Solace In The Silence ✓✓

chapter 36

"Bess," a throaty voice said, closing in on me. But it wasn't the use of my name that felt like someone was tossing me a lifeline, it was that voice . "Jesus Christ, hang on. Don't you dare leave me."
My eyesight was blurry, as though a dirty fingerprint had smudged my vision, and it hurt to breathe. My brain frantically skipped back through my memories, snagging on those haunting eyes and the bony fingers that had been wrapped around my lifeless neck. I'd been dying. Joe had strangled me.

"Bess," that familiar voice said again, reaching into the darkest recesses of my subconscious. I felt myself being moved, like I was being lifted off a hard, cold surface. Oh God, the pain. My head throbbed, lilting inertly as warm arms braced my body. "Fuck. I'm so sorry, baby. Can you hear me?"
Snippets of static-filled sound penetrated the quiet, ringing in my ears. I felt overstretched, as if gravity was tugging at my insides, and the darkness was back, creeping in.

Jake , my mind screamed. Is that you?
I tried to fight it, to stay awake, but it felt like I was being pulled under by a crosscurrent, sinking down into the coldest, deepest end of the ocean.
The last thing I heard before the shadows took me again was the distinct noise of my garbled breathing, hissing like a snake, and that harrowed voice, whispering my name, over and over.

Someone was squeezing my hand, anchoring me as I drifted aimlessly between a chilled darkness and a place where I wasn't quite lucid.
A shudder worked its way through me, and my chest rose and fell in a slow, sluggish rhythm.
I was breathing again. But how? How was that even possible?
Air whistled down my throat, almost like a gust of wind blowing through an empty cave. My body had been hollowed out, and I was lost in the pitch black, trying to navigate a way out.

The haze that had seeped into my consciousness was starting to clear, and the crushing pain was back with a vengeance. Gone was the dull ache of tenderness and relative peace.
The scratchy sheets that cocooned me felt like sandpaper against my skin, and the beeping sound of a heart monitor drilled through my temples.
Confusion gnawed at me. How the hell was I even alive? I remembered the weightlessness, and then the freefalling. I remembered the fire that had engulfed my lungs, and I remembered losing the ability to breathe. I'd even felt death the moment my heart had stopped beating.

I couldn't possibly have survived. Not after all that. And yet, somehow, I was still here. It was nothing short of a fucking miracle.
"Bess," a gravelly voice whispered, and strong, callous fingers tightened around mine. "It's me. I'm here, and I'm not going anywhere."

My pulse thundered, drowning out everything else.
Jake.

When I slowly blinked my eyes open, a soul-sucking exhaustion poured in, and I tried to comprehend my surroundings. It felt like I'd been sleeping for days, but I couldn't be sure. I was having a hard time processing anything, much less how I'd survived Joe's attack, or how I'd wound up in the hospital. The white walls, faded blue curtains, and the pungent smell of disinfectant had been a dead giveaway.
I twisted my neck on the starchy hospital pillow, wincing at the flare of pain that shot up the back of my head. Every small movement felt like someone had just shoved a hot poker straight through my spine, but I ignored it, shifting rigidly.

"Take it easy," Jake said gently, his voice pitching low. "The doctors don't want you moving much. Not yet."
He was sitting at the side of my bed in a chair that seemed way too incommodious and small for his large frame, and when our gazes locked head-on, nothing could have prepared me for what I saw.
His face was covered in bruises, a stomach-churning canvas of blacks and purples, and some that had already begun to fade to yellow. His lip was busted, swollen and split open at the corner, but it was those crystalline eyes that completely and utterly wrecked me. They were glassy and bloodshot, filled with a world of unspoken emotion.