47. Nell
My eyes roll back—I can’t focus. Everything’s blurry, like I’m underwater.
But I’m aware enough to know I’m not tied to that bed anymore.
Not staring at Lea’s lifeless body.
Not trapped in that room of death. Now I’m in the back of a car, being driven somewhere.
Probably to the next hell.
Maybe to my end, not that I’d ever be that lucky.
And I’ve already made peace with it. Wherever they take me, I’ll find a way to end this. To stop the pain. I don’t need to keep suffering. Not like this
Lea’s gone.
And I wasn’t strong enough to save her.
Behind my eyes, she’s still there—haunting me. Her body twisted and still. Her eyes, wide and empty, staring through me like even in death she knew I failed her.
Like she’s still judging me.
And maybe she’s right.
“Nell?”
His voice cuts through the haze like a thread of light in the dark.
I wish Cameron were here.
God, I wish I could see him—just once more.
Stalker Boy, with his quiet eyes and that maddening calm.
I used to think he was cold and detached. But now I understand. He wasn’t heartless—he was focused. He saw the bigger picture while I was still clinging to the edges of my own fear.
He was right to keep his distance.
Right to put the mission first.
And I was too na?ve, too wrapped up in my own pain to see it. Too stupid to realise he was trying to save me the only way he knew how.
“I’m sorry, Cameron,”
I murmur, my voice thick and slurred, barely audible over the growl of the engine.
I drift in and out, caught between waking and sleep—between the nightmare I’ve lived and the one I’m afraid to wake into.
“Why are you sorry?”
His voice again. So clear. It sounds… real.
Too real.
But it can’t be.
I’m still dreaming. Still trapped in my own mind, reaching for something—someone—to hold onto.
“I’m sorry I wasn’t strong enough,”
I whisper, the words trembling on my lips.
Even they taste like failure.
I squeeze my eyes shut, harder this time, like pressure alone could collapse me into nothing. I want to dissolve into the dark—the kind that doesn’t ache, that doesn’t carry the imprint of Lea’s stare, wide with the pain I couldn’t prevent.
The heaviness crawls across my chest, settles in my throat, coils around every limb until I forget how to move, forget how to breathe.
Sleep pulls at me, insistent and unkind, like a tide that doesn’t ask permission.
I let it.
Let it drown the images still flickering behind my eyelids, let it pull me under where silence feels merciful. Because what waits on the other side—whatever mess, memory, consequence—I can’t face it.
Not like this.
Not yet.
“Nell? Can you hear me?”
No.
This has to be a dream.
There’s no way I’m awake right now.
I squeeze my eyes shut tighter, clinging to the illusion. Whatever this is—whatever warmth or softness I’ve stumbled into—I don’t want it to end. Not yet. Not when the alternative is waking back into pain.
“Nell?”
The voice again. Closer this time.
And then—fingers. Gentle. Careful. Brushing hair from my face like I’m something fragile.
That touch is too real.
My body jolts, the instinct to fight taking over. I startle awake, breath catching in my throat, preparing for what is to come.
Everything hits at once—light, sound, pain.
My heart stutters in uneven beats, thudding against my ribs like it’s trying to escape. My throat is raw, dry as sandpaper. My head pulses with a deep, nauseating ache.
I need something—anything—to dull it. The drugs they gave me before… they were the only thing that made the pain bearable. The only thing that made me forget.
But now I feel everything.
Every bruise. Every tear. Every place where my body no longer feels like mine.
I try to move, but even that feels foreign. Like I’m wearing someone else’s skin.
And then I see him.
Cam.
Or someone who looks like him.
But not the way I remember.
There’s a scar now—jagged and raw, cutting down the left side of his face. One eye is clouded, milky white, it almost resembles a ghost.
He looks older. Harder. Like he’s been through hell.
But it’s him.
It’s really him.
And for the first time in what feels like forever, I don’t know whether to cry… or collapse.
“Cam?”
His name slips from my lips, but my brain is still playing catch up.
There are tense lines carved into his face—grief, exhaustion, guilt—but it’s him.
He’s real.
He’s really here.
“I’ve got you, baby,”
he chokes, voice thick with emotion as he eases onto the bed beside me.
