Beat Of My Heart

Decrescendo

Flashing police lights, red and blue, red and blue. Sirens blaring in my ears, the whirr of officers and the SWAT team running in and out, in and out.

A major sex trafficking ring, that's what they called it. I was going to be sold into sex slavery. They told me I was lucky, told me that I should be happy that the girls I was put with were fighters and had a plan.

Happy? I should have been happy that my life was a bleeding, incoherent cancerous mass that I would never be able to hear.

My heart was still beating, but I couldn't feel it. I knew it was there, but I didn't know if it would ever beat correctly ever again.

I felt the weight of the blanket around me, but its warmth didn't see through to my core like it was supposed to.

The flashing of photographers burned into my eyes leaving black and red swarming dots ever lingering, like they would be there forever.

I was just staring into the ground, watching legs walk around me. I was just sitting on the back of the ambulance, waiting to be taken to the hospital or the police station, I honestly couldn't care which.

"Sir! Sir you are not allowed to cross the border! Sir!"

"I don't care what you say that is my daughter and I am going to see her!"

I recognized my dad's voice before I saw him. Not my dad...my adoptive dad? My non biological father?

I was going to call the man who raised me my dad and the masochistic human who donated his sperm to me my biological father.

He didn't even deserve the title father. I would just call him my sperm donor.

"Holly! Holly oh my god are you okay?! We were so worried when you didn't come home, what happened?" I heard his words but didn't register their meaning. My mom was with him too but she was standing beside him silently, streams of tears running in rivulets down her face.

"I don't know," I told him honestly. My whole world had just been imploded upon and I didn't know how to fix it, and I didn't know if anything would ever be okay again, if I would ever be okay again.

And then I saw his face...and I knew that he would be able to help me pick up the pieces.

"What's that famous guy doing here? I don't care how much money he has, he's not allowed past the yellow tape!" I heard the police officer next to me yelling into his cell phone.

Without thinking, I jolted up from my place on the ambulance and ran towards the spot where I had last glimpsed his face, not caring about the medics screaming my name or my parents yelling for me to stop and come back. They thought I was running away from them, but they couldn't have been more wrong.

Sure, I was upset with them for keeping such a detrimental secret from me, but that didn't mean that I didn't love them and never wanted to see them again.

I just had someone to run to who I needed more than I needed my lying parents. At least with Sebastian, I knew he'd tell me the truth about that picture sooner or later. I honestly didn't care at that point, I knew how he felt about me if he was willing to be at the crime scene to try and find me.

Arms folding around me, the floodgates opening finally for the first time in what felt like years, I let his presence surround me and unruly around me like a butterfly closing its wings.

"Holly, I- I don't know what to say, I...are you okay?" he asked me and I had to stop to think about that question for a moment.

I had to forget about the tingles rushing through my body at his touch, forget how the deep timbre of his voice made my bones quiver with happiness and lust. I had to forget about how royally and totally messed up my life was.