Lost In The Dark (‘Lost’ #1)

CHAPTER 20

ADDY

It was late by the time we all got home. It had been almost twelve hours since I left for the park that morning with Jordan and I was exhausted.

Asher had insisted that I needed to eat something, and he and Adam had set to work making grilled cheese for everyone, while Jordan and Eli started going through the numerous pills I had been given, and discussing when each should be taken. I knew I should care, and help, but the truth was, I just couldn’t find the will to.

I was zombie like as we sat down to eat together. The guys were chatting, but I couldn’t have told you what about. All that was swirling through my head was the fact that I had all of those pills to take on a daily basis to manage something that monster senator had done to me. The pain of those currents being charged through that cage and straight into me, from the memory I had recovered, was haunting me, as was the face of that sadistic psycho as he had smiled while torturing me.

“Addy, try to eat a little more, please. You’ve barely eaten all day and you have these meds to take,” Eli prompted, pulling me from the images that were pulling me down further and further.

I didn’t have it in me to answer, so I just nodded and took another bite, the food feeling and tasting like cardboard in my mouth.

I managed to choke down half a sandwich, which seemed to settle Eli, and the others down, then I numbly swallowed down the half dozen tablets Jordan handed me one at a time. I didn’t know what they were or what they did. I didn’t want to know. I just wanted to pretend none of that day had happened in the hope it would also block out all it was bringing back with it.

Eli walked me up to my room when I said that I was tired. He offered to stay with me, but I told him I was fine and just needed a little space. I knew he hated to leave me, especially when he was still worried about what had happened that day, but I just needed him to go. I needed them all to leave me that night. I had needed them all so much since I got to that house. Asher and Eli had been with me every single night, there to soothe me after nightmares and make me feel safe and loved, but that night I didn’t need that. I didn’t know what I needed. I felt completely lost, if I were honest, just like Asher had said earlier. I didn’t know how to even begin to pick up the pieces of myself and find a way to make them into anything worthwhile. I didn’t even know if I wanted to in that moment.

I stripped off my clothes and climbed into the steaming hot shower, then sank to my knees and just started to sob. I had tried so hard, since the first day I woke in that hospital with no memories of the last two years, to push on and keep going. Plenty had knocked me back in the weeks since, and I rarely felt like I was winning the battle, but I kept on trying. I wanted to be strong and brave and tough, and all of the other things the guys all continuously told me I was, but the truth was, I just wasn’t any of those things and pretending would only ever get me so far.

I was on the edge, I realized; the edge of that abyss that kept on opening up beneath me and trying to consume me whole. I was clinging to the edge and trying not to fall into the darkness, but that night, after what had happened and what I had found out, I wondered why exactly I was bothering to try and cling on to the edge at all.

I had been broken by traffickers and sick monsters who had kidnapped, drugged, sold, raped, tortured, and abused me. I didn’t even remember a quarter of that time, so whatever was to come back to me next was nothing but more terror to further destroy me. I was weak and falling apart at the seams. Now, even my body had failed me – that too broken by what they had done to me. It was enough. It was more than I could take and I just couldn’t find it in me to believe I should keep hanging on.

Eventually I literally crawled from the shower and wrapped a towel around myself. I felt utterly fractured, my thoughts in a complete mess and becoming darker and darker with every passing moment. Even though I knew I should pull myself out of it, I just couldn’t.

“What are you doing?” I lifted my head at the strange voice and found Karen stood over me. She was older than me by a good few years, but she still had an incredible body. She shared the room at the club with me and two other girls. She wasn’t a friend. The girls there didn’t have ‘friends.’ They were all like me, being held against their will, so they didn’t trust anyone enough to form any kind of bond, but Karen had been decent to me since I got there. She was one of the only people I could talk with.

She’d told me she’d been there for over five years, which terrified me. I had been there two months and it had completely obliterated who I thought I was.

“I took them from that last guy,” I admitted as I held up the pill bottle I was clutching. Vicodin. The bottle was over half full and I was pretty sure if I took them all I would finally find some peace.

“You got the guts to do that?” Karen asked, not even looking shocked I sat contemplating suicide. It was hardly surprising, I guessed. I was sure girls took their own lives at the first opportunity they got in that hell hole.

“I can’t do this anymore,” I whispered as tears filled my eyes. I had hardly allowed myself to cry in the time I’d been there. I’d tried to stay strong as June had told me to, and focused on the fact the police had to discover this place soon, and come in to rescue me; to save us all from the nightmare we were being forced into. It was a delusion, but the only thing that got me through each time I was roughly shoved into one of those rooms with some sadistic creep who got off on raping a terrified woman. It was the only thing that got me through the ordeal of being torn to pieces every time they touched me.

