by Loretta Lost
Copyright 2018 Loretta Lost
Cover art by Damonza
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Chapter One
I wake up panting and gasping in a pool of my own sweat. Cole is instantly at my side, wrapping his arms around me, comforting me.
“Shhh,” he murmurs. “He’s dead. He’s dead.”
I struggle to catch my breath. “How do you know?” I demand. “How do you know I’m not still drugged out of my mind? How do I know that you’re really alive, really here? You could be a dream.”
He clasps my fingers in his, and brings them up to touch the necklace hanging around my neck. “See? Evidence.”
I gingerly study the vertebrae, tracing the familiar shape. It feels right. He feels dead. I exhale slowly. The bones wouldn’t lie. This simple ritual has become incredibly comforting to me, and I estimate that I must have fingered this necklace for reassurance at least twice per hour while I was holed up in the psychiatric facility. It’s funny how a tiny bit of calcium and collagen can offer me more sanity than anything in modern medicine.
These bones are the closest I have ever come to justice.
And I always thought archeology was bullshit.
Color me mistaken. I have gained a new respect for everyone who works with bones. Forensic anthropologists, orthopedic surgeons, osteologists in museums. Bones help to remind us of what happened before—and sometimes they are all we have left to tell the story. Like the remains of all the other girls that Benjamin tortured in that place.
If not for their bones, they would have entirely disappeared from the face of the earth.
Maybe even eventually from the memory of those who loved them.
Noticing the worried expression on Cole’s face in the darkened room, I realize that I am shaking. I notice his hand is stroking my hair to soothe my nightmares, and I am slowly pulled away from the bad dreams, and into reality. As I process my surroundings, I am startled to find that reality is actually good. The familiar face looking back at me, the familiar eyes. His familiar bone structure. I’ve yearned to wake up next to him like this for years. His musky scent, and his gentle hands.
Even in an unfamiliar motel room, in an unfamiliar country, I feel at peace. I feel at home.
Overwhelmed with a sense of gratitude, I lean forward so that my forehead falls against his neck. “Why do I keep losing you, Cole? Why do you keep getting ripped out of my life?”
“Because you kept running away,” he responds.
“That’s not fair,” I whisper. “I didn’t choose to run away this time.”
“Yeah, you did, Scar. That’s why I had to come all the way to Canada to find you.”
I pause. “You’re right. But you left me, too, when you faked your own death. I nearly got turned into extra crispy bacon, walking across Nevada to find you.”
“That was only because I hadn’t heard from you in months, and thought you were marrying Zack.”
“It was a mistake. He kept your letters from me.”
“You chose to be with him,” he accuses.
“You got me pregnant…” I murmur, and then find myself trailing off and staring at a wall. All the fight goes out of me, as I think about Joy, and what I’ve lost. What I’m not sure I ever had. She was only with me for a few days, a few weeks—but she was so real. My mind spins and somersaults with the possibility that if I hadn’t been so weak, she could have existed. She could still be real, and exist somewhere out there.
Or maybe she only exists inside me, waiting to be born. Will I ever be strong enough?
“Scar,” he says softly. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, for the way I was. All of that is in the past, now. I won’t run away again, and I will never hold back. We need to forgive each other and move forward.”
“Can we?” I ask him. “Because I’m not the same as I was before—” My eyes dart around the room madly, as flashes of it all flood my mind and make my body shudder. “—Before what he did to me. I just didn’t want to be a burden on you, with how I am right now. Totally broken.”
“Hey,” he says firmly. “You’re not broken. You’ve never been broken.”
He pulls my body close to his, tracing my various scars. He starts with the little bumps on my abdomen, cigarette burns from Professor Brown. “You weren’t broken then,” he says, holding me the same way he did when I was thirteen years old. Then his hand slides over the marks on my wrist, from various suicide attempts. “It might have felt like it, but you weren’t even broken then.” He touches my recently bruised ankles, where I was shackled, and the tender spots on my neck where the skin was rubbed raw from rope. He then moves to the recent gash in my thigh, still held together with stitches, from where Benjamin sliced open my artery. “And you’re definitely not broken now. You’re stronger than ever. You just don’t know it yet.”
“How can you love me like this?” I ask him hoarsely.
“We made vows,” he says simply. “For better or worse. In sickness or health.”
“Those weren’t real vows. We were children.”
“It doesn’t matter. Real love doesn’t stop or disappear if something bad happens.”
I squeeze his arm. “Cole. I can’t lose you again.”
“You won’t.”
“I’m serious. I won’t survive it.” Hesitating, I point at my chest. “She won’t survive it. You came all this way for me, and you made me feel alive, after I clawed my way out of hell. You can’t walk away from me now.”
“Never,” he says. “Not even for a minute. Trust me, I’ve been beating myself up. If I hadn’t let you fly across the country on your own, maybe I could have protected you from being abducted.”
“Or maybe he would have killed you,” I respond, poking at the wound in his side. “If it means no more bullet holes in you, then I’m glad I went through this on my own.”
