Page 13

One week later

I find solace in the shower as the hot water pours down my front, as I try to keep my back as dry as possible. Everything is healing well, and out of the dozens of cuts that marred my back, most were shallow enough that they healed on their own, the new skin various shades of red and pink. The laceration just under my ribs was a different story and is healing slowly despite the stitches and care provided by the doctor. I’m told a wedge of glass had lodged into my left side, deep enough that Jax didn’t dare risk pulling it out on his own when he found me as thick blood oozed slowly around it and showed no signs of stopping. Seventeen stitches later and I’m under strict instructions to limit any physical movement that could risk slowing down the healing time. The doctor told me that despite his best effort, I’ll be left with a scar. In all honesty, I don’t mind, and a part of me likes the idea of scarring. I lather more soap between my hands, grimacing as I realize just how fucked up that sounds.

I want it to leave a scar.

“Wow, that’s macabre,” I mumble out loud to myself.

I guess a part of me is relieved that there is some proof of what I went through and that if I ever decide to acknowledge it, the scars will be there to remind me that I didn’t make it up.

When the doctor came back to check on me earlier this week, he told me that I was lucky , that most of my wounds were superficial and that any resulting scars could be covered by a shirt easily. Jax was ready to add another body to the pile he was leaving in the wake of this mess, the doctor’s comment causing a feral growl to slip from his lips as my stitches were checked. The doctor rattled off a bunch of information about the treatments that were given to me once I woke up and could agree to such care—mostly preventatives for pregnancy and STIs, reminding me of the possible side effects, as well as the proper wound care for my stitches. I was also told I could report what happened to me, but the idea of telling strangers what happened made me feel like throwing up, so I quickly declined that suggestion.

I felt so uncomfortable as he was speaking that Jax’s hand on mine was the only thing keeping me from bolting from the room. I didn’t want to remember—I still don’t want to remember. I close my eyes, willing myself to see nothing except the darkness behind my eyelids, locking everything I experienced away in a box, somewhere deep enough in my memory that even I can’t stumble upon it by accident.

I hate that I’ve fallen into old habits, denial once again my go-to coping strategy, but I refuse to entertain the idea that I’m anything but fine.

I take a shaky breath as I try to figure out how to move forward.

How do I come back from this?

While I’m physically healing well, my body feels like it’s no longer my own, like I’m no longer beneath the skin that surrounds my soul. I feel distanced from everything around me. I know I should be crying, I know I should be devastated by everything that has happened, but I feel as though I have nothing left to give. My tears have dried up and there’s no sign of the fire within me, as if it has been reduced to nothing more than ash. Yet, in addition to a familiar numbness, my chest feels as though it has been cracked open, the emotional pain a constant state. I try to remember what it feels like to be happy, to be excited, to be hopeful.

But I can’t.

Those feelings all seem like long-forgotten memories, the recent trauma refusing to let anything else surface within me.

At least feeling something is better than nothing—isn’t that how the saying goes?

My breathing starts to increase, shallow breaths taking over, and I can feel myself on the verge of panic at the realization that I’m unable to feel anything except hurt.

“Lock it up, Evi,” I whisper to myself.

I try to take a deep breath but the pain in my back prevents my ribs from expanding fully.

Instead, I do the only thing I know will help me find a sense of calm within me: I run my nail over my thumb, counting as it bites into my skin. The pain and the motion are soothing against the storm that rages within me.

The water continues to run over me and I let it wash away everything I’m feeling. But no matter how hot I make the water, no matter how many times I pass the soap over my body, I can’t get rid of the dirt I feel on my skin, the crawling sensation that hasn’t gone away since Tanner touched me.

“This was not real. This did not happen. I am fine. None of this happened.” The words surprise me as they pass through my lips as I scrub harder.

This is not real. This cannot be real. I am fine. None of this happened.

My new mantra.

I stay in the shower until the water runs cold, and only then does it feel like my skin starts to settle, the invisible filth quieting under my touch.

I step out of the shower and wrap a familiar towel around me, gently drying myself off.

I avoid looking in the mirror, unwilling to see a reflection that might suggest I am anything but fine, and instead get dressed slowly, my body still bruised, the skin that I can see now red and raw from the heat of the shower and the scrubbing.

Wearing my own clothes suddenly feels like a luxury, and the soft silk pants and shirt feel like butter against my skin.

I step out into the bedroom to find Jax awake and sitting on the bed with his head in his hands, looking like grief personified. I know he is struggling with everything that has happened, and like me, he’s unable to fall asleep until the early hours of the morning. Since I’ve been back it seems he spends all his energy tracking down Rhett, Tanner, and Winston while making sure I’m okay.

He doesn’t hear me as I walk towards him, my footsteps quiet against the cold floor and my skin prickling against the cool air, my silk pajamas doing nothing to keep me warm.

I stand in front of him before brushing my fingers through his hair.

Green eyes find mine, filled with a darkness I haven’t seen before and a sorrow deeper than any ocean.