But after two months even I was starting to realize it really was a delusion. No one was coming to save me, and without the precious pills in my hand my life would only ever consist of pain and fear. I couldn’t live that way. I refused to. It wasn’t like I had some amazing life or family to live for anyway. It would be better this way. I could finally find some peace in death – something I had never truly found in life.

“You sh-should go,” I sniffled as I opened the pill bottle and poured the little pills into my hand. “I don’t want you to get into trouble.”

I doubted the men who guarded and controlled us would care that I was dead, but it would cost money, and that never went down well in that place. The beatings doled out by the guards were brutal and usually ended up with the men taking what they wanted from you before they locked you in a cold room alone, bleeding and beaten half to death.

“You should have done it quicker,” Karen told me, then she was gone. I didn’t know what she meant, but I was done having any doubt. I had to end things. I had to end this torture. I had nothing left to live for. I didn’t want to end my life that way – feeling so irreparably broken and alone, but I also couldn’t live in terror anymore, being abused and beaten at every opportunity. I sobbed as I studied the small pills in my hand, knowing they would take my life quickly and easily. I didn’t want to give up, but it was the only way I believed I could ever find some peace.

But as I moved to take the first handful, my hand was wrenched upwards violently and when I turned to look behind me, one of the huge guards was standing over me. Karen stood in the doorway watching, a sad smile on her face. She had told him, I realized.

“Why?” I cried as the guard wrenched me to my feet. Karen just shook her head, then walked away.

“Stupid bitch!” The guard hissed as he shook me violently until I dropped the pills, then he landed the first blow to my stomach.

I gasped as I took in a huge breath of air and slammed my eyes open. I could still feel the pain of the blow as tears ran down my cheeks. The pain I had felt in the flashback sat heavily in my heart and in my mind. The emptiness, the despair, and the feeling that I just couldn’t go on any longer.

It was no coincidence that memory had come back to me in that moment, because I knew I was feeling almost as lost as I had back then, all those months ago.

“Addy?” I looked through the open bathroom door and into my bedroom. The door was locked so no one could come in.

“I’m okay, Asher,” I called back hoping to appease him.

“We’re all going to bed. Are you sure about being alone tonight? I can sit with you.”

“I’m sure. Good night,” I told him, trying to keep my voice as steady as I could.

I stayed on the bathroom floor, the cold making me shiver as I sat covered with nothing but a now wet towel. I listened as Eli and Asher went into their rooms on either side of mine. Adam and Jordan had their rooms on the other side of the house.

I’d like to say I started to gather myself and calm down, but I didn’t. I was spiraling and I didn’t know how to stop or even slow it. My mind slipped from my control once again, and the memories I had recovered played one after the other, mixed with the doctor telling me the damage to my heart could have been caused by repeated electrocution.

I tried to focus on other things like my amazing brothers, or on Adam and Jordan and how good they were to me. I remembered my moment with Adam, when we had almost kissed, or the conversation with Jordan earlier, when he told me he felt something for me. I tried to focus on the good because deep down I knew those were the things I had left in my life to cling to, but the darkness was just so thick and strong, and it refused to let me go.

I was scaring myself, I realized. I was terrified the darkness was going to take me back to that point in my flashback when all I wanted was for everything to just stop.

Hours had passed by the time I pulled on some clothes and slipped silently from my room. It was a crazy decision, and yet it was the only thing I could focus on. I needed help before I fell any deeper and there was only one person who had any chance of understanding the state I had found myself in.

When I got downstairs it was dark and silent. I slipped on my boots, not bothering to lace them and left the house through the front door.

Outside snow was falling heavily and the wind was bitterly cold, but none of it really registered as I put my head down, crossed my arms over my chest and forged on towards the garden. I almost ran through it, trying not to trip in my unlaced boots and the deep snow. Tears were running down my face and making me even colder as I moved with just one thought. I needed help and I was pretty sure only one person would get that.

Kane’s cottage, which was actually a two story modern house, was in the very back corner of the vast garden. As I got closer I saw lights on inside and that just spurred me on. I ran down the small path that led up to the door and just as I lifted my hand to knock, the door was pulled open.

“Addy? What the hell?” he gasped as he stood staring at me open mouthed and confused. He was bare chested, dressed in a pair of checked pajama pants and nothing else.

“C-can I come in?” I asked shakily.

“Yes, hurry. Where’s your damned coat?” he grumbled as he stepped back and allowed me inside. “You do realize it’s three A.M. What are you doing?”

Inside the house was toasty warm and there was dim lighting. We were stood in the entrance hall, a staircase behind where Kane stood ranting at me.

I stepped out of my snow covered boots, my feet frozen and wet inside of them, then looked up at Kane shakily.

