Love Me Like You Do: Books That Keep You In Bed

by Fields, MJ

  In the few days we’ve been together, I’ve learned that the only times Adam isn’t on Main Street when I get off my shift is because he was called in for an emergency response.

  I say a silent prayer that he’s okay and get in my car.

  I drive to his townhouse. While I want him to see me in my red spandex that leaves very little to the imagination, I also want to wash the grime of a long day’s work off of me. I might have to entice him to get in the shower with me.

  When I pull up to his townhouse, the lights are off, and his truck isn’t in the driveway. I park my car in a guest spot far from his entrance just in case someone recognizes the Blue Whore. I walk across the pavement to his staircase. I punch in the code to his house and open the door.

  I throw my bag on the table by the front door and take a step further inside. I’m about to close the door when a dark figure comes barreling at me, and with a violent thrash, I’m thrown down on the floor, my head slamming into the tiles.

  Twenty-Six

  There’s a thick throbbing in my head. The room is completely dark, and all I can see are tiny white lights as my body adjusts to the blow I just took.

  I ignore the faint ringing in my ears as I roll over and push myself up onto all fours when two hands grab my stomach and pull me back and up, almost into a standing position. My hands immediately reach for the hands to pry them off of me. My feet planted firmly on the floor, I thrash and pull, trying to break free of the grasp.

  The figure pulls me in closer. The smell of menthol and stale sweat permeates my nose, making me want to vomit.

  “There’s my feisty baby girl. Looks like you dressed up to play tonight,” Nico’s words breathe into my ear.

  A swell of bile climbs up my throat.

  “I thought you were in jail.” It’s more of a plea. There’s no way this is really happening.

  “Sometimes, the bad guys get to run free, too.”

  He turns me around, and I’m face-to-face with the sinister stare of the man who held me captive in a jail cell. Only, this time, Adam isn’t here to save me.

  “Where’s Adam?”

  He sneers. “He’s detained. Victoria put in a call of a drug bust down by the park. She thought it might be a good diversion.” His eyes roam over my heaving chest. “You’re gonna be so much fun to play with. Let’s hope he doesn’t come back for a long, long time.”

  I gasp in disbelief. “Victoria is helping you?”

  “I wanted revenge on Reingold. She wanted payback from you. I even gave her some Cupid’s Bow on the house for being such a good friend. Everybody wins.”

  Nico’s hand skims over my ass, and I buck to get away, which only forces his front to rub against my chest. I gasp in disgust.

  “He’s going to kill you.”

  “Let’s hope I die a happy man then.” He moves his hand around and cups my crotch.

  I scream at the highest pitch imaginable, praying a neighbor will hear me. He throws a hand over my mouth. I jab him in the eyes with two fingers and start running. I make it to the living room, throwing dining room chairs onto the floor. I leap over the couch and try to make it to the back door when Nico jumps on top of me and pulls me down.

  “You little bitch.” He slaps me in the face.

  It’s forceful and powerful, and the wind is knocked out of my lungs. I squeeze my eyes shut as the sting travels across my entire body.

  He climbs on top of me, pinning my body and wrists with his full weight. I start to cry, the powerlessness overwhelming me. The harder I try to fight, the stronger his hold becomes.

  He takes out a switchblade. The sound of the metal upon metal as the knife springs to life makes me stop my fight. My eyes widen, but I can barely see through them from the tears that are filling the insides.

  “Keep your eyes open. I wouldn’t want you to miss this.”

  He holds the knife to my throat. The cold, sharp tip pokes my skin.

  He has both my wrists in one hand as he trails the knife down my throat, letting the edge dig into my skin. It travels down my breastbone, over my stomach, and rests in between my legs.

  “It’s either me or the knife.” He pushes into the fabric. I can feel the steel on skin. “Which is it going to be?”

  I start to cry. Billowing heavy tears fall down my face. I don’t want to say either.

  I squeeze my eyes shut. Maybe if I pray hard enough, this misery will just end. I pray to the only person I know who might actually hear my prayer.

