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She was wearing my jacket.
Until that moment, I’d honestly thought I was in hell—the thirst, the hunger, the incessant pain, and the hours I’d spent lying awake in the dark, listening to this girl’s muffled sobs and chattering teeth. I hadn’t been able to see her, or speak to her, or get up and walk to her, but I could hear her.
The Devil had made sure of that.
When I couldn’t fucking take it anymore, I’d rolled onto my good side and used my forearm and legs to drag and push myself, meter by meter, toward the source of the sound. The pain was so intense that I would have vomited if there’d been anything in my stomach, but the agony didn’t stop me. It only fueled me more.
Pain had been a way of life in the Kletka. They inflicted it to remind me of their power, and I fought through it to remind them of mine. For five years, pain had been my constant companion, but those five years had been nothing compared to the few hours I spent listening to that redhead suffer.
When I’d finally dragged myself over to the boulders where her tiny body was huddled in a ball, I’d collapsed at her feet, unable to see through the blinding agony I’d just inflicted upon myself. I sensed her body stiffen next to me, heard her yelp in fear, and hoped for a moment that she would shoot me like she’d promised—put me out of my misery—but I knew I wouldn’t get that lucky.
I was in hell after all.
The world threatened to spin out from under me as I pulled off my jacket and shirt and draped them over her trembling body. They were stiff with dried blood and smelled like death, but I knew they were warm. I was on fucking fire.
Once her shivering stopped, I pushed and dragged my worthless body back over to my side of the cave, bile searing the back of my throat from the pain. Panting and sweating and shaking from exertion, I crumbled against the stone wall and waited for the relief to follow. The triumph. I’d thought my act of defiance would feel like a fuck you to Satan himself, but instead, I could practically hear him laughing at me from his throne of lies.
Because silence, it turned out, was the worst torture of all.
“Ya scared the shite outta me last night,” the girl said, her head still bowed as she untied the shirt wrapped around my waist. “I thought you were gonna …” Her shoulders shuddered as her voice trailed off, and after the nightmare I’d just had, I knew exactly what she’d been afraid of.
The fact that she thought I might be capable of something like that hurt worse than being shot. It was like she didn’t know me at all, but I knew her. At least, I felt like I did. I knew her smile, even though I hadn’t seen it in this place. I knew the exact color of her eyes—even though she wouldn’t look at me—and I knew that she pursed her lips when she was thinking or trying not to laugh.
“You shouldn’t have done that, ya know.” She kept her eyes down, speaking to herself as she doused what looked like a pair of pink cotton shorts with Jameson. “Draggin’ yourself across the cave like that. You were finally startin’ to heal, and now, look at ya.”
Something wasn’t right. The longer I watched her work, the more differences I began to notice between this girl and the one in my dreams. Her hair color was wrong, her attitude, even the way she smelled—salty instead of sweet, like seawater. Maybe she wasn’t the same girl after all. Maybe she was an imposter, created by the Devil himself just to torture me.
I didn’t know where I was, who I was, or if I was alive or dead, but I knew better than to trust a fucking soul, human or demon, who wasn’t her.
And this girl was not her.
I hissed through my teeth as she pressed the whiskey-soaked fabric against the gaping hole in my side.
“But thanks anyway,” she muttered. “Ya probably have no idea what I’m sayin’, but … what ya did last night was … really nice.”
Then, she glanced back and forth between the shirt that had been wrapped around my waist and the fabric she was holding against my wound. “Em … shite. How do I … I need a third hand.”
I placed my hand on top of hers, wincing from that simple movement, and the girl gasped in surprise.
“You understand English?”
I nodded, gazing at her downcast face, the thick lashes fanned out over her freckled cheekbones, the way my sleeves swallowed her hands as she worked. She wasn’t my girl, but she was just as beautiful.
It felt like a trick.
Sliding her fingers out from under mine, she set to work, tying the bloodstained shirt from the day before around my waist to hold the new bandage in place.
“What’s your name?”
I opened my mouth to tell her, but nothing came out. It was as if my lips and tongue had forgotten how to form words. I could at least hear them in my head again. That was an improvement. My confusion was beginning to lift, but …
I groaned in frustration and scrubbed a hand over my broken fucking skull. I couldn’t remember what had happened. My entire life was just … gone.
“It’s okay,” she said, placing a hand on my bare shoulder before turning her attention to the wound on the side of my head.
Her touch was so gentle. No one had touched me like that since … well, I couldn’t fucking remember when. But it made something in my chest throb worse than the head wound she was dabbing with alcohol.
“There was a woman in our town,” she said, still avoiding my gaze, “the wife of a fisherman. She slipped at the harbor and hit her head so hard she couldn’t remember a thing for days. Not even how to talk, other than curse words, which was pretty funny ’cause she was such a God-fearin’ woman. They thought she might have brain damage, but come next Sunday, she was back at church, singin’ in the choir like nothin’ had happened.”
