This is my fault.
All my fucking fault.
Just as I stand, muffled shouting arises, and I feel several sets of hands grab my body at once and shove me back down. I fight against their hold, continuing to roar, but my blindness works against me.
Straps circle around my wrists and chest, imprisoning me to the hospital bed.
But I’m too far gone.
Despite the frantic hands attempting to hold me down beneath the binds, my legs swing over the bed and I stand, straining against the weight threatening to take me back down.
“Jesus,
Zade!”
My chest heaves and my vision becomes spotty, allowing me only snippets of my blurred surroundings. Four frightened nurses and Jay crowding me, eyes wide and faces pale as I stand before them with a nearly two-hundred-pound bed strapped to my back.
I am…
I am no longer a man-only a beast succumbing to primal instinct. I am annihilation.
“Sir, please calm down!” one of the nurses pleads shrilly, her green eyes nearly black with fear. I pant, my chest tight from lack of oxygen and the strap straining against my chest.
I can’t, I can’t. She’s gone because of me.
How am I supposed to fucking live with that?
I shake my head, my energy depleting steadily. Words evade me and I stumble, struggling to right myself.
“Unstrap him,” Jay demands sharply, already aiming for the one secured around my chest. He waits until one of the nurses unclips them from my hands before he releases the buckle. The bed falls to the ground with a deafening boom.
Security guards come barreling into the room, skidding across the cluttered tile when they see the absolute carnage.
Jay gets in my face and shouts, “Quit acting like a fucking lunatic and get it together! Trashing a hospital isn’t going to save her.”
My vision clears, and the wreckage becomes apparent.
Shit.
That potent fury is still present, spewing from my pores, but I manage to keep it in check. Enough that it just steams.
“What the hell…” a security guard says, his young face painted with utter disbelief.
“He’s okay,” a nurse huffs out. She’s an older woman with short blonde hair and large wire-rimmed glasses that take up half her face.
She approaches me like one would a crocodile with its mouth wide open, her hand steady as she grabs my arm and lifts it.
A tiny trail of blood leaks down my arm from where the IV was ripped out, stemming from a tear in my skin no longer than half an inch.
“That… that is a nasty wound, sir. You better sit down so I can fix you up before you keel over and die where you stand,” she orders, her voice stern as she points me towards the skewed bed.
It’s just a scratch, and we both know that, but I sit anyway. I watch her as she grabs a bandage from a cupboard and begins to blot the blood.
A few of the guards question Jay and one of the nurses while the other two rush from the room, red and shaking. I can’t manage to feel an ounce of guilt.
Not when there’s a black hole in my chest where Addie once took up residence.
“Want to talk about it?” she asks quietly, dabbing up the blood with a piece of gauze.
“No,” I mutter.
“Well,” she titters, sticking a small Band-Aid on my arm next. It has dinosaurs on it, and all I can do is stare. If I didn’t feel so empty, I’d laugh at how pathetic it looks.
“You can either tell me or tell the police. And I know you’re a big, burly man-you’ve gone out of your way to prove that part-and police officers probably don’t scare you, but I’d rather you spend the rest of your time in this hospital not handcuffed to a bed.”
I pause. “I’ll just stand up again and walk out with it.”
She looks up at me, and then a chuckle slips past her pink lips. “That’s fair. You have your heart broken?”
I raise a brow, and though she has to work to swallow, she doesn’t relent. I soften my face and sigh. Right now, I appreciate her candor.
“You could say that.” I sniff, rolling my arm to look at the Band-Aid again. They’re green T-Rexes, mouths open in a roar. I imagine I didn’t look much different not two minutes ago.
“She was taken. Kidnapped.”
The nurse gasps, quiet and soft, but it feels like a shout when I’m so hollow.
“It’s my fault. I didn’t…” I trail off, deciding it’s best not to tell her that I didn’t kill a man who I should’ve, a long time ago. “I need to get her back.”
She blows out a shaky breath and straightens. “I’ll make sure no charges are pressed so you can save her.” She points to the Band-Aid. “Maybe no more life-threatening injuries, yeah?”
I grace her with a strained smile, and assure, “I’ll pay for the damages.”
“That would be appreciated,” she says.
I nod and turn my attention to the ground. The white tile blurs as I feel her presence leave, replaced with Jay’s.
“I know where he is,” he murmurs.
I look up at him, murder in my eyes. He tightens his lips, knowing I’m not going to settle down.
“Let your body heal, man. You’ll be useless otherwise. We’ll get him, and find where they took her the second you’re not broken anymore. You may be able to move now, but the next few days are going to hit hard, especially now that you walked around with a big-ass bed on your back. Your very injured back, might I add.”
“The longer I wait, the more likely she is to disappear. To suffer and have unimaginable things happen to her,” I argue through clenched teeth. The muscle in my jaw is nearly ripping through my flesh from how hard I’m grinding them.
He bends down and puts his hands on my shoulders, dipping his chin until he catches my eyes. I glare at him, wanting to go back to not being able to hear or see anything.
New Book: Back Home to Marry Off Myself
Loredana’s father left the family for his mistress, leaving them to fend for themselves abroad. When life was at its toughest, her father showed up with “good news” after 8 years of absence: To marry off Loredana to a paralyzed son of the wealthy Mendelsohn family.