CHAPTER 20
Adam
"A dam!"
Cotton's voice is barely a murmur over the boiling of my blood.
"Adam! Help! It's Eve!"
Eve. It's Eve. Where is Eve? I turn and see nothing but teammates around me. Cal is tossing guys back away from us like they weigh no more than a loaf of bread.
"Adam! Damn it!"
Cotton. Where is Cotton? I push my way back out of the swarm of bodies and I see it.
I see them. Cotton is fighting with Eve.
There's blood. It's everywhere. Cotton has a knife.
I rush toward them and as I get closer, I see that he's keeping the knife away from her.
Why does she want it? What's happening? Finally reaching them, I make the decision to grab Eve.
I know that Cotton would never hurt her, and I need to find out where she's bleeding from.
Searching her body frantically, moving my hands up and down her arms and to her face, I see no wounds.
"Where are you hurt? What happened?"
"Get her out of here before they see her. Get her to your room and calm her down. We'll get them out."
"What? What happened?"
"Listen Brother, get her out of here. I'll come to you when they're gone. Don't let them see her."
I have no idea what's happening, but I trust Cotton with my life. I pick Eve up in both arms and rush back upstairs with her.
"Are you hurt, love?"
Nothing. She doesn't respond. I look down at her face and dread curls in my middle.
She's not there. It looks like my Eve, but it's not her behind these eyes.
We get into the bedroom, and I strip off her clothes.
She lets me. She doesn't respond in any way, and she doesn't seem to perceive any external stimuli.
Once I have her down to her bra and panties, I can see that she isn't injured.
There's nothing. It isn't her blood. Whose blood is this?
Quickly, I pick her back up and put her in the shower.
Getting in behind her, fully clothed, I start washing the blood off her skin.
What's happening? What happened down there?
She still isn't speaking. She isn't helping me wash the blood off of her.
She doesn't even seem to be aware of what's happening.
Once we're out of the shower and I have her wrapped in a towel, I strip off my wet clothes and change.
There's knocking at my door. "Hey, can we come in?" It's Cal.
"Just a minute."
I quickly dress Eve and open the door. Both Cal and Cotton stand there, clearly worried. Cotton still has blood all over him, but it doesn't look as bad now that I've had some time to calm down.
"What happened? Whose blood is that?"
They brush passed me and into the room.
"Eve. Are you alright?" Cotton looks worried. He has a dish towel wrapped around his hand, and it's soaked in blood.
Eve doesn't respond to Cotton, and I say, "It's your blood." Not a question but a statement filled with confusion. "What the fuck happened, Cotton?"
He looks at me and runs his uninjured hand through his hair, looking more troubled than I have seen him look in years. "She...fuck, I don't know. I saw her change. I saw her change and I...Eve?" He turns to Eve to address her mid-sentence. "I don't want to talk about her like she's not here."
"Something's wrong. She isn't responding. Not to touch, not to conversation, she's just unavailable."
Cotton nods his head toward the door in a gesture that lets me know he wants to talk outside.
"I'm going to stay in here with her. We shouldn't leave her alone." Cal looks worried and he hasn't taken his eyes off Eve since he entered the room.
"Yeah, we'll be right back," I tell him.
As soon as we shut the door, Cotton says, "I've seen shit like this before, Adam. As soon as you and Cal started tossing bodies around, I turned to find Eve. I was going to get her out of the room, but I immediately knew there was something wrong."
"Her entire demeanor changed from confusion to.
..I don't know, just...vacant. She checked out, but something else checked in and it was ready for battle.
At first, I thought she was going into the kitchen to get out of the chaos, but she came back with that knife.
She was so calm. Eerily calm. I almost waited too long because I didn't realize what she was doing.
I just barely caught the knife by the blade before she shoved it into Jason's back. "
I rub my hands down my face and into my hair. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck .
"Did anyone see her?"
"No. I don't think so. The focus was on you curb-stomping Chad into the living room floor. Not cool, by the way, Captain."
"Did you hear what he fucking said?"
"Yes. Kick him out, suspend him from a practice, don't permanently change the structure of his face."
"Well, agree to disagree. Cal obviously agreed with me."
"When your best defense is that Cal Ashford agrees with you, you've already lost your case."
I can't help but smile at that despite the shit show that's still taking place.
"I can't believe she was going to stab someone."
"That's the thing. That wasn't Eve. I saw it happen.
Eve checked out and the trauma took over.
Something has happened to her. Something really fucking bad, man.
I think she was defending you and Cal in some messed up trauma response.
Her nerves were already at the surface because of all the people and then things turned to shit, and she just reacted in the only way she knew how. "
"How do you know that? About the crowd. How do you know?"
"I've put things together over time since that first time we saw her in the gym.
She never spoke a word that day, and the next time, when she ran into you, she was trying to go unnoticed in that outfit.
She never looked at us. She put you in your place, but she lit out of there like her ass was on fire.
I knew for sure after she came here for the first time.
It's some form of social anxiety, right? "
"Yeah. It's not that she's worried about being judged. She doesn't give a shit about that. It's a fear response. I don't know what happened but you're right. Something bad."
Cotton just nods because I'm only confirming what he already deduced on his own. Cotton is smart. Not just smart for a jock. He has genius-level deductive reasoning skills. He's studying to be a forensic psychologist and he's probably my greatest asset in the fight against Eve's demons.
"What do I do now? Does she need to go to the hospital?"
"I don't think so. She could end up being placed in an inpatient facility in this dissociative state. That's not what she needs. She needs to be grounded. You do that by talking to her. Touching her. Reorienting her. She will come around. She just needs some time and some calm."
We walk back into the room and Cal has his arms wrapped around Eve. Her face is buried in his chest and his chin is resting on her head. "It's over. They're gone. We would never let anything hurt you. Adam's here. Everything is back to normal."
He's doing what Cotton said to do. Do both of these guys know more about this than I do? If this were anyone else, I would be seeing red right now but, I know these two men would lay down their lives for me. That means they would do it for Eve too.
Cal gestures me over with a nod of his head. When I reach his side, he moves Eve into my arms and goes to the bathroom to turn out the light. Cotton pulls back the covers on the bed and I am so thankful for these men. My brothers.
"Do you need help getting her laid down?
" Cotton asks and they both look to me for my answer.
I shake my head. These men truly are my brothers and they're going to help me fix this.
Eve and I won't face this alone. I pick Eve up and lay her down on the bed.
Cal turns off the light and shuts the door as they exit the room, and I slide in bed behind the woman I would kill for.
The woman I will spend the rest of my life loving, and I attempt to bring her back to me one word, one caress at a time.