Page 15 of Feed Your Fiends

“Have your contact recheck it,” I say, heading for the door.

“You forgot your coat,” Zaddy Zedd says like a proper father. “It’s chilly outside.”

“Bae needs it more.” At Bae’s arched brow, I clarify. “You know, to jack off with later.”

Elle

I wake up to a warm body beside me, but the make is all wrong. Instead of lean, corded muscle, the person’s ultra-slender besides a fleshy hip that’s pressed against my side.

“Disgusting,” a feminine voice hisses.

I blink my eyes open and stare at the blasian girl next to me. Her steely grey eyes are scanning a tray of overcooked eggs, five per cent orange juice and soggy white toast on the rolling table she’s pulled across the bed.Ourbed, apparently.

“Why the hell are you in bed with me?” I ask, sitting up. Not that it takes much effort. She’s already adjusted the back of the bed, so we’re mostly seated anyway.

As the words escape my dry lips, I lick them and get a mouthful of salty sweetness. It tastes sort of like pineapple. I love pineapple, but I don’t remember eating it or much of anything else since I came to this cursed hospital. Even swallowing is too painful. Everything is.

“The futon’s fucking up my back,” Rin says dismissively, spreading butter onto the toast. “Why the hell didn’t Zedd bring the food this time?”

My eyes snap from the tray to her murderously. “YouknewZedd was here? And you didn’t tell me…just like you didn’t tell me that Gant was real! That he wasn’t some figment of my drugged-up imagination.”

Rin’s been my plus one since I checked into the hospital four days ago if my time estimate is correct based on the weak sunlight streaming through the window.

She picks over the eggs, barely sparing me a glance. “Why would I? You weren’t fully coherent until now.”

I glance at the sparse tray again and eye the nearly grey eggs. Last time, it was stuffed with lasagna, a Caprese salad, and buttery garlic rolls. The time before that, it was loaded with a Belgian waffle as big as my head, with sliced strawberries topped with blueberries and dotted with whipped cream. I swore I’d imagined it. I swore Gant’s accomplices, fiends from the infernal regions, were just apparitions. I wanted them to be a dream, one I’d wake up from.

“Zedd’s been bringing me food, and you’ve been eating it,” I say slowly, accusatory as my blood overheats, though I don’t know why I’m surprised. It’s Rin, after all. We aren’t friends or even frenemies.

She’s an accomplice, someone good at scheming and strategising as we play this insane game I’ve finally accepted I can’t escape. Not yet. Because I believe Gant. I believe he won’t let his obsession go until I break it irrevocably.

Him raising the steaks by slaughtering my feet, my dreams, my escape from my shitty reality has awoken something feral in me. Something that’s doubled since he had the fucking audacity to slip into my bed and hold me so tenderly after what he’s done.

I’m no longer in my piteous, sad girl trance of wanting toleavefor good because I’m not finished here. I don’t want the quiet darkness.

I want to bathe in his blood.

“You weren’t going to eat it,” Rin huffs, pushing the rolling table away from the bed. “You could barely stay awake. Not that you didn’t try. I seriously think the doctors preferred to sedate you than deal with you.”

“Deal with me?” I ask incredulously. “You’re sharing my bed. Eating my food—”

“Oh, so it’s only cool when Gant does it? It’s a problem when I do it.” She rolls her eyes and shoves the toast into her mouth. “I thought he’d never leave. I hid in the bathroom for four freaking hours before falling asleep in the shower. Thank goodness he’d rather keel over than sit his precious ass on a semi-public toilet.”

I roll my tongue, sucking the salty-sweet taste off of it. “When did he leave?”As if I care.

“About three hours ago, before the sun came up. He spoke to the night nurse before he left. You’re being discharged at ten, and he’s coming to pick you up.”

“Like hell he is,” I mutter, my eyes flying to the clock again. I have less than an hour to get the hell out of Dodge.

Rin grins wickedly. “That’s the spirit. You did amazing last night.”

I freeze in utter shock at the compliment. Rin of all people is complimenting me?

“Gant believes that you hate him and that you need space. It had just the right amount of fury and tension. Step one is complete. Now, we temper for a few days before easing into step two with the feigned forgiveness. That way, it’ll feel natural, believable.”

“I wasn’t acting,” I say, wrinkling my brows. “Idohate him.”

She stares at me, head tilted. “Like I said, you were a lot to deal with. They’d sedate you to calm your hysteria and stop you from trying to get to your feet. Stop you from trying to dance to see if they really were fucked and not just a bad dream. And whenever you’d go night-night, you’d still yap and moan and you know who got you to shut the fuck up even when opioids couldn’t?”

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