared with him. But he knew how much you meant to me, and that you’re my brother.”
Nate’s mouth trembled slightly. “What did he do?”
The muscles in my neck tightened so hard that pain shot through my head. “He went into the dark and he brought you back.”
Nate stared at me, unblinking. “He brought me back?”
Tears spilled before I could stop them. “He got you out. He carried you to me. He made sure you got to a car. He made sure you got here.”
Nate’s Adam’s apple bobbed. “Why?”
“Because he loves me,” I whispered. “And because he saw what losing you did to me. And he decided that wasn’t how my story ended.”
Nate looked at me for several seconds, something breaking open in his face. “He didn’t have to.”
“No,” I said. “He didn’t.”
Nate swallowed hard, and his voice dropped. “I know the people he dealt with. What did it cost him?”
I screamed inside my head, the loss of Ryker too heavy to talk about. I didn’t want to say it out loud. I didn’t want the words to become real in this room. “He traded … He traded himself to get you home.”
Nate went completely still.
The silence stretched between us, heavy and brutal.
He blinked hard, but a tear slipped anyway. “He did that for me?”
“For you.” I glanced at the floor, trying not to break down. “For me. For us.”
Nate stared at my hand holding his, and his fingers tightened around mine. “People don’t do that.”
The words came out fiercer than I meant them to. “Not everyone. But he did.”
Nate’s lips trembled. “So you … weren’t alone all of this time?”
The sentence gutted me.
I shook my head. “No. I wasn’t.”
He frowned like he was trying to put the pieces together. “He must … he must love you a lot.”
I let out a broken sound that might have been a laugh if it hadn’t hurt so goddamn much.
“Yeah. He does.”
Nate’s attention drifted, unfocused for a second, overwhelmed by too much emotion stacked on top of his pain. He squeezed my hand again, weaker this time.
“If he comes back … tell him.” His voice trailed off.
My breath hitched. “Tell him what?”
Nate’s struggled to focus. “That … I’m here. That he didn’t do it for nothing.”
Tears blurred the room. “I will.” The promise tasted like grief.
Nate’s breathing was uneven now. The conversation had taken more out of him than I’d hoped.
I leaned in. “You did nothing wrong by wanting to belong. Do you hear me?”
He stared at me, exhausted.
“You hear me?” I repeated.
He nodded, barely.
I brushed his knuckles with my thumb. “And you’re not alone anymore.”
Nate’s eyelids fluttered.
He held on to my hand like he didn’t trust sleep.
“Slo.”
“Yeah. I’m here.”
His gaze drifted, unfocused again, and his voice dropped, smaller.
“That room,” he murmured. “It felt … official.”
My forehead creased. “Official how?”
His brows pulled together as if he was trying to find the right words.
“Like paperwork. Like rules.” He blinked slowly, fighting the pull of exhaustion. “And…” His voice thinned. “After … after the tattoo …”
His attention darted to the corner of the room, the fear sliding back into his expression.
I squeezed his hand. “Starlight.”
He tried to nod. “It got worse.”
My blood went cold.
He couldn’t say more. The words died in his mouth as his eyelids slid shut. His breathing evened out again. His hand stayed wrapped around mine, weak but determined.
I sat there, staring at the rabbit mark hidden under the blanket, hearing the buzz of a needle in my imagination even though the room was quiet.
Too clean.
Too clinical.
Too familiar.
And I realized I wasn’t afraid of what Nate remembered.
I was afraid of what he didn’t.
Because if this was the beginning, if a party and a room and a buzzing needle were only the first steps … then whatever came next had been designed.
And the man I loved had walked straight back into that. Ryker was in the dark with the same people who had designed this. Who had built rooms like that one and called it science. I placed my palm flat against Nate’s blanket and made myself breathe. They had a plan. They had to.
I pressed my lips to Nate’s knuckles, my voice barely a breath. “Starlight.” This time I said it as much for me as for my little brother.
Then I lifted my head and looked at the door.
Waiting.
Terrified of what would come next.