They werescreaming.
8
PHOENIX
The wind sliced through my jacket, driving icy raindrops into my already-soaked clothes like needles. I wiped the water from my brow, repositioned the flashlight on the log behind me, and scanned the woods. I wasn’t the only predator out here—not this deep in the mountains, not after dark.
It was that strange, in-between hour—twilight giving way to night—when the world turned a murky shade of blue. The rain hadn’t let up all day. A cold, relentless downpour that mirrored the storm I’d unleashed in Dr. Rose Floris’s office. And as wild as I’d been, the skies had outdone me by afternoon. No sunset tonight. Just a heavy gray shroud pressing down on the ridgeline, promising more chaos. More rain. Maybe enough to wash the image of that sharp-tongued, infuriating doctor from my head.
RoseFlower—as I’d dubbed her—had hair black as raven’s wings and just as glossy, like the chrome fender on my Harley. Her eyes were wide, almond-shaped, and so dark I found myself wondering how many shades of black existed. Hooded lids gave her a look of permanent skepticism,while her lashes—long, dark, and feathered—were pure sex.
Her bone structure was sharp, maybe Eastern European, the kind of face sculpted for cold beauty and colder rejection. Her body? Long and lean, with just enough curve to keep a man up at night. And when she finally opened her mouth—that mouth—she spoke in a tone as sharp as her cheekbones and as commanding as the designer suit she wore.
But it wasn’t the eyes or the voice or the suit that haunted me.
It was the lips.
Thosefuckinglips.
Crimson red. The exact shade I imagined when I thought of her name—Rose. Also the exact shade her cheeks had turned after I’d done the unthinkable—bribed her with money and sex, then flipped her office like a rage-fueled gorilla.
Over the course of the night, I convinced myself it was for the best. Rose Floris, with her judgy eyes and cool detachment, was everything I never wanted in a woman.
And yet…
She had the upper hand.
And Ihatedthat.
Not just because I wasn’t in the habit of letting a woman have control—unless it came with whips and chains—but because this woman,thisshrink, held the key to my freedom.
She had power over me.
The irony burned.
A bead of sweat slid down my temple as I gripped another nail.Focus,I told myself, but the rain buzzed in myears like a swarm of bees, and the pain between my temples pulsed like stingers.
Damn headaches.
Focus, Phoenix.
With every swing of the hammer, raindrops snuck past my collar, little devil’s fingertips sliding down my back. The sensation was temporary, though. I focused on each one, at the exact spot on my spine where the feeling faded to nothing, reminding me of the science experiment I’d turned into. As if I needed a reminder.
Numbness. Complete loss of feeling in random spots of my body. That was one of the manysymptoms—as they called them—that had slipped by Dr. Buckley and his team. My team of “medical professionals,” as they liked to call themselves.
“Temporarily mentally deficient”, the tests read.
I gritted my teeth and pounded the nail, the smooth rhythm I’d established began to waver.
It was coming. The mood swing brewing in my gut like licking flames, igniting me from the inside out. My pulse started to increase as I warned myself to get a grip before it happened, but in an ironic twist, this only ignited it more because I knew I couldn’t control it.
These types of mood swings were new to me—not the anger, the rage; I was very familiar with those emotions. The type of anger I’d felt since waking up from my coma was an entirely new kind of mad. An immediate, uncontrollable wave of white hot fury that gripped ahold of me like a bear trap, vibrating until it exploded out of me. Tossing a computer on the floor?Ha,that was child’s play. Only a touch of what this new—impulsive—Phoenix was capable of. And honestly, the doctors had no idea how bad it reallywas. Of course they didn’t. They’d never been shot in the head before.
My jaw clenched as I connected with the nail, again, and again, each hit harder than the last.
It always started with a rush of heat over my skin. Then came the tremors. My warning signal. I’d tell my brain—stand down, you lunatic—as if it were a separate being. Then, boom—adrenaline. And I was gone.
Gone to the fury.
