Like the night before.
This time, though, Vaughn was asleep. Whereas I’d been lying flat and under the covers, Vaughn was sitting up, his back against the headboard. His hands were folded in his lap. On the nightstand was a gun sitting on top of a laptop computer.
Had I blacked out? Was Vaughn actually right about all that?
I shook my head.
No, I was okay… I was on my way back to being normal. Well, normal enough.
Dante was so proud of how well I was doing. I could see it in his eyes every time I did something like leave for work or make a decision about something.
Vaughn was wrong.
He just had to be.
I struggled to remember the events of the day. It took a moment but things finally became clearer as my breathing evened out. I’d stopped talking to Vaughn after he’d said those things to me. I wasn’t sure how many hours we’d driven for after that, but when he’d asked me what I wanted to eat for lunch, then eventually dinner, I’d politely told him I wasn’t hungry.
Fortunately, he hadn’t tried to make me eat because I wasn’t sure I would have been able to survive the humiliation of throwing up in front of the man twice in twenty-four hours.
It had once again been dark when he’d pulled off the interstate. I’d had no idea where we were and I’d been too tired to care. I’d only heard Vaughn briefly say the house belonged to a friend of his and that we were safe there as he’d shown me to the bedroom. I’d made use of the bathroom and then I’d crawled into the bed and couldn’t remember anything after that.
But luckily only because I’d been asleep.
Not because I’d blacked out.
Because I was normal… I didn’t have that thing Vaughn said I did.
He was wrong.
He just was.
I glanced at him, then the clock on the nightstand. It was just after three in the morning. There was a small lamp on the nightstand that was turned on, but it didn’t offer much light. I could see that the room we were in seemed a little more modern than the room we’d spent the previous night in, but it didn’t look particularly fancy. There was what looked like an old-fashioned fan on the dresser that was turned on and made a soft whirring sound that broke up the silence of the room.
I turned to look at the nightstand on my side of the bed and stilled at the sight of a small bottle of chocolate milk sitting there.
It was open and empty.
I vaguely remembered Vaughn stopping at a gas station shortly before we’d gotten to the house, but I hadn’t noticed him buying the milk.
And when had I drunk it?
I couldn’t remember that.
God, what was wrong with me? Why did everything seem so muddled in my head?
I glanced at Vaughn again. I wanted to ask him if things would ever just go back to the way they’d been before those men had grabbed me. I hadn’t exactly been living a dream life but considering all that had happened and compared to what I was going through now, I might as well have been on top of the world.
I missed Dante.
And Magnus.
And Matty.
I felt tears threaten but refused to let them fall. My eyes hurt so bad from all the crying that if I shed even one more tear, I’d probably never be able to close my eyes again.
I wondered if Vaughn would let me call Dante again in themorning. My brother had to be going crazy with worry and Magnus would be doing his best to keep Dante calm. Vaughn shifted slightly but it wasn’t until he whispered, “I’m sorry, Aleks” that I turned to look at him, fully expecting him to be watching me.
But he was still asleep.
