As my head began to pound, I wiped the blood from my lip and steered him toward the nearest empty room to cry out the end of his marriage.
I wished Ruby were here. She was amazing with the tough love. Even if she couldn’t make Hank feel better about his relationship prospects, she could get him on his way with a word of encouragement and a bottle of wine before the Tylenol I hadn’t taken yet kicked in.
Instead, it took me hours to calm him down and wave him off home.
As much as I’d been looking forward to a liaison with the security staff, by the time I waved Hank off in his car, I only had enough energy left to drag my aching head onto the tour bus, swallow a couple of Tylenol dry and pass out on the bench seat near the kitchenette.
Darkness hada special quality to it when you were in an enclosed space. There was still a moon on most nights of the month, and even when cloud cover kept it from shining, there was the slight glow from the ambient light of the city. In houses, there was the glow of devices plugged into power outlets and the comforting noises that told you everything was right with the world.
As I opened my eyes, I could hear my breath bouncing back at me from a wall close to my face. I reached out a hand, praying for the softness of cushions under my fingers. Instead, there was a metal wall, cold and ungiving. My heart rate jumped as I followed the smooth surface upward to find a corner above myhead. I was trapped. The space seemed to shrink as I mapped out the surface above me with bent arms. If I turned on my side, my shoulder would almost touch the top. I reached above my head and whimpered as I encountered the same smooth surface there too.
“Help,” I choked out, my voice barely a wheeze as panic gripped my throat. That wouldn’t do.
“Help me!” I banged my fists against the surface above me.
Visions of coffins buried under miles of dirt drifted through my head as a primal scream tore from my throat. This was so much worse than the chest freezer. This was life or death, and the little girl who was trapped allied herself with the woman who couldn’t go back as we shouted at the unfairness of it all.
Hands reached for me, and I fought them off, desperate to escape whatever entity had come to take me away. They couldn’t have me. I deserved more.
Despite my struggles, my body slid backwards, the arms scooping me out of hell and into the light. My face was pressed into tattooed skin, and I took my first deep breath as the warmth registered against my cold fingers. The firm flesh beneath my cheek vibrated and, as my hearing came back online, the words “I’ve got you” repeated over and over in my ear.
Wrapping an arm around his neck, I buried my face in the hard chest and allowed myself to be carried to safety.
Chapter
Fourteen
Tobias
I’d been debatingwhether to take the Xanax bricks I scored off Lainey earlier in the day when the screaming started. Normally, my mantra was mind your own fucking business, but the distress in it called to the broken part of me.
That, and my brother started in on his usual shit. “Who the fuck put her in bed?”
“I did.” Otis’s face was screwed up tight, the confusion I usually felt written all over it. Of course it was. He hadn’t grown up the way Calix and I had. The way it seemed like Tatum might have, too.
“She’s claustrophobic, you asshole.”
While Calix once again showed the world how observant he was, I pushed past him and ripped open her curtain. In a full panic, she fought me, nails clawing at my hands as I got a good enough grip to pull her out of the tiny bedding space.
“I’ve got you,” I muttered, unsure what else to say as I struggled to keep her in my arms. Repeating the words over and over, I felt the moment she returned to us.
Her body relaxed, her head tucked in so I could feel her sigh against my skin as she looped an arm around my neck. Turning back to Calix, I gave him a helpless look. I was out of my depth. All I knew was that I couldn’t let her go.
“Take her in the back,” he said, gesturing toward the bedroom at the back of the bus.
“I didn’t know.” Otis’s voice was pure misery, but I ignored it as I moved through the tight space and laid her down on the big bed we generally took turns enjoying.
Crawling in beside her, I curled my body around her and stroked her hair off her forehead. Her lip was split, and there was the shadow of a bruise on the side of her nose.
When the hell had that happened?
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, rolling over and snuggling into my chest.
“Nothing to apologize for.”
She hummed and traced a finger over the apple I’d had tattooed on my shoulder. A noise at the door let me know Calix had followed, and before he could slip away, I held a hand out.
There was a time, back before we’d discovered music, before I’d discovered the power of self-medication, when I wouldn’t have doubted Calix would climb in to help me. I could have read it in his thoughts.
