by Renee Dyer
“I submit,” I yell.
His head pops up and he turns to me. Cammie is sobbing behind him. “I submit,” I repeat.
“About fucking time,” he growls and storms toward me. “I will not make this easy this time, lover.”
Because he’s made everything easy so far?
He crawls onto the bed, his face a mask of fury. The first bite breaks the skin on my calf. I hold my cry in by slamming my teeth together. I turn to Cammie to find strength in her beauty, but what I see only angers me. Large red marks mar her breast and blood rims her nipple. I’ve never wanted to hurt someone the way I want to hurt Davyd now.
Bringing my eyes back to the devil crawling and biting his way up my body, I do my best to tune out the pain. I can’t tell whether blood is dripping from my wounds or if his saliva is the wetness I feel. It all just angers me more. Somehow, I remain still.
His teeth clamp down hard over my nipple and I breathe in deep to keep from screaming out. “Stubborn son of a bitch,” he huffs. He bites the other nipple harder, going deeper into my flesh. I can’t stop the yelp that falls from my lips.
He slams his tongue into my mouth, my blood salty on his lips. I allow him to kiss me, draw him in. I only have this one chance. Holding back the bile threatening to spill forth, I force my tongue into his mouth on a fake moan. His erection jabs into my leg. I wait for him to tilt his head to the most compromising angle and call forth the last of my strength.
I throw as much as I can into the punch and it connects with the right side of his face. While Davyd is stunned, I go for his throat. Wrapping my fingers tight, I squeeze. I picture the life leaving him even as I feel my strength waning.
He grabs at my fingers with one hand and starts punching me with the other. I don’t know how long I can continue being a punching bag, but I’m hoping he’ll lose consciousness first.
“This is not submitting,” he squeaks out.
“Fuck you!” I bark.
There’s a commotion coming from the room Davyd likes to hide in, but I can’t make out what’s going on. I’m too focused on keeping my hand wrapped around his throat.
“I want you to die!” I scream at Davyd.
“You first, lover,” he wheezes.
“Grant! No!” Cammie squeals as I feel pain rip through my side.
My hand falls from Davyd’s throat and he starts to sputter and cough. He hovers over me, spittle falling in my face.
“You worthless motherfucker! Look what you’ve caused me to do.”
His head tilts toward Cammie and he lifts his hand. There’s a knife covered in blood that I know he’s about to throw at her. Somewhere in my mind, I process that the knife was just in me, but instincts kick in. I know I have to save my buttercup. I do the only thing I can. I throw my arm in the way of his, stopping him from launching it.
“I’ll fucking break you one way or the other!” His quickly lands a few punches to my face, while I uselessly defend myself. “I can do this all day while you lay here and bleed out, lover. Tell me you’re mine.”
“Never,” I say through bloody lips that barely open.
“Argh!” His battle cry echoes off the walls and I see the knife coming at me. This is the moment I’m going to die.
An explosion happens and my world goes black.
Hello, death.
Chapter Forty Four
Grant
“Grant, can you hear me, son?”
I turn into the light and…no, it can’t be. “Da…I mean, Nathan?”
His mouth turns down in hurt and my heart lurches, knowing I somehow caused it. I try to see behind him, around me, but everywhere I look, I see white. Oh, God, I really did die. Is he here to show me the path to the next world?
“I’m dead, aren’t I?” I ask plainly. What is there to really say?
“No, son, you aren’t, but you want to be. Sometimes, a person can just let go because they don’t think they deserve to live. It has nothing to do with doctors being able to revive them. They just stop trying because they think it’s best, but that’s not the case this time. You deserve to live, Grant.”
“How can you say that? You hate me.” Old hurts come back to haunt me. Ironic, isn’t it?
“I’m sorry you’ve felt that way all this time. I was a fool, son. I tried to call you back, but it was too late.”
“I’m not your son. Remember?”
“I was so wrong to tell you that. You will always be my son. Blood means nothing to me. I was and will always be proud to be your dad, Grant.”
