Page 18 of Warrior

Reese has been trying to make eye contact, but I can’t look at him. My pupils reacted to the doctor’s light, I heard them all say that everything is normal. There’s a new bag of fluids hanging next to my shoulder, dripping through the IV stuck in my arm.

To flush out…

Something.

Everything mechanical keeps trudging along. Heart. Lungs. Eyelids.

The things that take effort are out of reach.

Reese sighs. A door closes.

Someone else comes to stand over the bed, his face swimming over mine. “Have to make this quick, Artemis. No time for pleasantries or inquisitions.”

He uncaps a syringe. The liquid is cold—colder than the fluids—as it floods into my bloodstream. The rushing euphoria follows.

A hand covers my mouth, blocking my groan.

“Madness,” he whispers in my ear.

His breath on my skin should make my skin crawl, but my body has been taken over by other sensations.

“We’re all mad, Artemis. When you get out of here, you know where to find me.”

I can’t.

I can’t think about what the fuck he’s talking about when I’m floating like this. I lose the sensation of gravity. Every brush of air against my skin is like a thousand fingers coaxing me to pleasure.

I’m lost in it, awake and somewhat aware but totally blissed out.

Another door opens, the light spilling across my bed, and then it clicks off. Reese doesn’t come back over. He returns to hisown bed, but I can’t tell if he’s looking at me. I don’t want him to see what I’m feeling.

I remain still and quiet, and his breathing eventually evens out.

I’m left… like this.

Two days later,I am given the green light to go home. The rush receded as the morning dawned, although I hadn’t slept. When the nurses came in for their rounds, I was able to focus on them. My brain unscrambled long enough to give them words, pieces of what had happened…

Saint pulls up to the curb. He circles around, offering his hands to me. I take them, my legs still a bit unsteady, and stand up out of the wheelchair. I get into the passenger seat and cross my arms over my chest.

I have bandages on my arm from the IV, many stitches to close up the knife wounds in my stomach and abdomen, and a headache the size of Texas.

I know what I need.

I just don’t know how to get it.

Yesterday, the doctors told me I was being drugged, and Saint followed it up that a now-fired nurse was to blame. They gave me something that reverses overdoses, and that’s how they woke me up. But the fact that it was a nurse who was giving me something…

How did Gabriel plant so many people around me?

Not just the nurse, but Kade, too.

Reese is already back at my condo. He was discharged yesterday, and I didn’t have the heart to send him away. He had to ditch his apartment because of me…

Or because of Kade?

Because Kade was searching for him.

Is he still? I mean—he set out to do what he wanted. He found Reese.

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