His hands wrap around my waist gently, pulling me into him, and I wonder if he can feel the battle that wages inside me—half of me wanting to be near him, the other half barely able to tolerate being touched, even by him.

“I want to know about it,” I start quietly. “I know it’s a lot, but it’s been a week and I think I’m ready to hear it. I need to hear it. Please,” I say.

They haven’t told me anything about what happened when I went missing, nothing except that they tried to find me. I had been too upset to hear much more than that, and I could barely stomach any conversation around the events that took place. So for the past week, I agreed that prioritizing rest and giving my body—and mind—time to heal was the priority, and Jax promised to catch me up to speed when the time was right. And now I’m ready to hear it all. I need to hear it all, to fill in the missing pieces of what happened.

“We tried to find you. We tried,” he says quietly, and I can hear the pain in his voice. “The second I pulled up at Poison Ivy I knew something was wrong. You’re always waiting for me out front, but that night you weren’t. I thought maybe you got distracted, maybe you were still inside talking to one of the girls, so I came to find you.”

He pauses, his eyes flickering with despair as he recalls what happened. He takes my hand gently in his before continuing.

“When I saw your phone on the bar and you nowhere to be found, I panicked. My mind went in a million different directions imagining what could have happened to you, trying to figure out where you could possibly be. I have never lost it in front of other people before like I did that night. But no one had seen you, no one knew where you had been. Until Greg told me he sent you to take the trash out twenty minutes ago.”

He takes a shaky breath, as if trying to settle himself.

“ Twenty minutes ,” he growls. “No one looked for you after you went outside and didn’t come back in. No one paid enough attention to think it was weird you weren’t finishing up behind the bar, or to notice that you left your phone.” His voice is barely above a whisper now, and I can feel his muscles tense as he talks before taking a deep breath. I mirror the breath he takes, willing my emotions to stay locked somewhere deep inside of me.

“I went out back, looking for you, praying you would be there, and afraid—so afraid—of what I might find. But you weren’t there. There was no trace of you as I walked around the building in the dark. And then I saw it. Your underwear ripped and left laid out neatly on the gravel.” The rage in his voice is palpable, and when I take a breath, it’s as if I can hear the moment Tanner ripped my underwear, as if I can feel the tug of the fabric pulling against my skin as the gravel dug into my back and legs. I shake the vision from my head and swallow the bile in my throat as Jax continues, “And I knew this was a message, I knew whoever took you wanted me to hear them loud and clear. Wanted to tell me that I fucked up and they were going to get to me through you. And I am so, so sorry.”

A lump forms in my throat as I hear Jax tell me what happened from his perspective, recounting the worry and panic he faced when he realized I was missing, and the helplessness he felt not knowing where I was or who took me.

“I’m not used to being caught unprepared, of letting others get the upper hand. In my world, this is how you get killed, how my parents got killed. But there I was, standing outside, my thoughts going a million miles a minute, trying to figure out which of my recent business dealings went south and who might have taken you. I went back inside and when I saw Greg—the man who sent my girlfriend outside alone at 3a.m., I snapped. I have never—and I mean never—lost control like I did, but I don’t regret it, in case you’re wondering.”

“Is he…” I trail off, searching Jax’s face for any sign of what happened.

“He’s fine. Or he will be. I didn’t do anything that won’t heal eventually.”

I nod, unsure of what to say, and my chest tightens as I try not to relive that night, the panic that surged within me, the fight that didn’t make a difference.

“What took you so long to find me? I waited for you. I hoped you would come. It was the only thing that kept me going for so long, but then… you didn’t, Jax. You didn’t find me soon enough…” I blink a few times, trying to keep the tears at bay.

“I underestimated Rhett. I never should have, but I never thought he would do something like this. I went knocking on a few other doors first—”

“He said he messaged you,” I cut him off, needing to make sense of all this. “He said he told you where I was and how much he wanted, and you didn’t care. He said I was nothing to you, nothing but a fling… a way to get your dick wet.” I wince, reliving how those words made me feel as they came out of Rhett’s mouth. The first of many nails being hammered into my own coffin as fragments of my soul slowly died under his watch. My heart hammers in my chest and tears well in my eyes.

“Rhett lied to you. I swear it on my life, and I’ll swear it on anyone else’s. I’d do anything— anything —rather than leave you surrounded by people I know wanted to hurt you. The second I realized he had you, I came for you.”

“So the only reason you didn’t find me sooner was—”

“Was because I was looking for you in the wrong places… looking into the wrong people. And I will never, and I mean never, forgive myself for that.”

“I was worried that you hadn’t bothered to come looking for me. And if you weren’t looking for me, then it would probably mean no one else was either, and I was just going to… be stuck there. Disappearing from the world without a trace.”

“Except for Sam,” he says casually.

I jolt at the name on his lips.

“Sam?”

“She’s as tenacious as a bulldog when she wants to be,” he says, as if he’s thinking out loud. “She texted you a couple days after that night, after we realized you were missing. And when you didn’t respond… well, I don’t think I’ve seen that many texts from one person before.” The corner of his mouth tilts upwards slightly, as if a smile is trying to work its way onto his face, but the anger and grief are holding onto him too tightly.

