Page 55 of The Hangman's Rope
I stroked up and down her arm over the blankets and she sighed and settled.
I thought she was asleep pretty soon after, but then she began to speak.
She remembered everything.
She told me everything.
As I lay there with her in the close dark, she bared her soul to the bone, laying every last bit of the worst thing ever done to her bare to gleam wetly with blood, sweat, and tears in the moonlight coming through the slats of the blinds.
I let her speak. Held space for her trauma and the horror that she’d suffered, and I let her fill that space to overflowing with her thoughts and her feelings.
If she could live through it, the very least I could do was stand sentinel as she gave witness to her experience.
When she’d been quiet for a long time, I pulled my lips from the top of her hair and whispered, “Rest, darlin’. I’m not going anywhere.”
I didn’t get an answer but for the deep and even breathing that filled the night.
I waited until I was certain she was out, and carefully worked my way out from beneath her.
I found a fair bit of the club in my living room waiting. Synister in my recliner, Grim and Reaper on the couch with Fear and Death. Haint sat at my kitchen counter and Shade next to him. Corvus was leaned against the mantle looking at me, his hands buried in his pockets.
I went to the kitchen sink and threw up. Spitting the acid from my mouth into the garbage disposal and running the tap.
I rinsed my mouth directly from the stream and spit a few more times, Torment sighing at my kitchen table and getting up.
“I’m fine,” I said, voice gravelly from the recent purge.
“Yeah, right.” He said, adding; “Move your big ass out the way, I’ll fix you something.”
“I’m definitely not fucking hungry,” I said and he shook his head.
“Not food, you dumbass. Something that’ll settle your stomach.” He got my whiskey out of the freezer and poured a couple fingers, sliding the glass down the counter in my direction. I caught it and downed it.
“How much did you hear?” I asked quietly.
“Hard to make most of it out, but enough,” Corvus said.
I looked over at Syn who had that blank, perfectly stoic mask of his in place.
“We’re going to go ahead with the plan,” he said quietly, evenly, and I nodded.
The plan we’d devised involved the good doctor who had seen her falsifying some hospital records. We were going to sneak Lorelai in and as far as the paperwork was concerned, she’d been at the hospital the whole time as a misplaced Jane Doe. She needed treatment. She needed to go home… and I needed to find who did this and make them pay. Sure as fuck couldn’t trust the cops to do their fucking job.
“I don’t think there’s honestly anything more that needs to be fucking said,” Synister declared, pushing to his feet. The rest of the boys followed suit.
“Best get back in there before she wakes up howling again,” Torment said and Grim snorted.
“That was a Reaper sized dose that just went into her slender frame,” Grim said. “She should be out until at least mid-morning.”
I nodded, grateful for the heads up.
“Thanks, brothers,” I said.
“Don’t mention it,” Synister declared and I knew that look. We all did. He was pissed past throwing one of his tantrums. He was pissed beyond anything, and I knew it had everything to do with him picturing Madisyn when she’d been at her most vulnerable, back shortly after they’d started hooking up.
“Night,” I muttered and held the door as they all filed past.
“Meeting fucking adjourned, I guess,” Corvus said as he went by.
