Chapter 8
Bria
Everything hurt worse than before. Every single nerve ending, straight down to my fucking fingertips, felt raw and exposed.
I was in so much pain that I made a silent promise to myself right then and there…
if I actually survived to see the other side of clean this time, I was staying there.
No more lies. Not to myself, and not to my parents.
This time, the reality of what I’d become stared back at me in the dark, and it was scary. A literal stranger had kidnapped me just to force the drugs out of my system. How bad had I gotten? How far down had I fallen?
I rolled over and groaned.
My body felt like it had been run over by a truck, then set on fire, then left to rot.
The fever I had made my skin feel too tight and too hot at the same time.
Every time I moved, my stomach threatened to empty itself again, even though there was nothing left.
The tremors had eased a little thanks to whatever Lena had put in the IV, but the nurse seemed to be too heavy-handed.
It hadn’t even been a full two days since she was brought in, and she seemed to have a full-blown attitude with me.
At first, I kept telling myself I was imagining it.
I tried to convince my brain that the withdrawal was making me paranoid.
She wasn’t doing anything overt enough for me to call her out.
She grabbed my bruised arms too tightly when shifting my weight.
She intentionally tugged at my tangled hair when she wiped the sweat from my face.
She spoke to me with her voice raised enough to make my throbbing head feel like it was splitting open, and it seemed like she was doing it on purpose.
I kept making excuses for her.
Until I opened my eyes through the haze and caught her looking at me.
She was standing at the foot of the bed, arms crossed, watching me with pure disgust on her pretty face.
“What’s your problem?” I asked outright.
Lena blinked, the nasty expression vanishing so fast I almost thought I’d imagined it. She gave me a polite, professional smile that didn’t reach her eyes.
“No problem at all, Bria,” she said sweetly, moving around the bed to check the IV line. “I’m just doing my job.”
She adjusted something on the bag.
“You don’t like me, I can see it,” I pushed.
Lena paused. Then she let out a soft, pitying laugh.
“It’s not about liking you,” she said, circling the bed slowly.
“It’s just… interesting. A man like Kael Voss—powerful, dangerous, beautiful—going through all this trouble for…
” She gestured vaguely at me, her eyes dragging over my sweaty, trembling form with clear disdain. “Well. For someone like you.”
I pushed myself up on shaky elbows, ignoring the way the room spun. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
Lena tilted her head, still smiling that fake-sweet smile. “You’re a pretty girl, don’t get me wrong. But you’re… sick, Bria. Addicted. Weak. The kind of girl men like Kael don’t usually waste their time on.”
She stepped closer, lowering her voice like we were sharing a secret.
“He deserves better. Someone who can stand beside him. Not someone he has to lock up and babysit like a stray dog he found in the gutter.”
My chest tightened with rage so sharp it cut through the withdrawal fog.
“Get out,” I snarled, my voice gaining a sudden, fierce strength that made her smile falter for a fraction of a second. “Get the fuck away from me.”
“Careful, Bunny,” Lena mocked, using Kael’s private nickname like a weapon. “Your blood pressure is already dangerously high.”
“I want to see Kael,” I demanded, my breathing picking up as I tried to swing my legs over the edge of the mattress. My heart was hammering violently against my ribs. “Call him. Bring him up here right now.”
Lena chuckled as she picked up her medical bag from the chair. She adjusted the strap over her shoulder, completely unfazed by my anger.
“Mr. Voss isn’t here,” she said flatly. “He had business to attend to. You’re stuck with me.”
“Fuck that, tell him to come here now!” I yelled after her, but the exertion was already draining the last of my energy. My head spun, and I collapsed back onto the pillows, gasping for breath.
Lena paused at the doorway, unlocking it with a key. She looked back over her shoulder one last time, her eyes completely devoid of warmth.
“Rest up, Bria,” she said smoothly. “We have a long night ahead of us.”
Lena left the room, leaving me alone in the dark with my heart racing and the terrifying realization that the woman holding the needle hated my guts.
I curled into a ball, sobbing quietly into the pillow as another wave of cramps tore through me.
I kept thinking about what she said about Kael—and she was right.