His arms wrap around me with the gentlest care, like he’s afraid I’ll break if he holds too tight.
Maybe I will.
But I don’t care. I just need him close.
“I’m never letting you go again. You hear me?”
His voice cracks.
“I’m so sorry, Nell. I’m so fucking sorry.”
I clutch him back, my fingers digging into the flesh of his arms, desperate to feel something solid. Something real.
I need to be sure this isn’t another illusion. That I won’t blink and find myself back in that cold, airless room where everything went wrong. My chest is tight with doubt, lungs barely moving, every breath whispering the same question—is this real or some cruel trick stitched together by my own broken mind? The light feels too soft. The warmth of his body too steady. I breathe it in like it might vanish.
“Is it really you?”
I whisper, my voice barely registering above the thud of my pulse.
He answers without words—just presses his lips to my forehead and holds them there, like he can seal every fracture in my soul with that one quiet touch.
His arms don’t loosen. His grip doesn’t falter. I sink into him, afraid to lean too hard in case this all shatters. But he doesn’t move. Doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t let me fall alone.
And I never want him to. Not now. Not after everything.
Still, a part of me is bracing. Begging the universe not to tear this from me. Because if this fades into a dream—if I open my eyes and he’s gone again—there won’t be anything left of me to survive it.
“I’m here, Nell,”
he murmurs against my skin.
“I got you out. You’re safe now. You don’t have to worry anymore. They’re never going to take you again.”
His words wrap around me like a promise.
“I don’t understand…”
My voice is hoarse, barely more than a whisper.
“How did you get me out?”
An escape like that—surely I’d remember it.
But I don’t.
Everything after Lea is fuzzy, a grey cloud blurring my mind, like something’s taken root and won’t let go.
Just fragments.
And then… this.
Cam’s eyes soften, but there’s something behind them—something dark and heavy he’s not saying.
“I got to you at the auction,”
he says quietly.
“I had to play their game. I bought you, Nell. That’s how I got you out.”
The words hit like a slap, but not because of him—because of what they mean.
Because that’s what it took.
“They think I’m one of them,”
he adds, voice low.
“That’s how I got close. That’s how I got you back.”
He brushes a strand of hair from my face, his touch trembling.
“You’re safe now. I swear it.”
Safe.
The word feels foreign.
But in his arms, for the first time in forever, I start to believe it might be true.
My hands creep upward, slow and uncertain, like they’re moving through water. I press my palms to his chest first—solid, warm, steady beneath the soft cotton of his T-shirt. His heart beats beneath my touch, grounding me in a reality I still don’t fully trust.
I let my fingers wander, up the slope of his shoulders, along the curve of his neck, brushing the stubble along his jaw.
He doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t pull away.
He just lets me explore him like I’m trying to memorise him all over again.
And maybe I am.
I thread my fingers through his hair—longer than before, messier, like he hasn’t had time to care for it. It slips through my hands like silk, but it’s his scent that undoes me.
That familiar, quiet mix of soap and spice and something uniquely him.
It hits me like a wave—nostalgia, safety, grief—and I close my eyes, breathing him in like his scent alone can protect me.
“You’re real.”
The words fall from my lips, soft and reverent. Not a question. A declaration. Like if I say it out loud, it’ll stay true.
“Yes,”
he whispers.
His long fingers cup my face, his thumb brushing gently beneath my eye. Then he tilts my chin up, coaxing my gaze to meet his.
His eyes—one warm and brown, the other strikingly pale—lock onto mine with a tenderness that shatters me.
And then the tears come. They slip down my cheeks in silence, hot and aching. Not just from relief. Not just from the overwhelming truth that I’m safe.
They’re happy tears.
But they’re also soaked in sorrow.
Because I got out. But Lea didn’t. She died in that room—brutalised, discarded, forgotten by everyone but me.
And I couldn’t save her.
Her eyes still haunt me. The way she stared into my soul as the life left her body.
Cam doesn’t speak. He doesn’t need to. He just holds me, his forehead resting gently against mine, his breath mingling with mine in the quiet.
And finally, now that I’m actually free, I let myself cry.
For her.