Page 84 of Feed Your Fiends

I shake the vision away.

There's no glass. No pain.

You took a painkiller ahead of time, ensuring you wouldn’t feel too much.

But my skin suddenly boils like peas ready to split open, and it does all at once, reopening dozens of stitched wounds.

The soft white lights turn a stark icy blue. In the mirror, my warped reflections look horrified. I follow their wide gazes to my feet and see a bloodbath. My knees give out and I fall hard onto my back. Suddenly, fingers are threading through my hair.

“What have you done!”Stassi’s voice shrieks through my skull with the pounding.

But Stassi isn’t here.

The therapist Gant hired said these flashbacks aren’t real, but they are. It happened.

It’s happening.

Fingers stroke through my hair and then arms embrace me, lifting me, but I’m not blinded by pain or those harsh lights dotted through the theatre’s ceiling.

Instead, I’m greeted by Gant’s painfully handsome face, a halo of ethereal white shining softly above him. His beautiful features aren’t twisted in panic and fear but calm concern.

“Dove.”

He sounds like he's underwater.

One moment, I’m cradled in his arms like a new bride, like Cinderella at her wedding… the next, I’m upright as he hooks my legs around his waist.

“Penthouse,” he says simply.

What?

I can feel his heartbeat against mine. It's quickening as he dances us around the room, but it's steady, and it's forcing my racing heart to sync and calm.

“We’re in the penthouse, Dovey. In my lair where no one can reach us.”

I cling to his neck tighter as he leaps, locking my feet behind his back.

“It's just you and me.”

We turn in tune to the music, his words as hypnotic as the soft beat.

“Just us.”

Just us.

Elle

He quickens his pace.

“There's no glass.” Another turn. “No blood.”

I gasp as he pushes my legs, forcing them to drop, but it’s the weight of the fall that jars me back to reality. I gaze down and see that my feet aren’t touching the floor. They’re hovering a few centimetres above Gant’s feet as he follows the choreography perfectly.

“Dance with me, Dove.”

Suddenly, the music is back.

It takes me a few seconds, but I do, grazing the tips of my toes against the floor as Gant does all the work. I just have to lift my legs at the right moment; it's more like I’m posing than dancing, but the fact that I’m not putting any weight on my feet is giving me more confidence. Eventually, I watch us in the mirror, enamoured.

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