I don’t have any possessions with me. Nothing to weigh me down, nothing I am attached to. I float above the dark carpet like a ghost, my feet only barely touching the ground beneath me, my movements not making a single noise. It is unnerving, this silence. In the three months I was in the basement—the dungeon, whatever you want to call that hellhole—I’d grown accustomed to the noises. The dripping of pipes that must have intersected above my roof, letting me know whenever water flowed through the mansion Emilio had called home before Luis blew his brains out. The scraping sound, several times a day, that marked a key in the door - somebody bringing me food…or something worse. Bringing me pain, if it was Dornan visiting.
Dornan.
Where is he now? I try to picture him, wonder if he tried to save his father when he finally made it over to him. Did he crawl through blood and skull? Did he try to press his hands against Emilio’s wounds, try to help him even though it was futile?
Did he hold the man who had created him?
Dornan murdered my father, and now his own father is dead. The irony is not lost on me. I imagine him now, one son left, just Dornan and Donny against the world, a smaller band of increasingly suspicious and on edge Gypsy Brothers bikers behind their rage. I still can’t believe they even got me out of there, and killing Mickey and Emilio in the process?
That is the icing on the motherfucking cake.
Yeah, I know. I’m a strange girl. Horrific death and pain surrounds me, and I still celebrate silently when one of those bastards is taken down. I can’t help it. It’s who I am.
I am a damaged girl.
I perch myself on the bed, shades drawn, reveling in the solitude that engulfs me. The silence might be scary but the being alone part is nice, being alone and knowing Dornan isn’t here, ready to burst the door in and torture me to within an inch of my life.
I have no worldly possessions. Nowhere to be and nowhere to go. I am just here, and so I sit with my hands in my lap, and I wait.
After a few minutes, Luis returns. When I snap my gaze up to see it’s him walking through the bedroom door and not Jase or Elliot, I am so surprised at the relief that takes hold of me, it’s like I’ve been sucker-punched in the gut. I mean, I don’t even know him.
But I believe he means me no harm, and so the rest doesn’t matter right now. I make a mental note to speak to him more, to see what his story is, but somewhere inside I already know. I feel safe with him because he is a survivor, just like me. Not only a survivor, but a warrior, on his own journey of vengeance and redemption. Yes. That’s why I feel safe with him. Because, even more than Jase, Luis is just like me.
He closes the door and stands in front of me. From his jeans pocket he withdraws a plastic medicine bottle full of cloudy fluid. My first reaction is to frown and tilt my head. That’s not what I want, I want to say to him. That’s not what I need. But I clamp my lips shut, because I cannot jeopardize this fledgling relationship with this man, whatever it is. This man with the bright blue eyes who wants to rescue me from myself, for no other reason, it would seem, that just because he sees what I see, as well. Because Dornan Ross took both of our parents from us. What a sorry connection we have—united by Dornan. United by death.
Luis must see the displeasure clouding my eyes, because he smirks. “Hey, mamacita, you don’t look so happy. Let’s fix that.”
He takes something else from his pocket and when I catch sight of it, I get excited. A syringe. So he is going to give me something.
But then my heart drops, thud, back into my stomach, because what he’s actually holding is one of those medicine dropper syringes, the ones they use to give babies medicine. I bite the end of my tongue to stop myself from screaming.
I watch tensely as Luis uncaps the bottle and draws light brown liquid, the color of cola mixed with water, up into the dropper.
“Open your mouth,” he says, and I do. He squirts the stuff into my throat, and it burns on the way down.
I close my mouth, willing the strong, cherry medicine flavor to fade. It’s disgusting, and it makes me want to throw up. But I don’t. I will not waste whatever he just gave me. I look up at Luis, who is watching me silently.
“I don’t feel anything,” I say. Underneath my blank, cool exterior, I’m fuming, bubbling with a desperate rage that threatens to consume me. In my head I imagine springing to my feet, wrapping my fingers around his throat, and squeezing until he agrees to get me some actual heroin.
But of course, I don’t. I snap back to reality, take the water he’s offering me and gulp it down, swishing some around my mouth at the end to dilute the shitty cherry taste coating my tongue. “Tastes like Nyquil,” I say. “What was that?”