Love Games

Thirty - five: No turning back

"Sarah," I hear Jack's voice, soft but firm. It sounds so close, but I'm not sure if I'm imagining it or if it's real.

The smell of his cologne hits me with all its power, waking me up instantly and I realise I've been asleep.

Probably longer than I should have - at least half a day.

I slowly open my eyes, my head throbbing in a slow, painful rhythm, as if each beat was increasing in excruciating pain.

Jack is on top of me, hunched over, his eyes boring straight into mine. I see something in his expression that I cannot read - is it worry? Fear?

Before I can ask anything, I feel a sharp, burning sensation in my thigh, making me tense my legs slightly. "What happened?" I whisper in a hoarse voice that surprises me. My lips are cracked and my throat is dry, as if I haven't spoken for hours. "Where are we?"

Jack doesn't answer immediately, breathing in slowly, his gaze fixed on me as if choosing his words.

The weight of his silence becomes almost unbearable, a feeling of unease slowly mixing with a vague memory of something... something important.

Jack continues to watch me in silence, his eyes dark and full of thoughts he doesn't say.

At that moment, the world around us seems to slow down, the sounds of the outside world fade into silence, and it's just the two of us - me, full of questions, and him, full of unspoken answers.

"In Los Angeles," Jack says, his voice strangely calm, almost hollow, as if he's trying to hold back everything beneath the surface.

I slowly become aware of my surroundings - everything around me is sterile white, with only a few shades of dark oak. I am lying on a soft bed, but something inside me immediately screams that something is wrong.

The bed... it shouldn't be here.

I look around, and when my eyes finally focus, I realise we're on a private plane.

I sit up slowly, feeling slightly dizzy, my eyes fixed on the small window to my right.

It is night outside, the darkness is thick, and time seems to have passed while I slept.

Too fast.

Something gives me no peace, the feeling that reality has become entangled with something unknown.

"Where... where are we? What?" I breathe in to calm myself, but my chest tightens. Suddenly I remember. Emma. My parents. Fear floods my body like a cold wave that won't let go. "What about Emma? My parents?" I ask, horror now in my voice, my heart beating wildly.

Horrified at how the world around me has suddenly changed, I realise I have no idea how we ended up here.

I realise how afraid I was of flying before all this. This fear that has now flooded my mind again has been with me for a long time, but somehow I have managed to suppress it. But this time it is pressing more and more with each passing moment. The feeling of being burned comes back to me - but at the time I thought I was imagining it.

I look down at my leg and see the redness coming out from under the light sheets. I've obviously 'got something', but what? My mind began to spin as I wondered what was happening to me and what I was doing here.

"You stayed in Sicily," Jack says, his fact seeming cold and unjustified in the situation. "If you want to call your parents, there's a phone here. But only for your parents." Meanwhile he offers me the phone.

I look at it and feel a pang of anxiety. It's not his phone - I know exactly what his looks like. This device is different, alien, with unfamiliar apps and overly simple functions. The feeling of uncertainty grows, my heart beats faster, as if I am surrounded by some dark secret.