Eleanor!
I spiralled.
I forgot everything I’d just reclaimed.
I fell in perpetuity, never hitting the bottom, tumbling and tangling.
Fading and dissolving...pain.
Pain spooning out my insides. Pain crushing my skull.
Stop
Come back.
Fuck, please come—
“Sully!”
The string reappeared, glowing silver and crimson instead of just gold.
I grasped it, bleeding and panting, weaker than I had been in a while.
I dangled from her bond.
I didn’t even have the strength to lift my head and focus on their conversation again.
All I could do was sway there like bait on fishing line just waiting to be swallowed by something far more vicious than me.
From far, far away, Eleanor said, “See? I can’t leave him. He gives up if I do. I...I’m sorry.”
I couldn’t hear the man. I no longer had ears that worked, but I felt Eleanor curling into me.
Her heat warmed my icicle-riddled soul.
Her love once again had a flavour.
When I’d fallen for her while taking her in Nirvana, love had tasted sweet and sour. It’d smelled of fresh rain and new beginnings.
Now it tasted of comfort and longing. A scent of commitment and orchids.
I love you.
I’m sorry.
I blanked out.
Chapter Twenty-Three
I HAD A DILEMMA.
I needed to free Sully’s goddesses before the police returned. I had documents to shred and emails to hack into and delete. But...how could I do a damn thing if Sully kept trying to die the minute I couldn’t touch him?
Going to the bathroom had to be done in short bursts. Eating had to be done curled up by his side. Whenever Louise and her team changed his catheter or inserted a new IV with sustenance to keep him alive, I clung extra hard to his hand, just in case he felt the discomfort. In case he confused one touch from another and slipped.
For two days, I’d tried to figure out how to protect Sully from future complications all while doing my best to keep him safe from the current one. I wished Calvin wasn’t injured, and Jess wasn’t in a coma. Why were the only people I knew all in different stages of maladies and utterly useless in a mass freeing exercise?
Come on, Sully...please wake up. This would be easier with your help. Hopefully you understand why I need to do it.
I continued stroking my fingers through Sully’s hair. The bronze-tipped dark strands were longer as was his beard. His cheekbones starker. His lips cracked and dry.
Each day, he looked more unkempt. A little wilder and unreachable.
I should shave him...wash him.
Make him feel better.
With the decision to do something for him, even if I couldn’t do what was immediately pressing, I sat up and looked for Louise. She’d have to run the warm water and bring scissors, razors, and towels. However, the doctors were deep in discussion in the living room, and I didn’t want to disturb them.
Damn.
“You know, Sully...you’ve got me trapped better than you ever did, even when you first bought me.” I bent and kissed the tip of his nose. “Who would’ve thought love was a bigger trap than trafficking.”
His pulse kicked, ripping my gaze to the heart rate monitor.
“Wait...can you hear me?”
What if he could?
My God...
“Do you remember when we first saw each other? You standing on that sandy ledge and me being delivered to you by helicopter? When our eyes met...you felt it, too. I know you did. That first trip into our destiny.”
The monitor remained steady, showing no hint I’d affected him.
I tried again.
Lowering my voice, I shared our story in the hopes that he’d wake, ready to relive it, eager to write more pages and give us a happily ever after ending. “God, I hated you for what you’d done. I was prepared to find any and all ways to either kill you or escape you. But...” I sighed, reliving the smash of connection and the flash of incomparable lightning the moment I’d seen him. “I knew, even then. When you first spoke to me, your voice reached past my ribs and claimed my heart. I told myself it was loathing. I mean...how could I ever fall in love from just a stare? But...I had. I’d found you. I was home.”
A tiny flicker on the monitor.
I rushed with more of our tale. “You might’ve asked traffickers to find me, Sully. You might’ve purchased other women and turned them into your goddesses, but without that criminal habit, we might have never met, and that...that’s inconceivable. How could I ever have thought I was whole without you? How did I ever think I could be happy somewhere that wasn’t by your side?”
Another kick, a quickening of his pulse.
I nuzzled into him, shivering with hope. “I’ll always be grateful that you found me. So glad that you gave me your trust. So honoured that you put your life before my own. But I need you to come back now, Sully. I miss you so much. It’s killing me not being able to talk to you. Not seeing your eyes or hearing your voice. I know you’re in there. Your heart reacts to mine because we’re linked in every possible way. So why won’t you wake?”
Tears squeezed from my eyes as I murmured, “What’s trapping you? What can I do to bring you back?”
The monitor recorded a skip of nonsense. A flurry of half-beats and speed.
I sat up, my own heart pattering with growing worry. “You know...if you can hear me, I’ll tell you anything you want to know.” I switched to happier subjects as his pulse continued to scatter across the screen.
I never took my eyes off the irregular hills and valleys. Was this development a good thing or bad?
Keeping my hand on his, I murmured, “Are you hungry? Do you miss your chef’s delicacies?” I kissed his cheek and lay alongside him. “If you wake, I’ll gladly make whatever you want. How about some of those mushroom stuffed aubergines? Or that tempeh satay? Your food is one of the first things I fell in love with. And Lebah?
