CHAPTER 16 - Ink
I couldn’t tear my gaze away from Gracie. She’d pulled her beanie back on, hiding her shorn hair. It broke my heart to see those long, dark strands gone. She told me she did it because Jebediah had more or less cajoled her into it, but I knew it was a defiant act in a moment of rage that was fueled by what she saw and thought happened between Jeze and me. Fuck, just the thought of that sour-faced bitch made me want to puke my guts up. My fists clenched as the licking flames of fury teased me from the inside out. Being forced into such a vulnerable state, drugged, my body not my own to control, I would admit scared the shit out of me. In my tight fists, I imagined I held Jeze’s throat. I imagined squeezing it tight and watching the life empty from her body as I relished the fear in her eyes. The earsplitting clattering of a tray hitting the ground broke through my murderous haze.
“Sorry,” Ashlynn murmured, reaching to pick it up.
Shaking out my clenched fists, I glanced back at Skye. It had been over two weeks since she’d been found beaten outside the compound wall, and considering the brutality of that beating, she looked good. Her wrist was tightly bound due to a fracture, but otherwise, all the swelling had reduced and the bruising faded. She’d lost some weight and looked bone tired even though she’d been unconscious for so long as Gracie fussed over her, making sure she was warm and placing another pillow behind her head. Skye seemed unperturbed by Gracie’s mothering, but there were lines of worry and confusion around her heavy eyes.
“I don’t remember,” she finally murmured, her voice rasping.
“That’s okay,” Ashlynn assured her. “Memory loss is common with a head injury and the amount of time you’ve spent unconscious.”
Skye’s hand lifted to her head, to the gash that Ashlynn had stitched and since removed the sutures.
“What do you remember?” I asked, leaning against the door frame and allowing the women to crowd Skye. Ashlynn voiced her displeasure of my question through a fierce scowl.
“I was at the cave,” Skye answered. “I was worried about getting eaten by a bear or pack of wolves, so I wasn’t sleeping well. I waited, but nobody came.”
My chest tightened at her confession. We should have tried to get word to Skye sooner, I should have sent one of my soldiers out to take care of her. Jebediah’s defenses seemed so impenetrable that I hadn’t even bothered to try and break through them.
“I was just so damn tired, and cold.” Skye’s soft voice caught my attention, dragging me away from my self-recrimination. “I thought I’d try and get close to the compound to see what was happening. I wanted to know if it was safer inside than it felt outside.”
“Hadley said she found you on the northern side of the wall, not far from the river. Do you remember being there?” Gracie asked, carefully handing Skye a cup of hot soup.
Skye shook her head and blew gently into the steaming mug before taking a careful sip. “No, I don’t remember even leaving the cave. I only remember that I was going to.”
The room became quiet as Ashlynn checked Skye’s blood pressure.
“So, is it?” Skye finally asked.
“Is it what?” I replied.
“Safe?”
Gracie turned to face me. She looked different to the Gracie from before Jebediah’s attack on the compound. Not just her hair, but her gaze which was once carefree was now filled with fear, pain and the harsh glint of determination. She’d also lost weight, her cheeks a little more sunken than usual, dark bruises hung beneath her eyes giving away to the sleepless nights she’d endured. She was no longer the innocent nineteen-year-old I’d tried so hard to put into that little girl box. She was a woman who had taken a life. She’d witnessed violence up close and personal, and that kind of trauma changed a person. It left shadows where light used to rest.
“Not yet,” I answered. “But we are going to fix that.”
***
Leaving Gracie had been hard. She was determined to stay glued to my side, and I understood that need, but inevitably this was something I had to do on my own. Convincing her she should stay with Skye hadn’t been all that difficult, but that hopeless fear which hung over her as I left the infirmary was almost impossible to ignore.
Banging loudly on the door before me, I chanced a glance from right to left, finding this secluded area of forest empty. This was where Trigger was staying now our barracks was filled with Jebediah’s men. Charlie had allowed him to bunk down here with him, and with Charlie watching over the girls back at the infirmary, it meant Trigger would more than likely be here alone. Although, Charlie did confess Trigger didn’t spend as much time here as he thought he probably should. With another loud hammer of my fist, I heard a grumbled murmur from inside the room. The figure that loomed before me when the door opened was one I knew so well—my colleague, my best friend—but betrayal, whether warranted or not, made him look like a stranger to me. As Trigger took me in, his lip curled.
“Figured you be busy with Jeze,” he spat out.
I snapped, the heat of my anger hitting him square in the jaw, followed by a left jab to his kidneys. Trigger wasn’t one to take a beating though, and he shoved me out of his body before throwing a careless right hook which barely clipped my cheek. He’d been sleeping and was still groggy with the lingering haze of slumber.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” I growled as I continued to hammer my fists into his face, wanting him to feel the pain and humiliation I was feeling.
“I’m not the one fucking the enemy,” he said with a slurred voice, a smile on his lips.
Lifting him clear off the floor, I shoved him against the wall, clenching his shirt in my fists as I put pressure on his throat. “I didn’t willingly fuck her. She drugged me and then she fucked me when I couldn’t defend myself. And where the hell were you? You were supposed to have my back?”
Something akin to guilt and remorse flickered through his bloodshot eyes, but it was gone as quick as it appeared. Instead, indignation lifted his chin and narrowed his eyes. “Can’t handle your NIM, brother? You want me to give you some pointers?”
What the fuck? It was then I noticed the sharp pinpoints that were his pupils, and the still groggy look to his slack and beaten face. He was high. Glancing over my shoulder, I found the inhaler resting beside his bed.
“You fucking idiot,” I shouted, slamming his body against the cabin wall. “What were you thinking?”
“I was thinking…” he murmured, “… that a little break from this shit-hole was in order.”
My fist still clenched around his collar, pushed and I released him, stepping away and running my hands through my hair with agitation, trying to pull the strands in an effort to relieve the tension filling my head.
“How long?”
“It’s none of your fucking business. I’m on downtime… I can do what I like.”
“We’re at war, there is no downtime,” I growled, trying to make sense of this. Out of the two of us Trigger was the more laidback, the more adventurous, but I’d never seen him touch drugs before. “Is this why your head’s so out of the game lately? You’ve been sucking back on NIM? Getting pissy with me for not buddying up with Jebediah because what? You might get better access to drugs if I did?”
“I got my reasons,” he said, so low I almost missed it.
Staring at him I knew I wasn’t getting anywhere today. He could barely stand straight, his lids heavy, his body gently swaying. I looked around the room helplessly. In this moment I felt like I’d lost all control, and that Jebediah and Jeze had won. I’d been fucked over, literally. Gracie was hanging on by a thread, Skye had been beaten, Trigger had embraced the oblivious high of drugs. The natural order and control I strived for had been ripped away, chaos thrown at me in its absence.
“Fuck me,” I spat out. “And fuck you, too,” I added, pointing at Trigger who gifted me a morbid smile, his teeth stained with his own blood.
“The only one fucked around here appears to be you,” Trigger drawled, in his usual cadence that lacked any kind words. “Was she a good lay?”
Pulling my arm back, I slammed my fist in his face and watched as my best friend crumpled to the ground. It was probably the drugs talking, but the hurt I felt at his words were real, and my reaction was honest. It hurt, so he’d fucking hurt too. Leaving the cabin door hanging wide open, I walked away, my mind twisted with disbelief and confusion.