Page 14 of Fervent
So we were in Portland, close to the bustle of people that could help us if they only knew this place existed. I wasn’t sure why Jax was telling me this, and I didn’t get a chance to question him further. A scream echoed from down the hall.
I staggered forward, every muscle bunching in preparation for a fight, adrenaline coursing through my veins.
“It’s not Alex,” Jax said.
He halted at a door, and another scream tore through my ears. He appeared stoically detached, as if the screech of pain was something he was used to hearing on a daily basis.
Maybe it was.
Maybe I hadn’t known him at all, even before I’d lost my memory.
He pushed in a key. “She’s in there.” He wedged the door open and removed a penlight from his pocket. The beam bounced across an empty cot. Mouth flattening into a line, he shoved the door wider, and the tiny stream of light lit up a huddled form on the floor.
“There’s no light in these rooms, but at least you got a bucket to shit in.” He swerved the beam to the other end of the room.
I couldn’t care less about the bucket or the lights or his casual, helpful tone. He sure as fuck wasn’t a friend of mine. I gazed down the hall, toward the end that led to the middle of nowhere in Forest Park, and wondered how much time it would take to get Alex out, assuming I could knock Jax on his traitorous ass first. The drugs were definitely wearing off, but the edges of my vision were still hazy, and I had shit for strength in my arms. She’d probably need to be carried out of here.
“Escaping isn’t gonna happen.”
My attention snapped to him. I was a moment away from trying to knock him out anyway, but the two goons—the ones who’d walked my pathetic ass into the showers—appeared a few feet down the tunnel.
Jax shut off the penlight and leaned against the wall, arms crossed. “We’re both stuck here, whether we like it or not.”
“Don’t play the victim, Jax. This is fucked up.”
“Yeah, tell me about it.” He shoved me into the room and slammed the door. I turned, and my hands smoothed over the surface, but he’d already clicked over the lock.
Suffocating blackness strangled me, blocking my air—blocking out everything except the stream of memories that flooded my head. I slid to the floor, my limbs shaking, losing strength as the last bit of adrenaline left my system.
Another shriek came through the wall, knifing through me, as pieces of my past resurfaced.
I jumped when the door burst open. Light beamed into the blackness, but it was too quick to note anything other than Rafe’s presence. He spoke to someone for a few moments, though I couldn’t understand what he said. Then he stumbled inside and the clank of the lock echoed, leaving us in complete darkness. Silence thickened the air, broken into pieces by the screams of the girl next door. Between the wailing, I listened, waiting for him to say something, do something, make some noise that indicated he was there, because I knew he was.
So why wasn’t he talking to me?
Gritting my teeth against the pain, I forced myself into a sitting position and slowly pushed to my knees. “Rafe?” I called, crawling in the direction of the door. The chain attached to my neck crept after me like a snake. At least, that’s what I envisioned.
He remained eerily silent as I spanned the distance between us. Terror gripped my heart, and my breath came fast and noisy. “Talk to me,” I said, but everything I was, all the shattered pieces of me, fell through the cracks. Fear iced my heart. Oh God. What had they done to him? My limbs shook violently as I lowered to my haunches next to him, and that’s when I heard it.
A low groaning, interspersed with quick, shallow intakes of breath. As if he were trying not to breathe. As if he were trying to hold it in. I knew what that was like.
My eyes burned with grief. “Rafe…” I reached out to touch him, but he shifted away at the first brush of my fingers. Fear and rejection darted through me, leaving in its wake tiny holes where stubborn hope seeped. I had to believe we’d find a way out of this. Giving in to the alternative would surely get us killed.
“What…what happened?”
“I remember.”
Letting out a breath, I reached for his hand, and my fingers wrapped around his on the first try, as if they knew exactly where they belonged. I held on tight, refusing to let him withdraw. “What did you remember?”
“The hole in prison. The guards let him in…”
“Let who in?”
“Cleft smells like him.” He returned my grip painfully. “He fucked me in there. Cleft fuckingsmellslike him.”
“Who’s Cleft?”
“The fucker in the hoodie.”