“No way, Scar,” he says gravely. “I would have preferred to take a thousand bullets, if it meant keeping you safe. That’s it!” he declares suddenly, grabbing the bedsheet and wrapping it around me. “I’m not leaving you alone again, even for a millisecond. I’m going to find a suit of armor for you—or at least bubble wrap—and keep you in a safety cocoon at all times.”
My eyebrows lift with amusement. “Not too sure about that strategy.”
He nods. “Trust me. I’ll go everywhere with you, and take you everywhere with me. I’ll even leave the bathroom door open when I pee, just in case. But if it’s a number two, l might have to shut the door—or else you’ll want to get abducted.”
I roll my eyes, suppressing a giggle. “I think I can survive long enough for you to take a poop, Cole. I did escape and kill the bad guy all by myself, you know.”
“You’re right,” he says, lowering me to the bed and covering my face with kisses. “You’re a total badass. I’m the one who should be staying close to you, for my own protection.”
“That seems wise,” I tell him playfully. “You do get shot fifty percent less when I’m around.”
“You can be my human shield,” he says, as he slides the sheets away to place kisses on my chest and stomach. “I just need to find some superglue and
literally attach your body to mine.”
I sigh contentedly at his affectionate touch, running my fingers through his soft hair. “That will make it even harder for you to have privacy while using the bathroom.”
“Very complicated logistics,” he says, raining kisses across my hips and thighs.
He gingerly places a kiss on my stitched-up leg, and I flinch. I feel so bruised and battered, like a rag doll from a Tim Burton film, held together with only thread and paperclips. It’s lucky that Cole is so gentle, for if he kissed me any harder, I’m sure my leg would pop right off, and he’d need to find the superglue.
“You could just say those vows again with me,” he suggests, leaning his cheek against my thigh. “If you want to make them more real. Maybe it will somehow help to keep us together, this time. Maybe it’s more than just a piece of paper.”
He has been talking about getting married again quite frequently since I checked out of the psychiatric facility. But while the idea makes me happy, it also makes me unsettled—because there is a secret I can’t bear to tell him just yet. “Let’s talk about that later, Cole,” I say softly, still tousling his hair absentmindedly. “When I’m feeling a little better. When I’m feeling more like myself.”
“Just tell me when,” he says, and I can hear the anxiety in his hushed voice.
I know he’s scared of losing me, too. I know that I am also all he has.
But more marriage won’t change any of this, when the first marriage was so pointless.
What a shitty job I’ve done of taking care of him. What a shitty excuse of a wife I’ve been—only showing up and actually using that title when I believed his body was already in the morgue. I close my eyes with regret for all the wasted years. I can’t even begin to apologize for how weak and afraid I’ve been.
But I can start to change.
“Come here,” I say, reaching for his shoulders. “Just be with me like this.”
“Be patient,” he says with a mischievous smile, as he continues to place butterfly kisses on my scars.
I squirm when his lips graze my inner thighs, and gasp out when they move to rest between my legs. My head rolls back at the dizzying pleasure.
And then I black out.
Everything is fuzzy and heavy for a moment, and I feel like I have been drugged again. My arms flail, reaching to grasp something concrete, but it’s like I am suspended in nothingness, deep underwater. When I try to breathe, it feels like I am drowning in molasses, or maybe gasoline.
“Cole,” I gasp out, trying to touch him, trying to climb my way to the surface. “Cole?”
When I am finally able to open my eyes, I find something cold and metal in my hands. It’s a gun. And I’m pointing it directly at Cole’s head. I am no longer on the bed—I am standing across the room, while Cole is on the floor, holding his face like he has been struck. His briefcase is lying opened on the floor beside me. I must have taken his gun.
“Oh my god,” I say in absolute horror. “What am I doing? How did I get here?”
“Scar—”
The gun clatters from my hands to the floor, and I follow it, falling to my knees. The blood has drained from my face, and I am hyperventilating. “Did I hurt you?” I ask him. “Did I hurt you?”
“No, no,” he says softly, crawling closer to me. “It’s okay. It was just Sibyl.”
That name again. “Who the fuck is Sibyl?” I ask angrily. It unsettled me when Benjamin mentioned her while he was torturing me, and I hoped she’d disappear—like Joy did. Except I never wanted Joy to disappear.
“She’s just another one of your alters,” Cole says, with a frown.
My fingernails move to my chest, scratching and scraping desperately. “Get her out. I want her out of me. She can’t do that. She can’t hurt you.”
“Don’t worry,” he says, grabbing my hands. “She wouldn’t really hurt me. At least, I don’t think she would. She’s not violent like Snow.”
I pause. “What is she like?”
“I don’t know yet. But she isn’t too fond of me. Obviously.”
“Should I go back to the hospital?” I demand, staring warily at the gun. “I’m afraid of myself, Cole. I don’t know what I could do. I don’t know anything about Sibyl. Neither of us do. We don’t trust her.”
“She was just asking about Zack, that’s all. Making sure he’s okay.”
“Is he okay?”
“Yes, of course. I roughed him up a little for taking you—but nothing serious.”