I shake my head, not able to believe the words I’m hearing. He’s dead. This can’t be real. I’m in hell and this is how I’ll live out my eternal damnation, hearing the words I long to hear and knowing they can’t be true.
“But you said—”
He shakes his head, sadness morphing his face. “I know. My pride got in the way. It’s such a small word, but it can cripple a person. It can make us inept at moving on and doing what we know is right. I know I should have told you I love you, but the words lodged in my throat. It doesn’t matter to me that you don’t share my blood. I was so angry with Gloria for her betrayal, but I took it out on you. I asked myself why thousands of times and the only answer I came up with is that I knew you loved me enough to forgive me.
His words are exactly what I’ve wanted to hear for so long, but my heart and mind are at war. “I want to believe you, but it’s not easy to undo years of rejection.”
I can’t look at him, feeling like I’m disappointing him again.
“I’m so sorry I caused you all these years of pain. I need you to know that I loved you then, love you now, and will love you every day of your life. I’ll be watching you always, son. I want you to be the great man you told about the last day you saw me.”
I meet his eyes now, mine full of tears. “I’m not a great man anymore, Dad. I’ve done terrible things. I’m sorry I let you down.”
“Shh, Grant. I know what you’ve done and I take responsibility for so much of that. You would have been a much different man had I not turned you away. You’ll never know how much I regret our last moments together. I only hope you can forgive me.”
I step into his waiting arms and feel love surround me. “Of course, I forgive you. You were my best friend. I’ve missed you. I’m so glad we’re reunited.”
“No. Not reunited.”
I pull back a little and sad eyes meet mine.
“I don’t have much time, son, but I want you to know that I love you. You have a group of people waiting for you to wake up. They love you, too. Please wake up, son. Fight. It’s not your time.”
He starts to fade before my eyes. “No, Dad, don’t go. Please, don’t leave me again.”
I try to grab for him, but he’s gone. I turn in circles, but he’s nowhere to be found. “Dad. Dad!”
“I’m right here, son.” I feel a hand on my arm and hear beeping all around me. It’s dark and I realize my eyes are closed. I slowly open them, just a tiny bit. Through slitted vision, I see Mikos staring down at me. What the hell is going on?
Where is Nathan?
My mind is foggy and I can’t comprehend how Nathan turned into Mikos.
“I’ll be right back, Grant. I’m just going to tell the nurse you’re awake.”
Awake? Of course. Nathan was a dream.
But…it felt so real.
I blink my eyes a few times and finally open them all the way, taking in the hospital room around me. Tucker is sitting in a chair a few feet away from me. “Hey,” I say.
“Hey. Good to see you awake, man. You gave us quite a scare.”
I don’t know what look I give him, but he says, “Do you remember what happened?”
Unfortunately, I remember too much. Memories of the time I was trapped with Davyd come flooding back to mind. Panic rushes over me. My heart starts to race and Tucker jumps from the chair.
“It’s okay, man. He can’t hurt you anymore. He’s dead.”
“Dea
d? Cammie? Did he?” Words rush out, but I can’t finish my question. What if he got to her? I don’t know what happened after my world went black.
“She’s fine. She’s in the waiting room with her parents. Grams, Adriana, Eddie and your mom are there, too.”
There’s no being fine after the horrors she witnessed, after the torment she went through. It’s my fault her innocence is gone. Cammie knows real fear because of me. No one can take that away for her. I’ll never forgive myself for that.
“Her parents wanted to take her back to Ohio as soon as she was cleared to leave, but she wasn’t going anywhere until she saw you,” Tucker says with a smile.
“Tell her to go home.”
“Don’t do this to her, Grant,” he pleads with me.
“I’m doing this for her. You weren’t there…you don’t know. She needs to get away from me. Look what happens to people in my life. Please, Tucker, make her go. I don’t want to see her. I-I can’t.”
He doesn’t answer me, but nods as Mikos walks in with the nurse. The nurse checks my vitals and tells me the doctor will be in shortly to talk to me about how my surgery went. I look at her dumbfounded. I wasn’t aware I had surgery.
