Page 22 of Liberating Lily

Someone had taken blood from her. What else had they taken? What else had they done?

She stood on shaky legs and glanced around. Ouch. She had to get out. She dismissed her last disastrous escape attempt as she rushed over toward the double doors to her left.

Immediately, the sound of an alarm went off.

She froze, crouching with her arms over her ears. It was all too much. She couldn’t cope.

Make it stop. Please, make it stop.

As soon as the alarm went off, he knew what had happened.

He was in the kitchen preparing a light dinner. He’d planned to wake her up as soon as it was ready. He hadn’t liked Michaela’s comment that she looked thin. So he didn’t want her missing another meal.

Turning off the stove, he rushed up the stairs to the bedroom. Maybe he shouldn’t have left her, but she’d seemed like she was in a really deep sleep.

When he ran into the bedroom, he came to a sudden stop as he saw she wasn’t in the bed. She couldn’t have gotten outside as all of the doors and windows were centrally locked. He’d done that when he’d carried her back from her earlier attempt to escape.

They could only be unlocked by him.

But it still caused him a moment of surprise and worry.

Then he heard a whimpering noise above the screaming alarm. Shit, he needed to turn that off.

Pulling out his phone, he brought up the app and turned off the alarm. Then he moved around the other side of the bed to find her by the window.

She was sitting on the floor with her legs curled up against her and her hands over her ears, rocking back and forth.

Fuck.

He was doing a fucking terrible job of taking care of her.

“Lily? Lily, it’s me. Lily, can you hear me?”

She didn’t react to his presence at all. Instead, she just kept rocking back and forth, back and forth. Walking over, he sat down in front of her.

Should he touch her? Would that make things worse? Could things get worse than they actually were? All he knew was that he couldn’t leave her like this.

Reaching over, he grabbed hold of her and lifted her into his lap. She sat there stiffly.

And then she started to fight.

It caught him completely by surprise.

And she escaped his hold before he could recover. He hadn’t expected that from Lily. But as she took off out of the bedroom, he finally got up and raced after her.

Fuck, he was probably scaring her more.

But he couldn’t let her run down the stairs in this condition. He managed to wrap his arm around her waist just as she reached the top of the stairs.

Who knew what would have happened to her if she’d tried to run down the stairs. She could have slipped and fallen, could have broken her neck.

Fuck. Fuck.

Unable to remain standing, he sat on the top step with her on his lap. To his surprise, she no longer fought him. She just sat there sobbing quietly.

“Baby, baby, it’s all right. You’re okay. I have you. You’re all right.”

“What’s wrong with me?” she cried. “What’s wrong with me?” She smacked the palms of her hands into her forehead.