I glance at Riley, knowing exactly how filthy he was when I found him. I have a feeling that I know exactly why Collins was kept cleaner, but I won't voice it. I refuse to clarify because I can’t think about what they went through right now.
The rest of the car ride is silent. Jett watches Collins, holding the blood bags while I take my time slowly cleaning Riley’s exposed skin with disposable cleansing cloths in between the medic taking his vitals. Asher announces that we’re almost there, so I take a moment to lean over towards Collins and brush a soft kiss to her temple. Bringing my lips close to her ear, I whisper, “I’m here, and I am so, so sorry, Stardust.”
Pushing myself in the opposite direction, I press a matching kiss to Riley’s much cooler, clammy forehead. I speak to him soft enough that only he can hear it, but the words are meant for both him and Collins. A promise. “I vow I will spend the rest of my life earning both of your forgiveness…even if I don’t deserve it.”
As if giving me an answer in a truly horrific fashion, Riley’s breaths shallow out and quicken, his body taking on a sickly ashen color, and the tiny monitor clipped to his stretcher starts to sound off some sort of warning.
“What’s wrong?” I snap. “What’s happening to him?”
I’m shoved out of the way by the medic, who immediately starts looking Riley over. “What is happening?” I repeat, getting pissed at this asshole for not answering me sooner.
“Possible septic shock, we’ll need a blood culture to know for sure, but with signs of wound infection, blood loss, and his temperature was all over the place, this seems to be the case. We need to get an antibiotic running STAT.” He pulls out his phone to message someone when the chaos just kicks itself up to eleven in the tiny shared space of this SUV.
Asher, Jett, and I share a look of mortification when Collins awakens from her comatose, dissociative state and starts to thrash against her restraints. Her eyes are wild but unseeing, darting around frantically. Her cracked, chapped lips are forming the wordsno, no, no, but the sound is no more than a broken whisper.
I’m fucking scared and I don’t know where to look as the medic does his best to stabilize Riley while Asher tries to calm his sister.
He must be failing spectacularly because I look over in time to see her crane her neck and sink her teeth into his wrist in blind self-defense. He hisses but refrains from yelling out. In her mind, it’s not her brother before her, he’s nothing more than an assailant, and she’s protecting herself the only way she can.
I sit, shocked and dumbfounded, watching it all unfold. For the first time today, I’m at a loss on what the fuck to do. What to say.
“You need to help Mr. Sutton, hold her down so I can sedate her,” the medic commands. I guess I spoke out loud. “We can’t risk her reopening any old wounds.”
“Hold her down? I’m not going to fucking hold her down.” Not after the way we found her.
“Creed,” Asher calls over the chaos, and my eyes find his. “Like this.” He demonstrates by moving toward her shoulders and pressing his hands down gently, only using the heel of his palm, keeping his fingers open and pulled back. “This way you’re not physicallygrabbingher, only assisting in keeping her steadyso she doesn’t hurt herself.” His voice wobbles with unchecked emotions as he tries to explain.
Nodding, I do as he says, but it guts me when Collins’ unseeing eyes lock onto my face, and she lets out a silent scream, the movement causing her battered lips to crack and split open again. Blood trickles down her chin as she silently begs and pleads for mercy to whoever or whatever is haunting her. She looks utterly horrified, and though I know it’s not directed at me, I feel something shatter inside of me.This is my fault.
“Collins, look at me, baby,” I say, just loud enough that I hope she hears me. “It’s Creed. It’s me, Stardust.” She stills, and her eyes flash for just a moment before it’s gone again and she’s back to fighting our hold. Something clicked for just that moment, so I keep going as we enter the tarmac. “Come on, sweet girl.See me.”I nearly choke on the words as I move my hands to cup her tear-stained cheeks.
Asher tries to clean the blood from her chin, but Collins continues to thrash against me, her body now in fight mode. It reminds me of the time she’d attacked Riley, not truly seeing him but feeling the need to protect herself from whatever horrors had manifested within her mind. I hold her firmly yet gently and allow my thumbs to brush her bruised cheekbones in a whisper of a touch. “Feel me.”
At the sound of my voice, her eyes flutter closed, her body goes lax, and she slumps back into the stretcher. I watch as she timidly turns her head and presses her cheek further into my palm. All noise fades into the background when her beautiful green eyes open once more and look at me.Reallylook at me.
“Creed?”I don’t hear it, but I watch as her lips form around my name, and I swear it ignites a flame in my chest, a renewed inferno that’s ready to burn the world for her.
Asher says something in the background, but I can’t hear or see anything beyond the beautiful, strong girl in front of me,her eyes finally seeingmefor the first time. And I fucking hate myself that the first emotion shining in her eyes isn’t disdain or loathing. There’s confusion at the forefront, but the relief I see is something I know that I am entirely undeserving of.
Her lips form another word. “Real?”
My heart clenches painfully in my chest.
“Yeah, baby girl,” I give her a watery smile and slowly lower my forehead to her temple. I can’t stop the singular, choked-off laugh that escapes my lips. Her brows furrow for just a moment, as if she can’t distinguish whether this is reality or a dream. Pulling back, I stroke my hands over the top of her tangled hair and whisper, “I. Am. Real.”
But just as her lips begin to pull with the faintest of smiles—an incremental shock of happiness shining through the pain—it’s gone just as fast as her eyes roll back, and her head slumps to the side. I look up in time to see the medic re-capping her IV, an empty syringe in his gloved hand.
“What the fuck?!” I bellow at him, ready to throw him from the moving vehicle.
Fury burns through my veins, but he just answers matter-of-factly, “It’s a light sedative that should keep her out during the flight.”
“She recognized me, you fuckwit! She washere!”
“I can’t risk her falling into a violent episode and injuring herself or this one in the process.” He nods toward Riley, who now has a cannula placed beneath his nose, connected to a small machine that hums quietly in the small cabin space. “She had to be knocked out.”
I want to launch myself at the prick of a medic and punch him in his fucking face for taking that moment from me when I’d just gotten her back. So I do. He’s kneeling close enough to me that he doesn’t see my fist coming when it flies at his face. His head snaps back, and my already injured knuckles split beneaththe bandages, but I hardly feel it as I revel in the howl this asshole lets loose as his nose gushes blood.
Dad snaps my name from the front seat, while Jett shakes his head and Asher gives me a silentwhat the fuck was that forwhile handing the pussy a tissue for his face. Ignoring all of them, I look back to check on Riley, my heartrate kicking up when I take in just how hard his body is working to stay alive. His pallor is still sickly, but I can see from the monitor that his heart rate is steady again at least. There’s been too much happening in such a small space, and the pressure of it all is about to cause me to fully blow a gasket.