“What did she say?” I ask, feeling stupid for not even picking up my phone since being back. It’s stayed on my dresser since they found me, and I haven’t so much as gravitated towards it, not ready to be thrust into reality quite yet.

“I didn’t respond—not for the first week. I knew that as soon as I did it would open the door to more questions. But then…” He trails off as I hang onto every word. “Then she threatened to call the police. And the FBI. And a SWAT team if you didn’t reply as, and I quote, ‘No one goes a week without checking their phone so you’re either dead, dying, or ghosting me and I won’t let any of that happen without my knowledge.’”

I smile, and the thought of having a friend who was genuinely concerned about me makes my chest swell.

“And then her texts got more serious. She threatened to call your parents and to actually call the police if she didn’t hear back from you. So, I called her.” He looks at me, assessing my reaction as my breath hitches.

“What did you say? What did she say?”

“Oh, she panicked. It took a while to calm her down, all while trying to remain calm myself. We hadn’t found you yet, and I was not in a good headspace,” he recalls quietly. “I told her that if she went to the police it wouldn’t be a good outcome for anyone, but she wouldn’t listen to me.”

“Did she go to the police?”

“No.”

“Why not? What stopped her?”

“Because I reminded her that the death penalty isn’t legal here. So, if the police got to whoever took you before I did, they’d get off a lot lighter than they would with me.”

My jaw drops, and the smile Jax gives me is nothing short of ferocious. Any doubt I had about his intentions, about his desire to find me while I was missing, is gone. The sheer determination to find Rhett—and the retaliation he wants to instill—is written clear as day on his face.

“You should probably call her though, now that you’ve had time to rest,” he says casually. “She’s been calling me daily and texting me twice as much. She wanted to come see you as soon as we found you, but I wouldn’t let her. I don’t think she’s happy about that.”

“She wants to come see me?”

Something swells in my chest at the thought of Sam wanting to come see me, of trying to be here for me.

“She threatened to knock on every door in the city until she finds out where we live.” He chuckles. “But you needed your rest, and I wanted to make sure you were in a good headspace first.”

A part of me is relieved, relieved that I had people looking for me, trying to save me, but my heart also aches knowing the pain he went through when I was missing, the pain I went through waiting for him. I try not to think about what would have happened if Jax had looked into Rhett first, had found me on that first day Bryce was putting groceries away in the kitchen.

Bryce.

I panic at the realization that I don’t know what happened to him—don’t know where he is or if he’s even alive after the beating he took.

Worry floods through me and I try not to look too deep into my concern, worried about the guy who helped kidnap me.

“When you found me—when you came into the house—the guys there… there was one—” I rub my hands over my face, not sure how to explain this to Jax, certain that I sound certifiable at this point.

Oh, you know the guys that kidnapped me? Right, well one isn’t all that bad. He’s kind, in the sense that he didn’t let me starve to death, never told Rhett or the others I ran away, and tried to help me in the end.

“Just say it, love. Whatever is on your mind, whatever you want to ask, you can’t say anything wrong.”

“Was Bryce there?” Jax gives me a questioning look before I continue, “He’s tall, built like you and Ryan, dark hair, deep brown eyes…” I trail off, realizing I described half the guys in Rhett’s group. I look at Jax but don’t see any sign that he knows who I’m talking about.

“I didn’t pause long enough to take in their features.”

“What happened when you found me?” I whisper. “What happened to everyone in the house?”

He takes a deep breath before shaking his head back and forth slowly.

“No? What do you mean no?” I don’t know what’s more obvious in my tone: irritation or confusion.

“I don’t think you want to know. I don’t think you’re ready—”

“All in or all out, remember?” I whisper, needing to know the truth. “What happened to them?”

“I killed them,” he says, his voice quiet but firm.

“All of them?” I feel like all the air has left my lungs, and I feel myself clutching onto Jax.

“Yes, all of them,” he says, the calm in his voice replaced by malice as he stands, towering over me, holding my face in his hands. “I heard them, heard what they were doing to you. I opened the door and saw them standing over you, saw you covered in blood and barely moving on the floor. So yes, the second I saw what they did to you I shot them all, and I think the world is a better place without them in it.”

Bryce is dead.

Something cracks in my chest, and I swallow a sob as it tries to leave my throat. The idea that the one person who tried to help me ended up like the others who tried to hurt me causes my stomach to roll. I swallow the bile that rises in my throat, burying the grief deep within me, with everything else I can’t stomach processing just yet.

“I want to know about what happened to you.” He looks at me as the words form carefully on his lips.

I pull back slightly.

“I’ve been able to piece a lot together myself, and I know you’re not ready to talk yet”—he takes a breath—“but when you are, I’m here for you. Just remember though, that emotional pain is like a splinter, and it’s better to get it out before it stays in for too long and you’re left with an infection.”

“Always so wise,” I joke, trying to deflect from the conversation. But his words resonate with me, and I wonder what the treatment is for the infection that seems to be buried deep in my soul.