Martha squeezes my hand so tightly my fingers ache. “You have to see a doctor,” she says firmly, voice trembling but determined. “If this were me, you’d drag me there yourself. And you know it.”
She’s right. And that only makes the fear twist harder inside me.
“I know a private doctor,” Fern rushes out. “She’s lovely. Gentle. She won’t judge. And she keeps everything confidential.”
My stomach drops. “But what if it’s true?” The words taste like poison in my mouth.
Fern takes my cheeks in her hands, forcing me to meet her eyes. “And what if it’s not?” she says softly. “What if you’re imagining the worst because you can’t remember anything clearly? What if your mind is filling in blanks from a nightmare?”
A nightmare.
I cling to the word like it’s a lifeline.
“What if you’re working yourself up,” Fern adds gently, “and it turns out you just had a horrible drug-induced night and nothing else?”
Hope flickers. Weak and fragile. But it’s something.
“Let’s not jump to conclusions,” Martha whispers, stroking my back. “Let’s just find out.”
Fern doesn’t wait for me to panic again. She pulls out her phone, her fingers shaking but determined, and calls the private doctor.
Within minutes she hangs up. “She’ll see you now,” Fern says. “Straight away.”
My whole body trembles. I nod. Because hope is the only thing keeping me upright.
CHAPTER SEVEN
KADE
Martha was right about one thing––the diary is stacked today. There’s no way Diesel could’ve covered my clientsandhis own. So, I stay at the shop, working back-to-back sessions, feeling every minute stretch like a taut wire ready to snap.
Between tattoo appointments, I call Martha. Once. Twice. Five times.
And nothing. She doesn’t answer, and doesn’t return the calls. I drop a couple of texts, they also go unanswered.
An ache starts in my chest, a dull, dragging weight that settles under my ribs and won’t shift. I keep picturing Eden from last night, all dressed up, glowing, laughing with Fern, and then the version of her at four a.m.
Confused. Lost. Sick. Terrified.
None of it makes sense. And the longer I sit without answers, the more my mind claws at the worst possibilities.
Diesel’s right, men piss up bins. There’s no way nobody saw her lying there. Not for hours. Not in that area.
My stomach knots tighter.
She could’ve been withanyone. A stupid, drunken mistake she regretted the second it happened. Throwing her phone, losing her purse might have been a frantic attempt to cover her tracks.
I shake my head, furious at myself. My Eden isn’t like that. She wouldn’t.
But doubt is a vicious thing, and it gnaws at me the entire day, picking at every memory, every silence, every flinch she gave me last night.
By the time I get home, I’m hanging on by a thread.
And finding Eden curled up in bed watching a movie with Martha, acting like everything is normal, snaps something in me.
“I told you tocall me,” I bark.
Martha sits up straight. “That’s my fault. I made her relax. The doctor said she has a concussion—”
