I try to move, but my body barely obeys. My limbs feel like lead. Unresponsive to my desperate desires to escape from whatever monster that’s taken me.
A shadowy figure moves at the edge of my vision—an arm. Tattoos. Lines and shapes that my foggy mind struggles to place, but fails to. It’s there. Just out of reach.
As hard as I try to fight this haze that has a hold on me, I lose the battle.
Darkness takes over, pulling me down into the depths of Hell.
Nothingness swallows me whole.
But it doesn’t last.
My body battles a cycle of fading in and out of consciousness, never fully waking or gaining the ability to take control of my limbs.
Flickers of awareness return in waves—brief, broken moments of half-waking. A distant creak of floorboards. A voice murmuring just out of reach, low and indistinct.
Slowly my eyelids flutter open and I strain my eyesight, trying to take in my surroundings, to figure out where I am. It’s familiar. But not. Shapes move slowly around me, just out of vision. Panic rises as my heart races.
I press my eyes together firmly, count to ten under my breath, then open them again. I try to force clarity into my vision so I can make out where I am. Who took me?
Then—hands appear. A figure leans over me, their face hidden from me by some type of mask. I tense, fingers twitching in protest, yet unable to do anything but lay limp.
A cloth hovers over my face.
“No… wait—” I mumble, but the words barely form before the rag returns, smothering me again. The same sweet scent. I fade into darkness again, faster this time.
Darkness.
A longer stretch, quieter.
Then—a faint pull upward. The world returns in fragments. Cold air on my skin. My temples are thudding. My breath is shallow, uneven.
I force my eyes open again, sluggish and heavy. A pale, dim light flickers above me, casting faint shadows on the walls around the room. I can barely move as my head falls to the side.
A figure sits nearby. I can’t make out the face. They’re shielded just inside the darkness of the room. But an arm is visible, stretched across a knee, fingers absently tapping against the denim fabric. The skin is inked—bold lines, faded edges, a pattern I know. One I’ve seen.
A tattoo.
I know that arm. That tattoo. That design.
My breath hitches.
Recognition cracks through my foggy brain like lightning.
I try to speak, but the words get caught somewhere between my mind and my lips.
I blink again, fighting the pull to sleep. Swallowing hard, I finally manage to get out one word.
“Why?”
Chapter 27
Roxy
Forty-five minutes earlier
MyheartleapswhenI pull into the driveway and see Felicity’s car still there. Earlier than I thought I’d see her back. Things must not have gone well. My heart aches knowing that she’s going to be upset. She loves Ezra. I don’t need to be a psychic to know that.
I stayed out longer than I planned to. Not wanting to be sitting alone in the quiet of the house while obsessing over whether or not my girl is returning back home, happy, or broken.
