Stay(70)

Numb and on the verge of passing out, I had little control over my body. I slid down Zane’s front. At the last minute, I regained strength in my hands, and I grabbed his shoulders, buffering my fall. He bent his knee up and hit me in the stomach. I crumbled onto the stairs.

It took everything in me to crawl down them before Zane could push me. I made it halfway when Phoebe stumbled through the doorway. She hurried down the steps and helped me the rest of the way. Everything was blurry, and I was nauseous, but somehow I made it to the cot.

I fell onto it, head pounding. Nate and Zane were shouting at each other upstairs. I tried to open my eyes and failed. My eyelids were just too heavy. I took a deep breath and pushed myself up, wavering. Fuck. My head throbbed.

Zane ran down the stairs, blue eyes flashing with rage. I pushed against the mattress and stood. My knees instantly buckled. I didn’t have a chance to get up again. Zane was right there, over top of me. He slapped me hard across the face. I fell backwards, my head too heavy to hold up.

I didn’t see the syringe in his hand, just felt the sting of the needle in my arm and the cold burn as the drug pushed into my muscles. My fingertips tingled. I lost sensation in my legs. My chest was heavy, and I struggled to breathe.

“Put her in the closet,” Nate ordered. “Since she likes being in them so much.”

I opened my mouth to protest but nothing came out. My entire body was heavy, as if it were made out of lead. There was nothing I could do to keep my eyes open anymore. They closed, shutting out everything that was going on. I was losing consciousness, fast.#p#分页标题#e#

I remembered Zane’s hands taking a hold of me one more time, then smelling the stale air that wafted out of the closet. He harshly set me down and slammed the door.

My cheek rested against the gritty cement floor of the closet. The hard floor painfully pressed against my hipbones. I had horrible cramps in my legs, and my left arm was going numb from being tucked underneath my torso.

I couldn’t move. I wasn’t even able to open my mouth to scream. Breathing took effort. The weight of my own body was suffocating me.

Tears ran down my face, dripping into my ear. I tried to scream but only managed to get out a weak wheeze. The deadbolt shot into place. The paralysis was making its way into my mind, pulling me under. Jackson’s face flashed before me.

I’m sorry, I thought to him. This is what not giving up had gotten me.





CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN





MY EYES FLUTTERED open. I was lying on the bed upstairs in the guest room. Zane was above me. He unlocked a metal cuff from around my wrist and let my heavy hand fall onto my face. He snickered and got off the bed. It was sometime in March. Several weeks had passed since I hid in the coat closet.

“You reek.” He wrinkled his nose and shuddered. “I should take you out back and hose you off.” He bent over and picked up my dress. He twisted it in his hands and snapped it against my bare breasts. “I don’t want to touch you. Get up.”

“Mhh,” I mumbled. My mind was stuck in a perpetual heavy fog. I sat up, so dizzy it was hard to smooth out the dress and slip it over my head. My eyes closed on their own accord. I swung my legs over the bed, pausing to collect my balance.

Inpatient, Zane took a hold of my hands and helped me to my feet with uncharacteristic gentleness. He wasn’t being nice. His patience was learned, albeit it had taken him several weeks to learn it. I was too heavily drugged to walk on my own. If someone didn’t escort me back into the basement, I wasn’t able to get there until the drugs left my system.

He kept a steady hold on me as we walked down the stairs, through the first level of the house, and into the basement. He dropped me off at the bottom of the stairs. Phoebe and Lily stood in front of the mirror, getting ready for another night’s work. I wobbled on my feet and leaned against the wall or support.

Phoebe set down the tube of lipstick she held and rushed over. She wrapped her arm around me and led me to my cot. I flopped down on it and fell backwards. Phoebe lifted my feet onto the mattress.

“You burning hot.” She pressed her hand against my forehead. “Lily, bring me wet cloth.”

Now that she had mentioned it, I did feel warm. “I’m okay,” I slurred. I blinked. Or at least I thought that was all I had done, but when I opened my eyes, Lily stood over me, folding a dripping washcloth in half.

“I say damp, not soaking,” Phoebe said.

“No, you said wet,” Lily told her.

Phoebe shook her head and took the washcloth from Lily. She wrung it out on the floor and draped it over my forehead.