“I’m sorry. I…I didn’t know where else to go. I…I need help Kane, please,” I whimpered, trying hard not to cry, but failing. “Please. I know you hate me…but just for tonight can we just pretend? Please? I d-don’t know what else to…to do. You understand. I need you to understand.” I stood before him, broken and completely vulnerable, just praying he wouldn’t turn me away.

“Understand what?” he asked as he stepped a little closer, but still left a distance between us.

“This!” I cried as I hit my head angrily. “It w-won’t stop and I…I’m scared…scared I’ll do something that I c-can’t take back.” By the end of the last word I was crying too hard to go on. A cry of pain burst from me, refusing to be held back any longer and I sank back against the wall.

“Please…I won’t tell anyone. We d-don’t h-have to be…be friends. I just…I n-need…” I was crying too hard to even finish the sentence, so I gave up and just buried my face in my hands as my body racked with my deep, desperate sobbing.

“Hey, it’s okay. I’m here…right here. I’ve got you, okay? I’ve got you now,” he said gently. I looked up through my tears, my whole body shaking, and Kane was there. He pulled me into his arms and I clung to him like I was drowning and he was my life line. As he swept me up and guided my legs so they wrapped around his waist I felt like he could see all of my fractured, dented, and broken pieces and he was somehow holding every single one of them. He cradled me against him and I just held on as so much pain poured from me.

KANE

I had been alerted the second she opened the front door of the house, and had been watching her on the cameras as I sped downstairs to pull on my coat and boots to get out there and see what exactly she was up to now. I had wondered if she were sleepwalking, but then she had turned in the direction of my home with so much purpose, and I had just stood frozen, watching as she got closer and closer, debating whether I could even open the door to her. My fear had been that I would do something I couldn’t take back if I did, like drag her into my arms, kiss the hell out of her, then terrify her by dragging her to my fucking bed.

But of course I had opened the door. She was out there in shorts and a thin t-shirt, with her boots not even laced. Even I wasn’t enough of a prick to leave her to freeze out there.

Now she was in my arms, holding onto me so tight I could hardly breathe. She was in pieces and her comment about doing something she couldn’t take back terrified me. Was she talking about taking her life? Had things gotten that dark for her?

I fucking hated myself for keeping my distance from her at that moment. I knew she had Asher and Eli who loved her and would do anything to care for her, and Adam and Jordan who seemed to have feelings for her. They were all in that house and it seemed there was nothing they wouldn’t do to help her, but they didn’t get it like I did. That was what she meant when she said I would understand. She saw her own darkness reflected in me. She saw all of my fucked up demons and she knew I would get where she had fallen to. That was why she was at my door, even though she thought I hated her. That was why she was desperate enough to come to me.

I was such a fucking asshole! If I’d have just pulled my head out of my ass and been there for her, instead of hiding like a fucking pussy, she would have come to me before things became this bad. I had fucked up and I knew it. I had told myself I needed to be there for her, then I had stayed as far away as I possibly could, all because I was scared of my feelings for her. It was no wonder she thought I hated her.

I sank down into the armchair closest to the fire, which I had lit earlier in the evening, and settled her so she was straddling my thighs and pressed against my front. She was shaking like a pneumatic drill in my arms and she was almost hoarse from crying.

“Talk to me, pretty girl,” I pleaded as I pushed some of her wild, and slightly damp hair from her face and then cupped my hands around her cheeks. She looked up and her eyes were glowing red from crying. I wondered how long she had been in this way. My guess was the last few hours at least.

“I…I tried to…to kill myself,” she whispered so quietly I barely heard her.

“What?” I gasped as I looked her over again. Had I missed something? But she wasn’t bleeding and her pupils weren’t enlarged. “Did you take something, Addy?” I asked, trying to appear calm, but losing my shit on the inside. My car was around the front of the property and it would take me vital minutes to get there if she had done something foolish.

“No,” she shook her head. “I mean before…when I was in that…that club. I had another flashback,” she whispered. She looked so exhausted, her eyes heavy and her body leaning heavily into me, not that she weighed a damned thing. “I st-stole some pills. I wanted to die, Kane.”

“But you didn’t do it?”

“No,” she shook her head as she wiped at her tears. “I…I tried. I should have been faster. He stopped me and hurt me.”

“I’m so sorry, Addy, but I’m not sorry you didn’t die. I hate what you had to endure, but I’m so thankful to have you here with me right now,” I told her honestly.

“But y-you don’t like me? You told me…you said you’re not my friend?” she asked so innocently it physically hurt me.

“I was being an ass that day. I don’t hate you.”

“You don’t?”

“Of course I don’t. I feel too much for you if anything,” I sighed.

“Too much?”

“I like you, sweet girl, far more than I should. I barely even know you, and yet I can’t stop thinking about you. It’s like you pull me to you like a magnet and I don’t know how to deal with that.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t…don’t mean to p-pull you…like that,” she stuttered and I couldn’t help but smile. She was just too damned cute and so fucking innocent.