Mikos and Tucker fill me in on what happened after I blacked out. The commotion I heard was the cops breaking in. The sound I thought was an explosion was Davyd being shot by the police as he went to stab me again. That memory made me do a once over. That’s when I see the tube coming out of my side under my armpit. Tucker explained it’s a chest tube. I have a collapsed lung from being stabbed.
They tell the tale of my rescue and how it started with the police shooting Davyd and the paramedics hustling me to the ambulance where they quickly started compressions and removing air with a syringe. I feel sick hearing them talk about it. Can a person live with one lung? Will my lung work again? Questions roll through my still foggy mind.
They go on to tell me I had to have immediate surgery when I arrived at the hospital and that’s why I have a tube sticking out of my side, but I should make a full recovery. They even think the doctor will be springing me from ICU in the morning.
After getting their version of my health, I want to know how the police found us. Tucker says it’s thanks to Cammie and me. She had called him after leaving me the night we were taken, asking him to go check on me. But he was picking Adriana up from the airport, which is why he called. I remember the horrible way I treated him. Soon after the fallout with Tucker, the text came from Davyd. I bantered with him and left my phone, thinking if someone noticed I was missing, it would be best if they got those messages.
Adriana insisted they go over to check on me and when they got in the elevator, they found my keys. I had dropped them in there because I thought Davyd was watching me through my windows. I wanted him to think I locked up. He never questioned where my keys were.
“But how did you get to the elevator? Didn’t Benny stop you?”
“He wasn’t there. Terrence said he left shortly after you got in the town car, stating he had a family emergency.”
Things didn’t feel right to Tucker so he asked Terrence if he could go up and check out my place. Being the kind man he is, Terrence said yes. Tucker knew they were my keys because of my Facing Extinction keychain. When he got in my apartment and found my cell phone, he knew there was a problem. He called the cops and gave them the information.
I’ve never been so glad to have a sibling in my life, especially a persistent, famous one. The cops were afraid to ignore him. They pulled the security footage for the building and saw that Cammie was driven away in the same town car. My behavior appeared hostile so the police believed I was coerced into getting in the vehicle.
It took them over twenty-four hours to track down Benny. When they found him, he was drunk and face down in the lap of a prostitute. After he sobered up, it took a couple days to break him. He was afraid of Davyd’s wrath. But eventually, he gave up all of Davyd’s properties he was aware of. They started searching, learned of the child prostitution ring, and finally got the location of where we were being held.
Cammie and I lasted six days in that mad man’s lair.
Six days that felt like years.
Dr. Sherman comes in a few minutes after they finish telling me about Cammie’s parents arriving in Vancouver. Grams and Mikos flew out as soon as Tucker told them I was missing. Eddie called the Richards. Mikos called Gloria and she arrived two days ago. It seems there has been quite the battle going on over what hell I got their daughter thrown into while my family tried to calmly explain that Davyd was the only one responsible for this nightmare.
I agree with Cammie’s parents. She would never have been in this situation if she hadn’t been my friend and I plan to make sure she never gets hurt because of me again.
“It’s nice to see you awake, Mr. Andrews. How are you feeling?”
“Like I got stabbed,” I joke.
He asks Mikos and Tucker to step from the room while he examines me and after all that’s happened, I appreciate the privacy. His eyes are kind and knowledgeable. When he pushes on my cheek, I wince a bit.
“Sorry. Nothing in your face is broken, but you do have bruising in your cheekbone. It’s going to be tender for a while. Can you follow the light with your eyes, please?”
He puts me through a series of tests and then he sits down to tell me about the surgery. He explains I was fully unconscious when I arrived at the hospital and I lost a lot of blood, requiring a transfusion. Other than the collapsed lung, there was no other organ damage. He uses the medical term, which sounded something like pneumonia, and I had to ask him to speak my language. He also explained the surgery and how it was a rather simple procedure. He shows me how the tube is attached to a see-through water seal chamber and the bubbles in the chamber are the air leaving my body. When they cease for a while, he’ll schedule a chest x-ray to verify re-inflation of my lung. If all looks good, he’ll get this tube out of me. He makes it a point to tell me he wants the tube out sooner rather than later to avoid risk of infection.