  I think of his dark hair and beautiful pictures. Of a boy who wrote gorgeous words on pieces of paper and how those words now reside over houses for people who deserve better than the life they were handed. I pray to the boy who sang rap songs in the mirror and who told me he loved me over a slice of pizza. I pray to the boy who took a bad batch of drugs and died before he had a chance to live.

  “Please, Brad. Help me,” I breathe out.

  “Praying to the dead? That just makes this all the more perfect.” He traces the knife over my face. “This mouth, it was the death of him.” The edge glides over the Cupid’s bow. “Right here, he couldn’t get it right. Wanted something to open his horizons. I gave it to him.” Nico laughs an evil, deep laugh that can only belong to the devil himself. “Sent him right over the horizon to the next world.”

  “Just kill me,” I say, the taste of metallic on my tongue.

  “You don’t mean it.”

  I don’t, but the alternative is far worse. “I’d rather be mutilated and die than be raped by you.”

  This is clearly not the answer Nico was looking for. His lip curls up, baring his teeth. He takes the knife and harshly runs it down the center of my jumpsuit, ripping the fabric.

  He might choose to kill me later. First, he’s going to murder my soul.

  I don’t care that he has a knife in his hand. I fight back. Kicking my knees up and pushing up on my hands. His grip is still too much, his body mass twice the size of mine. No amount of adrenaline is going to help me win, but I won’t quit. He has his hands on my clothes, tearing them off, when I hear the front door slam open, followed by heavy footsteps and the loud yell of Adam as he comes in, a man ready for vengeance.

  Nico’s body is thrown off me, and Adam is quickly on top of him. His fists are flying in Nico’s face. I push back with my heels and back away, clenching my clothes back over my body. I crawl to the side table and grab the phone, dialing 911.

  I listen as the operator answers, “Nine-one-one. What’s your emergency?”

  Adam is punching Nico in the face. His nose is gushing blood as Adam’s rage-filled fists collide with his cheek, his nose, his jaw, his ear.

  I forgot about the knife and, when I remember, I become so shocked that I can’t say a word. Nico grabs for it.

  I can’t speak to the operator because my brain is busy finding my voice, and when I do, all I can say is, “Knife.”

  “Nine-one-one. What’s your emergency?”

  It’s too late. Nico’s hand pushes up, the knife driving deep into Adam’s stomach.

  “No!” I cry.

  “We have your address and are dispatching a team to you. Are you still there?”

  Nico is bruised and bloodied, but he’s able-bodied. He pushes Adam off of him and takes off.

  Adam looks down at the knife sticking out of his gut. He falls back to the floor. I run to him, my hands no longer caring about my decency. All I want to do is touch him.

  He’s alive.

  “Are you okay?” he asks.

  He just got fucking stabbed, and he’s asking if I’m okay.

  My hands jumble over his body. The knife is there, and I want to pull it out. “What can I do? I don’t know what to do.”

  “Just stay with me.” He grabs my hand. “Don’t leave me.”

  “I won’t. Never. I love you.” I kiss his mouth and then his cheeks, his forehead, his neck, everywhere on his face. “You’re gonna be okay,” I say the words though I don’t know if they’re true.
<
br />   I pray again. This time, to every person and every saint and every star and every celestial being in the sky.

  Please don’t let him die.

  Twenty-Seven

  The police are at the house within three minutes. The ambulance is right behind it. When the gurney comes in, I nearly convulse with the thought of Adam’s body going on it. The paramedics push me aside, needing to work.

  When they see the blood on the couch and my torn clothes, they call for a second bus.

  As I sit in the back of an ambulance, they tell me I have a concussion and that I have to go to the hospital for tests. I refuse. Not without Adam. It isn’t until I see him come out with an oxygen mask on his face that I finally sit back and allow them to whisk me away.

  He is alive.

  His ambulance arrives at the hospital before mine, and he is rushed inside. My case isn’t an emergency, so I am wheeled through the ER and given a bed in the corner. I don’t have my phone with me, so I ask to use one.

  I call my parents. My mom freaks out and will probably say a novena on the way here. My dad will most likely drive in silence, keeping his nervous thoughts to himself.

