Heavy Wears The Crown

Forty Three

"I need your help I can't fight this forever I know you're watching I can feel you out there."

-------------- My Demons (accoustic) - Starset ----------------

Nolan

I watched Carter through the glass. She sat very dossal on the edge of a hospital bed.

Getting her here was not easy. This little scandal, Carter's disappearance that is, had the press swarming me like no tomorrow. Worse than usual. It had been less than 24 hours, but being the 911 text to Rita, the bloody mess and broken glass all over her living room, clear signs of struggle present, neighbors reported some noise and yelling late in the afternoon, and being her father was apparently a big shot lawyer there was already a missing person's report out for her.

Hard to believe she was just sitting in my closet the whole time, her car in my garage and out of sight. Even if I could have gotten my car through the swarm of people crowding the driveway, I wouldn't have bothered going into the garage because I'd never planned on staying home that long. I needed to be out looking for her, or doing something, I don't know, I couldn't just stay home. Considering our love affair, if you could call me loving Carter and her hating me a love affair, had swarmed the tabloids for a whole week and my recent "love interests" had been an even hotter topic because of Carter, when she went missing the media was all over it. When I left, mid-concert, and flew back home instantaneously the press had been waiting at the airport.

Carter was obviously in no condition to be met with by the press, she'd barely said two words to me after we'd left the closet she couldn't stop crying in she went completely mute. Not a single tear, or whimper or shaky breath did she let out. I wanted to ask what had happened, fȕck if I didn't want to ask, but I caught the panicked look in her eye when I set her down on my bed and for the first time got a good look at her in the light. She'd gulped so loudly that I'd been able to hear her even with the phone pressed to my ear. I knew then that she wasn't ready to talk yet and I knew if she faced the press now she would surely break.

To distract the press and get Carter out without hundreds of cameras and questions in her face we'd developed a plan. Dressed Derek like a much less handsome version of myself, he and Gunner had gone out first pretending to be me and furious at the media for swarming my house. He even kicked my trash can over, it was a fairly believable performance. They had made their way down and drove out in my car. Ten minutes later Carter and I snuck out the back entrance and floored it out of there on my motorcycle.

She hadn't spoken to anyone yet, had refused to even look up to me, even when I was telling her the plan about how we'd get her out of my house without the press seeing her. She couldn't even look at me.

But on the contrary, I couldn't stop looking at her. The dried blood on the side of her head, bruise on her cheek and wrist, and dirty rumpled clothes. She looked worse than hell. She kept toying with a loose string from her shirt, twirling it tightly around her finger, pausing when the doctor would say something particularly interesting, and then she would begin unraveling.

Wrap, wrap, wrap. Unravel, unravel, unravel. Wrap, wrap, wrap. Unravel, unravel, unravel.

Her finger was turning a deep red at one point when the doctor sat on a chair in front of her and rolled up to her, when he reached out to her she jerked, the string breaking free from the shirt and her eyes finally lifted to glare at him.

After several minutes the doctor came back out to talk to us.

"What happened?" Her father was the first to demand. The rest of the band and her friends were mulling about, taking up room in the waiting room, wandering the halls, drinking one coffee after the next. Only her father and I were at the window. Her one friend, Rita I think it was, had tried to stay close but the other girls flocked around the window with her and Carter had grown agitated with so many watching her so she'd gone back to the waiting room.