“My job is to protect you, Addy. I gave Asher my word I’d do that with my life if necessary, and I can’t let him down. I owe him so much. But I can’t do that and have these feelings for you. That’s why I’ve tried to keep my distance.”

“Oh,” she nodded. “I…I get it. I’m sorry I came here. I just…it was getting so noisy in here.” She tapped her head and I grabbed her hand, afraid she’d hit herself like she did at the door.

“Tell me the truth. Did you mean suicide when you said you were scared you’d do something you couldn’t take back?”

Her eyes met mine and she looked so unsure. I knew I hadn’t helped by telling her I needed to maintain a distance. She had come to me when she was at her darkest and I was just being an ass again. “It’s okay, Addy. Tell me. You said I understand, and I do. I get it.”

“I just feel so empty,” she admitted. “I don’t have any strength left, Kane, and there’s so much left I need to fight through. How can I d-do that? I don’t even know if I want to.” her voice broke at the end, then she was hiding her face as she sobbed, deep, heart breaking sobs against me. I held her and tried my best to soothe her, but it was pointless to talk. She was falling apart and who was I to reassure her with fake platitudes? She had lived through a nightmare most people couldn’t even stand to watch on their televisions, and she didn’t feel strong enough to get through it. Who could blame her for the direction her thoughts were taking? I’d definitely been there myself.

Finally she calmed herself back down and lifted her eyes to meet mine. I took a deep breath, then asked her what I asked myself when things got too dark.

“Do you really want to end your life, Addy?” She looked to me with surprise. “Think about what you have to fight for. Think about Asher and Eli. Think about the home you’ve made here and the friends you have now,” I went on, refusing to refer to Adam and Jordan as more than that. “Think about the dreams you had as a kid and imagine they could become a possibility one day. Is any of that worth fighting to live for? Do any of those things make you want to live in this moment right here?”

She took the time to think, not answering right away. I could see the struggle all over her face as she weighed up everything I had said.

“Yes,” she finally whispered. “But…”

“No. No buts. No letting that darkness inside of you take away that ‘yes’ that you just gave me. That’s what you need to cling to right now. This darkness, it’s going to be a part of you from now on. You’ll do things to make it less and learn to hold it back. In time it will fade and get less noisy in your head, but it will always be a part of you. You have to learn to live with it and take control of it when it starts to rear up.”

“That’s what Adam said too,” she nodded. “But what if it’s just too big and dark right now to try and control? That’s what was happening tonight. It was getting this hold on me and I c-couldn’t stop it. I was starting to think maybe I should just end things there and then. I was starting to lose control,” she sniffled.

“It is too big and too dark right now, any you said it yourself, you’re empty – completely worn out and broken down. I’m not arguing with any of that, because you’re right. I see it. I’ve been where you are. You’re exhausted, Angel, and you feel like you just can’t even try anymore.”

“Then what do I do? Give up?”

“No. Never. You rely on others. You come to me, or your brothers, or your friends, and you tell them it’s getting too dark. You admit you’re lost and you let them help you find the way out again. You count on them to come for you when you need them until you feel strong enough to do it yourself. You don’t give up, Angel. You surrender just a little trust to those who love and care about you. Do you understand? You don’t have to do this alone. You can’t. No one can,” I explained.

“I feel like I’m losing my mind, Kane,” she whispered as more tears slipped down her already red and blotchy cheeks. Her beautiful brown eyes were glittering in the firelight and she just looked so young and fragile.

“You’re not. There’s just a lot going on up here right now,” I told her as I ran a hand over the top of her head and smoothed back her wild hair. “You’ll learn to control it eventually, but there will be times right now, where you feel like the darkness is controlling your thoughts. It can take a grip on you until you feel like you’re drowning in despair.”

“That’s what happened. My thoughts…they were just getting worse and worse and I…I had that flashback. I don’t want to feel that way again. I d-don’t want to die, Kane. I’m just so scared to live right now though too.”

“Sshh now,” I soothed, seeing tears building in her eyes once again. “You’re exhausted. It’s been a crappy day. Try to rest a little, okay? Things will feel clearer after some sleep.”

“I sh-should go. I shouldn’t have come here.”

“Enough of that. You’re staying here with me. Close your eyes and get comfortable. You’re not going anywhere.” I knew I had to be confusing her, but nothing would force me to let her go in that moment. She needed me and I refused to let her down again. I was relieved when she snuggled in closer against my front and lay her head sideways against my chest. I wrapped my arms tighter around her and held her securely, hoping if she felt protected, it would ease how badly she still shook. “Everything’s going to be okay, Addy. I promise you,” I whispered, but I was pretty sure she was already out.