Chapter Twenty-Four
Feralyn
Two days later, Helios wheeled me out of the hospital, and it happened.
Open air.
No protection.
No barriers.
No bubble.
Everything shattered.
“No.” No, no, no. “I-I can’t do this.” Panic robbed my breath, memories stole my reason, and all of a sudden, I was back in a windowless, concrete room, naked and beaten.
“You’re already doing it, Haven.” Helios tipped his chin toward the parking lot where the old Ford truck was in the first space in the third row. “Ride or carry?”
It wasn’t safe.
I wasn’t safe.
I couldn’t walk or run or escape a speeding car. I couldn’t fight off scarred traffickers, and I definitely couldn’t travel that distance out in the wide open.
I couldn’t even make my body grasp enough air through the panicked breaths of spiraling pain.
I couldn’t do this.
“No,” I croaked, my lungs closing up, feeling like I was starting to suffocate.
“Those are your options. Not leaving you alone to bring the truck around.”
Oh God. “Don’t leave me.” Helios was armed.
He’d checked his magazine three times before we’d left the false security of the hospital room.
He’d also methodically moved two extra magazines from his cargo pockets to his front pockets, checked the hallway three times, then refused to let any hospital employee push my wheelchair.
“Like I said, not leaving you, Haven, but we’re not holding position here. Two choices. I carry you to the truck, or I push this fucking wheelchair.”
“You can’t carry me and shoot at the same time.”
He was behind me, but I still felt it. I’d felt a lot of things since being in the hospital. Most of it pain and fear, but there was that whole other element. One that started and ended with Helios.
That was how I knew his muscles had gone rigid and his body had gone so still, not even a breath would show.
But in the next second, he was in front of me, squatting. Bracing his hands on the arms of the wheelchair, using his large frame, he effectively caged me in. “I’m only gonna say this once. You’re not gonna want to hear it, but you need to hear what I’m about to fucking tell you. Copy?”
My heart jumping, my ankle throbbing, my collarbone sore from being moved, my ribs radiating a level of pain I never wanted to experience again, I looked past him toward the parking lot. To the insurmountable distance to the truck.
“Look at me, Feralyn.” Dark, demanding, the command was as quiet as distant thunder but as jolting as a bolt of lightning in a pitch-dark sky.
I looked at him.
“I can kill and carry you at the same damn time. I can wipe out this entire fucking hospital single-handed. I have enough ammo on my person to eliminate four times the number of traffickers responsible for taking you.” He let every ounce of his warfighter aggression and complete dominance show in his lethal expression.
Then in the next breath, he relaxed each muscle with harrowing yet spectacular discipline, and a locked-down mask slid into place.
“But I don’t need to do that.” He gently but firmly grasped the side of my face.
“Because every single motherfucker in that trafficking cell is dead.” His thumb glanced across my cheek. “They’re all dead, Feralyn.”
“Not in my head,” I admitted.
“That part’s gonna take time.”
I could live an entire lifetime, and it wouldn’t be long enough to forget. “Promise me something?”
“What?”
“Never take me to a hospital again.” Not if this happened again. I didn’t want to live through it.
“Why?”
Because I wouldn’t mentally survive another attack.
Because I didn’t want him to ever see me like this again.
Because being cobbled back together with pain meds, braces, and X-rays while Helios watched over me felt worse than seeing his scars, and I didn’t know how to not compare us.
Helios was strong. I was weak. And one of the words I hated most had taken up residence in my mind as it hovered like judgement.
Deserve.
Used one way, it was honest, wishful, maybe, but plain in its truth. But used another way, in any way directed toward yourself, it was a selfish word with an uglier truth. And that built-in switchback was what made me hate the concept of deserving so much.
Hearing our parents use it every time they wanted to justify their long absences made me hate it. But when I looked at the six-foot-six Delta operator who’d pushed me out of a hospital in a wheelchair, I knew Helios deserved better.
He’d always deserved better than being forced to look after me.
He was right to have left all those years ago.
But now he was back where he’d started, and the right thing to do would be to release him from any and all responsibility for me.
But I wasn’t brave enough. I just wanted to be deserving of every second of the protective attention he was showering over me. Except I wasn’t.
I wasn’t even brave enough to tell him why I never wanted to see the inside of a hospital again, or how deeply intertwined it was with both my fear of losing him and being his weakness. So instead, I gave him the simplest truth.
“I’m afraid.” Barely above a whisper, my spoken fear floated a second with all of its nuanced meaning.
Then the trees in the parking lot rustled like they’d caught my secret and agreed.
I was a college dropout who’d been abducted and beaten.
Helios was a Tier One operator who’d been shot defending our country.
We were not equal, and I would never be worthy of a man like him.
Missing my truth, Helios didn’t hesitate with his version of reality. “That’s why I’m here.”
“You can’t be forever.” The abduction, Helios’s wounds, the true evil I had witnessed, I understood now how shatteringly fragile life was.
And while I never wanted to take another picture again, or be so distracted that I didn’t see what was coming at me, right now, I’d never wished for my camera more.
Because in this very moment, Helios had never looked more compelling—virile, dominant, lethal—and all Helios. His half smile more smirk than humor, it radiated challenge.
“Watch me.” He winked.
I couldn’t watch him do this. “I’m not going to let you ruin your life over this.” It’s what I should’ve said when we were back in that hospital room.
The ruthlessly hard face of a Delta operator was instantly back. “You fucking dying would ruin my life. I’m not gonna let that happen.” Abruptly standing, he kicked the footrests up that were under my socked feet. “I’m carrying you. Cross your arms over those ribs and apply pressure.”
I barely had time to blink, let alone get my arms into position.
Then I was lifted with more gentleness than I thought possible, and the sudden stab of pain was immediately followed by his scent.
Soap.
Laundry.
Man.
Musk.
Familiar. Unfamiliar. But it was home.
I breathed through the pain.