  The speaker above calls for a code red. I know it’s terrible of me to think, but I hope it’s someone else dying. I can’t lose Adam. Not now. Not for another sixty years.

  When an officer comes to ask me questions, the first thing out of my mouth is, “How’s Adam?”

  He doesn’t have any answers for me. He wants the details of the night. So, I give them. Every gruesome moment. A fifteen-minute scene stretched out into great detail over forty-five minutes. I feel like I’ve just lived it three more times.

  My parents arrive just in time for a nurse to come in to take me away for tests. I promise them that I’m okay as I’m wheeled away. I’m sure my MRI is going to show abnormal activity, as my brain can’t seem to stop moving at a million miles a minute.

  This is taking way too long. He should be out of surgery by now.

  “Are you all right?” My mom grabs my hand when I’m back in the ER, clinging on to me like I’m going to drift away. “We were given only a few details. Did he…did he—”

  “No, Mom,” I reassure her. “Nothing bad happened to me. Adam got there just in time. I need to know where he is.”

  Dad steps up to my bed. “We’ve been asking, sweetheart. They won’t tell us anything.”

  “I called his mother. She’s probably here already,” Mom says.

  “What about Nico? He’s out there. He could be—”

  My words are halted as my dad pats me on the shoulder and makes me a soft shushing sound.

  “There are officers all over this hospital, waiting for Adam to get out of surgery. You’re safe here.”

  I raise my hand to my head. I’ve suddenly become dizzy, the room rocking from side to side. I close my eyes to make it go away, but that only makes me very nauseous. My mom must notice what is happening because she is immediately at my side with her hand on my back and a round pink pan in front of me. My dad holds my hair back as I lose my stomach.

  “That’s a symptom of the concussion,” a doctor says.

  She’s a pretty woman with curly brown hair and big doe eyes. She has on a Beauty and the Beast shirt under her open white doctor’s coat. Her name tag says, Dr. Grey Ditto.

  “Are you a pediatrician?” I ask as she walks in.

  My parents are still gathered around me, helping me as I heave.

  Dr. Ditto looks down at her shirt and laughs. “No. Just a believer. I took my kids to Disney last week, and I’m not ready to let go of the magic.”

  I am usually one to believe in magic, yet for some reason, I can’t shake this terrible feeling. I vomit again.

  “We are going to admit you. Your scans are clean. No brain bleed, but based on your symptoms”—she points her pen toward me hovered over the pink pan—“you have a grade two concussion. We’re going to keep you overnight for observation.”

  “I’m fine,” I say. “I just want to go home.”

  She leans over and turns on the fluorescent lights over my bed. My head is a rush of pain—a burning, nagging fist pounding pain right through my frontal lobe. My eyes involuntarily squeeze shut. I pull my head away from the light and into my mom’s shoulder.

  Dr. Ditto turns the light off. “Yeah, you’re staying overnight.”

  I open an eye and look her way. She has a smile on her face, and she’s taking notes on a white notepad.

  “You’re not going anywhere until those symptoms go away. We’ll get you some antinausea meds and some ibuprofen for the pain,” she says as she starts to walk out the door.

  “Doctor,” I call out. “Do you have any information on the officer who came in with me?”

  She shakes her head. “I’m sure the doctors are doing everything they can.”

  As she walks out the door, my head begins to throb.

  My parents stay with me as a nurse comes over with a new bed. I crawl onto it and let her wheel me through the ER, down a long hallway, up an elevator, into another hallway with a nurses’ station, and into a patient room. I have a double, but the second bed is empty.

  Another nurse comes in to introduce herself. She has on maroon-colored scrubs and has a rolling computer cart. She scans my hospital bracelet, and then she hands me a small white cup and another pill that came out of a packet.

  The sun is peeking through the blinds. My parents look like they’ve been at a rave with the dark circles under their eyes—Mom’s runny mascara and Dad’s pale complexion.

  “Go home, and get some rest.”

  “No.” My mom is adamant. “We’ll stay until they say you can go home.”

