Or maybe I did cry. After I upchucked on him again. This puking shite was wild.
Don’t like it.
Cam cleaned me up, but urgency flared behind his kindness, and somehow I saw it and reeled myself in enough to listen as he gave me the good news. “Your brain’s fine. No bleeding. You have a hardcore concussion, and you need to lie the fuck down and stay there for a month, but you can’t do that here. We need to leave the area in case the others haven’t got shit done in time to avoid the feds.”
The others.
Viktor.
“He’s fine.” Cam read me. “At least he was when I left him, apart from being scared as shit for you. But we need to get out of here, and that means a long drive while your brain feels like it’s bouncing around your skull. It’s gonna hurt, brother, and I’m so fucking sorry about that.”
I’m so fucking sorry. He’d said that already, I was sure of it. But more than that, I had nothing beyond the fact that I trusted him. If Cam said we needed to go, I was right there with him.
In theory.
In reality, I should’ve heeded him more when he’d warned me how much this shit was going to hurt.
He got me in the van, propped up on the seat beside him. We made it a mile down the road from wherever I’d had my brain scanned before I got sick, and my body spent the rest of the journey making up for the fact that I’d lived my entire life blissfully unaware of what this felt like.
It grew dark.
We swapped vehicles and Cam changed my clothes.
Or maybe it was me.
At one point, I was pretty sure he injected me with something. That he warned me beforehand, giving me every chance to stop him. But I had nothing, and life just happened to me until whatever shitbox we were travelling in finally eased to a stop.
“Where are we?”
Cam squeezed my hand. “Somewhere safe. There’s some steps, but once we’re inside, you can chill, okay? Let us take care of you.”
Viktor.
“Soon, brother. Soon.”
Cam helped me out of the vehicle. Even with his help, keeping myself upright was a fucking joke, and I didn’t raise my gaze from the strange boots that had appeared on my feet until we got inside and reached a staircase that smelt of black cherries and lemon.
Jean had a stroke five years ago. The first sign she knew something was wrong was that she could smell my long-deadgrandpa’s dodgy baccy. Was that what this was? Or did I just really need a fucking cig?
I thought about it. Wished I hadn’t. But I’d run out of shit to puke up, and I held myself together up two flights of stairs and into an apartment I’d definitely never seen before.
Cam got me to a bed. Spinning, I lay down, lost in the fresh plaster on the ceiling, the one construction job that didn’t make me want to hurl bricks at people. There was a lumpy bit by the light fitting. It annoyed me, until it didn’t, and the pain in my head came back full force.
A wild animal groaned.
I think it was me, and as boots thundered somewhere close by, I legit believed I was dying.
Or that I wished I was dead.
I groaned again.
Someone rubbed my arm. “Rest, brother. It’s the best way to heal.”
Fuck, I wanted to. I was so tired my body felt like I was sinking through the bed. But pain kept me awake, dancing a merry dance with the brutal dizziness still spinning me out. The inability to keep still, and the fear for Viktor that amped up every minute I spent away from him. It didn’t matter how many times Cam—or maybe someone else, told me he was okay, how much I believed them, I couldn’t fucking settle. I couldn’t fuckingbreatheuntil finally, what felt like days later, the bed dipped beside me, orange blossom filled my lungs, and sweet lips grazed my aching head.
“Asher, I am here. You can sleep now.”
[ 31 ]