“Then why would she point a gun at you? I should lock myself away forever. Oh my god.”
“No, no. See? You’re doing it again. You’re running away. Listen to me, Scar,” he says, gripping my face with both hands and looking at me firmly. “I can handle myself with Sibyl. Okay?”
“Okay,” I say softly, unconvinced. “But what she did is not acceptable. If anything like this ever happens again... I’m going to check myself into a facility.”
“It won’t happen,” he promises with a grin. “Next time I meet Sibyl, I’ll be so charming that she won’t be able to resist me. You’ll wake up and find us in very different circumstances.”
I smile, weakly.
Then, the phone rings.
Blinking, I push myself off the floor and move toward the nightstand. Grabbing the small device, I see that the name is saved into the caller ID.
Turning back to Cole with puzzlement, I ask, “Owen?”
“That’s Liam’s friend, who’s planning the wedding,” he explains.
“I remember him. He’s super annoying.”
“Scar. Answer it.”
Wrinkling my nose, I press the accept button. “Hello?” I say cautiously.
“Hey, hey hey!” says the cheerful voice on the other end of the line. “Is this the famous long lost sister, Sophie Shields?”
“That’s me, I suppose.” I turn to Cole, chewing on my lip due to this man’s extremely exhausting enthusiasm.
Cole just shrugs and smiles.
“I’ve been trying to get ahold of you for ages! Where have you been hiding?”
Oh, I was underground, getting tortured and raped and mutilated, then rotting away in a psych ward. How’s your week been? I hold my tongue to keep from blurting this out.
“Anyway, did your boyfriend tell you the exciting news?” Owen asks. “We’re having a baby! I mean, we’re having a wedding! Because Helen’s having a baby! Well, uh, we’re going to try to have a wedding, like we were supposed to, last time, in Michigan. But this time is going to be way better! Liam won’t be a dick, I promise!”
I arch an eyebrow. “Uh, the last time I tried to come to one of these weddings, I kind of messed everything up with my presence.” And then my life became worse than any horror movie you’ve ever seen.
“I know, I know, but that was before! Before I punched Liam in the face and told him to be a man and get over his shit, and stop crying and binge watching the Kardashians like a little girl—and I think it worked.” Owen pauses. “Okay, I don’t want to be a Debbie Downer, but you gotta try to understand, Sophie. Liam got really depressed and felt responsible for screwing up your whole life by ditching you when you were a newborn. He hasn’t been able to go to work, and he just melted into his couch, growing a Jesus beard. It literally looked like he had been marooned on a desert island, Castaway style. I think he wasn’t showering either, because his apartment smelled really bad. Like really, really bad.”
In the middle of this monologue, I pressed the speaker button so that Cole could hear Owen’s retelling of events. I gesture to the phone in amazement, shaking my head and looking incredulous. Cole is grinning, and trying very hard not to laugh.
“Anyway, these are too many details!” Owen says, coughing in embarrassment. “But yeah, Helen’s dad is flying everyone to Switzerland for the wedding, and it’s going to be Liam’s grand gesture to apologize and win her back. It would really mean a lot to us all if you could be there, Soph. Can I call you Soph? I mean, y
ou’re Liam’s sister, so you’re basically my sister, too. Even though he and I aren’t related, he’s my best friend in the world, and I would die for him.”
This sobers me up a little, and my amusement dissipates. I try to take this ridiculous man seriously for a moment. “You would?” I ask softly.
“Yeah. And it would seriously mean the world to him. He seems tough, and acts like a hotshot doctor with his fancy BMW and Manhattan flat and everything, but he’s just a lonely, messed up guy from a shitty home. It would mean everything to have one single family member present at his wedding. His mom and dad might still be alive... but you’re the only sane family he has, if you know what I mean.”
“Sane,” I repeat sarcastically, glancing at the gun I just dropped. “How do you know I’m sane, Owen?”
“Honestly, I don’t, but you just seem like a good person. Liam’s parents... were not normal. They were not kind. His dad’s in the hospital right now—and Liam swears to me he didn’t put him there, but I wouldn’t totally blame him if he did. And his mom’s just... ehhh, she’s a shitshow. He doesn’t really have anyone else. You’re literally his only living blood relative who isn’t a basketcase. Other than, hopefully, this baby, when it’s born. But if he could build some kind of relationship with you, even if it’s a Christmas-and-holidays-only kind of family, that would help him ease some of his guilt and self-loathing. He doesn’t know how he’s going to be a father, thinking he almost murdered a baby when he was four. But he was just a child, and didn’t know what he was doing, you know? He deserves forgiveness for that, or at least a second possibility. And I know that you and Helen seemed to get along, so if there’s any chance...”
“I do like Helen,” I say softly. “Let me think about it, Owen. But I really appreciate the invitation.”
“Please, please consider it, Soph. This is my phone number right here, if you can see it on your cell. Just text me the name on your passport, and your boyfriend’s passport, and we’ll buy plane tickets for you guys. He sounds nice, by the way.”