  I sigh. “I’m really tired, and if you’re here, I won’t sleep. Doc said I needed to rest.” It’s a half-truth. My body is exhausted, but them being here isn’t what’s keeping me from sleeping.

  “Go,” I push on. “Come back this afternoon. You need to be nice and rested if you’re gonna take care of me when I get home. I expect twenty-four-hour nurse service from you two, including breakfast in bed.” I give them a devilish smile. Knowing my parents, Dad will have a smorgasbord of delights ready by noon, and my mom will have knit an afghan with a kitty on it.

  My mother looks reluctant as Dad puts his hands on her shoulders. “Come on, Pammy. We’ll come back in a few hours.”

  I’m left alone in my hospital room. I turn my head and look out the metal slats of the window blinds. There isn’t much of a view. All I can see is the sunlight coming through the dirty window. I look away, toward the open room. A lone bed is next to mine. A curtain hanging from the ceiling is pushed open. There are some empty chairs and a bedside table. I try to focus my attention on the squares of the linoleum floor, but my eyes grow heavy. The exhaustion I’ve been fighting sets in.

  Threatening dark eyes skim over my naked body. The red fabric has been cut open, leaving my breasts exposed. His knife cuts again to rip my bra, nipping my skin. A trail of blood runs down my torso, freezing before it hits my navel. My body is turning to ice from being exposed to the open air and his sinister gaze.

  His mouth is full of gold teeth and a curse. It lowers to my neck and bites my skin. I try to fight him off, but I can’t. I’m paralyzed. My arms can’t push him away. My legs refuse to kick. I will my body to rage, but it lies motionless.

  Nico’s malicious hands grab the torn fabric at the bottom of my jumpsuit, and he pulls away further until I am exposed down to my toes. I try to cry out. He cuts off my tongue. All I can do is let the tears fall down my face as I pray for Adam.

  He undoes his belt buckle and rips open his zipper. I turn my head to look away. What I see causes me to gasp.

  Adam is lying in a pool of blood on the floor beside me. His once-vibrant eyes are lifeless as he lies dead on the carpet.

  I want to reach him.

  I want to help him.

  I want to die.

  And I can’t even ask for that.

  �
�Leah. Wake up, Leah. Calm down. Take deep breaths for me,” a woman’s voice speaks over me.

  I’m being gently shaken. I grimace, pulling away from the touch. “Get off me!”

  “Come on. Come back to us. It’s just a dream.”

  I open my eyes and see Dr. Ditto standing above my bed. A nurse is on the other side.

  She smiles warmly and then shines a bright light in my eyes. “It’s okay. You were just having a bad dream.”

  My mouth is incredibly dry. I swallow, despite the lack of saliva in my mouth. The nurse brings me a small cup of water. I drink it as Dr. Ditto holds up her finger and asks me to track it.

  “Were you dreaming about your attack?” she asks.

  I slowly nod my head.

  “I’m going to have a social worker speak with you.” She puts her mini flashlight back in her chest pocket.

  “I need to see Adam.” My words are hoarse. I try to sit up to take another sip of water—this time, on my own—and feel my sore muscles fighting me. Earlier, I could have lifted a car with the amount of adrenaline running through my system. Now, I’m shaking while just grabbing the cup.

  Dr. Ditto is giving me a look of remorse. She splays a hand on my shoulder and guides me back down to the bed. “You’re not family, so I can’t give out any information. I’ll see what I can do, but, right now, you need to focus on getting better. Try to rest. You’ve been through a lot.”

  I hate her words. I hate her and her shirt with a princess and a beast and a red rose. It’s a stupid thing for a doctor to wear.

  As much as I want to fight it, the lull of sleep pulls me back in.

  “I got into UConn.” Adam was hunched over and tying his laces.

  “Congratulations!” I leaned over and hugged him, causing us to nearly fall off the bottom bleacher. Leaning back, I looked at him. “So, this is what a college guy looks like.”

  He sat up straight. “Does being in college make me more attractive?”

  “Hell yeah! You just gained, like, ten hotness points. Do you know what your major is going to be?”

  “Architecture,” he answered surely. “I want to design houses.”