Twenty-Seven
Kyle
“She’s awake.”
There was that voice again. The one I’d heard in my head when I was prisoned, the one I’d just fallen asleep to. It was Garin. But, this time, it wasn’t in my mind. It wasn’t right next to me. It sounded like it was coming from several feet away.
My eyes opened slowly, my lids rising much easier than before. Unlike last time, I looked around the room, taking in the window, the two chairs—one of which had been pulled next to my bed—the TV, bathroom, and closet. I really was in a hospital…but in Atlantic City? That part didn’t make any sense. Maybe Breath had flown us back to the States, and an ambulance had picked us up from the airport.
“I haven’t told her,” Garin said.
I glanced toward the open door, the voice sounding like it came from the hallway.
“I know, I know,” he continued. “You have nothing to worry about. Trust me.” He looked into the doorway, and our eyes connected. “I’ll call you later.” He shoved the phone into his pocket and came over to the bed. “Feeling any better?”
As he sat, I noticed he was in different clothes again. Darker jeans, a black button-down shirt. His scruff had grown a little, the black hairs casting a shadow across his cheeks.
“A little, I think. I’m still so tired and so confused.”
“The doctor said that’s normal. It’s going to take your body some time to recover.”
“When can I go home? Unless…” My voice drifted off as I thought about the prison.
Were Beard and Breath waiting for me outside the hospital? Would they take me the second I healed?
“Home is an option, right?”
Garin laughed, which confused me more. “Yeah, it’s an option. Just a few more days, and you’ll be able to go. Your doctor wants to make sure you’re stable enough to fly. Your lung is healing well, and so is your head. Your drain should be coming out tomorrow. Then, I’ll fly you back to Florida to make sure you get home safely.”
“That’s not necessary.”
“It is. Don’t fight me on it. Because last time”—he grabbed the armrests, the tips of his fingers turning white—“I didn’t keep you safe.”
Last time.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. What happened to my head? And my lung?”
When he shifted in his chair, I picked up a whiff of his cologne. It was spicy, enticing. It would have turned me on if my whole body didn’t hurt, if I wasn’t so confused about why he was so healed and I was so battered.
I looked at his hands again. There wasn’t any dirt on his fingers or nails. No cuts. Not the least bit of redness. How was that possible?
“Do you remember Billy’s funeral?”
I recalled being at the funeral home, seeing Garin near Billy’s casket. Garin had come by the table where I was getting a drink.
“Yes,” I finally answered, “and I remember going to the bar with you.”
He had kissed me outside the restroom. Squeezed my neck. His touch had brought out more of the guilt. But it was the sexiest kiss I’d ever had, enough to make my skin flush in this hospital bed.
“We left the bar to go to your hotel, I think…”
That was where things became fuzzy. I didn’t have a full memory of the car ride, just random flashes of it. I saw the interior, the black leather seats. His hand on my thigh. A green light. Dark…something so dark and hard.
“We never made it back to the hotel, Kyle.”
That must have been because of Breath. He’d kidnapped us from Garin’s car, injected something in our bodies so that we’d black out, shoved us into a plane and flew us to Margarita Island.
“I know. We were kidnapped and—”
“We got into a car accident.”
“We…what?”
He pulled his chair closer, sending me his scent again. I didn’t know what he was saying, I didn’t know what he meant, but I knew there was nothing familiar about this smell. It wasn’t the one I’d memorized in the cell. It was too clean.
Everything in here was too clean.
“Listen to me.” His hand landed on my leg, and I winced. “A truck ran a red light and hit our car. It was on the passenger side, right in the middle of the hood. You hit the airbag and ricocheted off, slamming against the door. Your head hit the window. The glass shattered, and a piece of it punctured your lung. The blow to your head caused some damage, and you’ve been in a medically induced coma for the last eight days. The doctors just took out your breathing tube this morning and lowered your medication, so you’d wake up.”
It didn’t feel like he was talking about me. It felt like he was telling me a story about someone I didn’t know. How could all of these things have happened, and I had no recollection of any of them?
Was he lying to me?
I felt the medication in my body, I saw it pumping through the tube that led to my wrist. With each drip, drip, drip of the IV, I thought about everything he had said—head trauma, a breathing tube, days’ worth of medication…a coma.
A breathing tube would explain the plastic taste that had been in my mouth.
But what about everything else?
“I don’t…understand,” I said.
“I probably had a few too many drinks at the bar. I shouldn’t have been driving us. My reflexes might have been off, and I didn’t slam on the brakes in time. That truck hit us and—fuck, there was nothing I could do to stop it.”
I needed him to tell me I wasn’t crazy. I needed him to tell me that everything I saw, I felt, I experienced was real.
“Garin, I know we were kidnapped by two guys named Breath and Beard and…” I didn’t have to finish. The answer was all over his face.
“I haven’t left your side since you were admitted to the hospital, Kyle. I rode in the ambulance, and I slept in this chair.”
But he was in the cell with me. We’d both been held captive. We’d both been tortured. I had admitted to Breath and Garin that Anthony had killed Paulie.
And it had all been…a dream?
A dream my mind had created while I was in a coma. None of it was real—not the emotions I’d experienced in there, the words we’d exchanged…the sex. The only thing that was real was the kiss we had shared before we’d gotten in the car and the way he was looking at me now.
“I’m not sure what to say.”
“Why don’t you tell me about those guys you dreamed about? Beard and Breath—were those their names?” He sounded amused.
It made me feel ridiculous.
The man I stared at was nothing more than a friend from my past who I hadn’t seen in twelve years. He was basically a stranger now. The cell hadn’t brought us closer. It hadn’t reintroduced us; it hadn’t made our feelings grow. He hadn’t heard me say I love you. Telling him my dream wouldn’t change anything. It would only make me feel crazier. But there was one thing that seemed consistent during my dream and in this hospital room. I felt it in his grip and in the way his eyes wouldn’t let me go.
“You protected me,” I said. “You did everything you could to keep me safe.”
I didn’t deserve his protection in prison. I certainly didn’t deserve it out here.
The secret was still buried inside me. It prisoned me in my dreams, and it fueled me with guilt now that I was awake.
Had Garin known the truth, I wondered if I’d still be alive.
“I didn’t protect you, Kyle. That’s why you’re in here.”