Doctors always have to warn about that, don’t they?
Before he leaves, he turns to me and with a practiced smile, he says, “You’re going to have a lot of people telling you what you need to do to heal over the next few days. I’ll be in and out checking on you, nurses will be pestering you, the respiratory therapists will be by, but I truly hope you take the time to speak to someone about getting outside counseling when you leave here. What that man did to you leaves a wound no one can see and that is something I can’t heal.”
He smiles and leaves the room, his words hanging heavy in the air. How did he know? Was he Cammie’s doctor, too? Did I talk in my sleep? Is it written on my face?
Do I look like a victim?
Tucker and Mikos walk back in and I see stress on their faces that wasn’t there before. Feeling the need to erase it, I tell them the checkup went well and that I should be able to go home in a few days. They smile, but it seems forced.
“What?” I ask, tiredly. I’m losing energy fast and know I can’t take much more.
“You have some other visitors who would like to see you,” Tucker says.
“I told you, I don’t want to see her.”
He shakes his head. “I sent her away. She wasn’t happy, but she understood. She said to call if you change your mind.”
I nod, but I know I won’t. She is better off without me. As much as it hurts, she belongs in Ohio, as far away from me as possible.
“Your grandmother and mother would like to see you,” Mikos states.
My mother. Tucker mentioned she was here earlier, but it didn’t sink in. I have no urge to see that woman. She, in no way, comforts me.
“My grandmother can come in, but keep Gloria away from me.”
“Grant,” Mikos pleads.
“No. You want me to get better? Keep her away from me.”
I turn my face away from them and wait for the door to close. It’s hard enough having M
ikos here. I know he’s my father, but I know almost nothing about him. He can’t just step in because tragedy struck and tell me to forgive her.
I close my eyes and allow myself to relax for a few minutes until my next guest arrives. I’m not sure how to face her either. I’ve had a few talks with this woman who insists I call her Grams. I enjoy talking to her. She gives great advice and she seems to accept me no matter what I’ve done, but how do I look at her after what’s been done to me?
Will she be able to tell?
Will she be able to see how dirty I am?
I wish I could get out of this bed and take a shower, scrub clean all the areas Davyd tainted on my body before this sweet woman walks in the room. But all I can do is look away and hope she doesn’t see the foulness left behind.
“Oh, my dear boy,” she gasps.
My eyes pop open and my Grams is standing there with Tucker behind her. Her hands are over her mouth and I see her scanning my face. Tears pool in her dark eyes and I wish I could run to her. I’ve connected with this woman somehow and seeing her hurt is causing my heart to ache. I want to pull her into my arms and comfort her.
“If that man weren’t dead, I’d…” She stops talking as a tear falls. She wipes it away fiercely, stands herself up to her five-foot-eight height, and squares her gaze at me. “There’s a special place in hell for filth like that man. I promise you that.”
She walks up to my side, bends down, and places the gentlest kiss on my cheek. In Greek, she softly starts singing a lullaby. I have no idea what it is, but it soothes me. I fall asleep, feeling peaceful for the first time in a week. She did that. She made me feel safe.
Something I didn’t think I could ever feel again.
Chapter Forty Five
Grant
It’s been a few months since I left the hospital and my life has changed in many ways. I no longer live in Vancouver. I moved to L.A. about a month after I was released. There was nothing keeping me there.
The show was cancelled. If Victoria thought people hated her in Vancouver after her affair with me, she didn’t know what hate was. Although my fans rallied behind me and I became a sought after actor, it was public knowledge in the surrounding area how many people lost their jobs because of me. Eddie gave great recommendations, which helped most of the crew into other jobs, but the actors had to start auditioning for new roles. They weren’t quiet about their distaste for me.
