Quintessentially Q

“Put her down. You’re hurting her ribs.”

Q glared toward the door where a man appeared in a white coat over a casual suit. I curled up, trying to become invisible. I hated strangers. Hated that I didn’t know what to expect—that they might pretend to be nice, but they only wanted to rape and kill me.

Let me back into the tower!

Pain and fear crested and the guilt—shit, the guilt, came at me with the sickle of the grim reaper, hacking me into pieces.

Q looked down at me, dragging me closer, not listening to the man’s orders. “She’s freaking the f**k out. You have to give her something for the hallucinations.”

The man came closer; I whimpered.

“He’s there to finish you off. You disobeyed. He’s here to hurt you.” White Man laughed.

Never again would I go without a fight. Panic made me crazy and I bit Q square on the shoulder.

“Let me go. I just want to go back to the tower!”

He sucked in a breath, but didn’t push me away or strike. Instead, he looked at the doctor with such tragic weariness in his eyes. “Just give her something to ride out the worst of it. I can’t stand seeing her like this.”

The man nodded, and I tried to scramble out of Q’s arms. Not even the pain in my ribs or neck or finger could stop me from fighting. I couldn’t go through more. I couldn’t. My mind was already dead—I’d never find my way back.

I moaned as clammy sweat sprouted on my skin, chilling me. Bright lights erupted behind my eyes as the craving intensified.

The mouth-watering, teeth-clenching need for something. Something thick and syrupy and foggy. Something that I didn’t have a name for, but f**k, my body wanted it.

“Please. I’ll do whatever you want. Give it to me.”

“What’s happening to her?” Q asked but his voice was far, far away.

“She’s hit the second level of withdrawal. They must’ve kept her on a high dose for it to be this bad so fast.”

A tidal wave of insects consumed me, all chittering and chattering as they scurried around in my brain. “Give me it. I’ll f**k you. I’ll do it. I’ll do anything!”

Arms let me go and I collapsed against the mattress. I yelped against the pain, but it could no longer compete with the craving. “You have to give her something. I’m going out of my f**king mind listening to this.”

“All right. I think it’s for the best that she sleeps through the worst of it.”

Sleep. Yes. I could do with sleep. Vacant, never-waking sleep.

Something icy trickled into my veins, moving stealthily through my body. Instead of the horrible smog, this was clear and fresh, and it granted me wings to fly away from the putrid memories and leave it all behind.

I found the tower and returned, locking myself deep inside.

I was safe inside. Protected.

I would never leave my sanctuary again.

*****

After that first morning, my life became a patchwork of fragments.

Waking up with the consuming need.

Going back to sleep.

Waking up coughing my lungs out.

Going back to sleep.

Waking up in the dead of night to find Q sprawled out exhausted beside me.

Going back to sleep.

Each time I woke, the insects were fewer in number, and I no longer wanted to rape someone to get my hands on whatever I needed.

One afternoon I awoke to soulful, tortured music playing through the house.

You told me you were strong enough. You told me you were brave.

Yet now you lie next to me and all I can do is save.

I’m here for you. I’m there for you. I’ll help you with every fight.

But no matter what I do for you, I see no end in sight.

The lyrics tugged at some numb part of my heart, but no emotion cut through my tower. Ever since that first day, where I almost died from the mental onslaught, I made sure to never leave. The tower was the only thing keeping me alive.

Was it shock or weakness that caused me to retreat deep inside? I didn’t know. I didn’t want to know because regardless of how I came to live behind my heavily fortified wall, I was never leaving.

I knew what awaited me if I ever did and I wouldn’t survive it.

Q stayed beside me, never ending his vigil. Whenever I woke, he was there to fetch me a glass of water, or massage my temples if I had a headache from the medicine.

He tended to me with all the gentleness in the world.

I smiled and thanked him. I let him know I appreciated his tenderness, but I wished he would leave. Q wasn’t a healer or nursemaid. To the old me he was a beast, a strong-willed man who would never let me ruin him this way.

