Instinct

29. Make Them Pay

There had been a moment of weightlessness, a second where the pain dissipated into a numbness that rested comfortably in its place. In that split second, the knot in her chest had loosened and Stephanie had been able to breathe, to laugh.

But when that lump in her throat melted, there wasn’t a barrier left in place to hold back the hurt she carried with her: the doubt, the awful, creeping shadows in her mind in the shape of armed, masked people. In one second, she felt liberated, and the next it all came crashing down.

Her skin crawled with the sensation of a thousand hidden eyes on her. In the corners of her vision, there was always something moving that she couldn’t quite catch. Floating detached from her body was her head, spinning, airy, dizzy with the smoke in the air and the alcohol in her veins.

Stephanie didn’t feel care-free. She felt out of control.

Her eyes tracked another shadow, this one taking shape, materializing in the corner.

Wait, no, that wasn’t right. There wasn’t anything there –

He stepped out of the darkness of the corridor, smoke bending around his form. His severe gaze held a muted sort of contempt to match the monotone of his striking eyes.

He hadn’t been there that night. He couldn’t have been there.

His mouth moved, but the clear curve of his words, achingly sharp and smooth all at once, didn’t reach across the cotton in her ears, the ringing in her brain. Her body was heavy, eyelids lingering at half-mast longer than she would have liked. The roof of her mouth was glued to her tongue, dry and uncooperative.

There was a hand on her shoulder, a burst of unwelcome heat. She dragged her gaze away from Daniel and found herself looking into cunning, piercing eyes. A touch of insanity, a dash of danger caught in the light of Eric Bradley’s gaze. That daring smirk at the corner of his mouth, twisted and cold, punched through the fog in her mind.

He too was saying something. His lips were moving. Stephanie felt like she was in a glass box all on her own.

That wasn’t what had happened.

A frigid grip yanked her from the couch. Her limbs tangled and folded underneath her. Sprawled on the floor like a marionette with the strings cut, she looked up into solid brown eyes underlined by a bitter scowl.

“You took everything from me,” Diana snarled.

Stephanie’s eyes slammed open, pupils blown wide in the dark of the bedroom. The breath had been wrung from her chest, her muscles paralyzed with the remnants of her nightmare. Once the shadows in the room materialized into clean lines and familiarity, she dragged in a shaky breath and her muscles, strung tight and overwrought, loosened.

She looked briefly over to Liam, still lost in soft sleep, and swallowed.

Her heart was still drumming against her ribcage, pulse fluttering in her wrists. Stephanie knew she would not be able to close her eyes and succumb to sleep again tonight. After a moment more of being irrationally terrified to move, Stephanie slipped out from underneath the covers, leaving the warmth of the bed and Liam too.

She hardly dared blink as she stole out of the bedroom, the door closing behind her with a muted click. Belatedly, she realized that her hands were quivering with just the slightest of tremors. There was a touch of cold in the air, raising goose bumps along her skin as her bare feet touched the cold, hardwood flooring of the living room.

As she sat down on the sofa, pulling her frigid feet up underneath her, Stephanie felt the overwhelming need to just talk to someone. She didn’t want platitudes, or anyone talking at her like she was a damaged child – fragile.