Every time I saw him, he changed. His pale eyes lost the ferocious glow—they muted, faded, turned inward and unreadable. His body language morphed from itching to touch me, to withdrawn and self-conscious.

If I had locked myself in a tower, he had chained his monster up and forgot who he was. We both existed in another dimension—one that would never have a happy ending and one I wanted to leave as soon as possible.

I knew Q was pulling away from me, but I didn’t care. I wanted to care. But I wanted to stay in my unfeeling tower more. And so I let him care for me, to nurse my body from broken to whole, all the while saying a silent goodbye.

I let him drift away from me.

Hours turned into days and my lungs gradually drained from sickness. Q hardly ever left my side, but we never talked. He sensed I’d left him. When he looked at me, he stopped searching my eyes, stopped bossing me around to snap out of it.

He didn’t talk about his business, or what he went through to find me. We existed as strangers—our roles reversed from lovers to patient and nursemaid.

Thankfully, the bugs had transformed from gnarly insects into annoying moths and butterflies. The craving was still there, aching in my teeth, but I could ignore.

Even my dreams were vacant of emotion and thought. In fact, sleep was one thing that hadn’t returned. I managed to nap, to catch rest here and there, but at night when Q lay twitching with nightmares beside me, I stared at the ceiling.

You know this isn’t normal. You should grieve. Go through the stages of dealing with the guilt and find absolution.

I ignored myself. I was stronger this way. I stayed alive this way.

Q shifted beside me, mumbling in his sleep. “I’ll kill you. I’ll kill you, you bastard.” His fist gripped the bedding and he snarled, “I f**king love—” His leg struck out hitting my foot. It didn’t hurt, but the moment he made contact, I fell straight back into hell. My tower cracked, letting all the guilt and fear and never ending hatred for myself consume me.

“You think you’re free from us. You’re not. We’re coming.”

“He doesn’t love you. Nobody could.”

“Die, bitch. We’ll cut you up nice and fine.”

My head pounded, and my belly twisted with nausea; I dry heaved. The tower left me unprotected and in a bad, bad place to be.

“No. I want to go back. Don’t make me remember,” I moaned as another wrack of sickness crippled me.

“Tess?” Q murmured, half-asleep. “Shit.” He shot to his knees, helping me sit up. He grabbed a bowl from the bedside table and gathered my hair back as I retched and retched. I wished there was something inside to purge. At least then I might’ve stopped. Each wave squeezed my painful ribs until my vision greyed on the edges.

“You killed me. How could you! Don’t you know my family will never find my body?” Blonde Hummingbird wept.

In my mind, I hammered on the tower, my fists growing bloody with the need to go back in.

The guilt grew deeper and deeper, cracking my mind, making my heart race toward a dying beat.

“It’s okay, Tess. Don’t fight it. It’s okay,” Q soothed, his nostrils flared, scenting my panic.

After days of no emotion, I was sure he relished some sort of reaction from me. His eyes were alive for the first time, his body tense and hopeful.

Then the door in my tower opened wide, tumbling back into safety—granting me freedom from guilt. The retching stopped and I pushed the bowl away, dislodging Q’s grip on my hair. “Thank you.”

Q stared, shaking his head slowly. “How do you do that? You were feeling something. I could smell it. And now you’re like a shell. You smile, you talk, you heal at a miraculous pace, and yet you’re not really here.” He tossed the bowl away, anger tingeing his moves. “Speak to me, Tess. Tell me what happened.”

I looked away. “No. Don’t ask me about it.”

The darkness in the room seemed to grow as Q seethed with temper. Gone was the nursemaid; I saw glimpses of the monster who’d been covered in blood in Rio.

He gave me a heart. He placed the heart of White Man at my feet. The sudden memory made me ill and I fortified my tower even more. I’d stepped outside my safety twice now and all it brought was pain. I would never again willingly leave my safe place.

Not for Q.

Not for me.

Not for anything.

“You will talk to me, esclave.”

My eyes rose to his. “I’m not your esclave anymore. I’m sorry, Q, but what we had is gone.”