plunge she yells, every plunge she gets closer to closure. The fact that she keeps going tells me he wasn’t just rough with her; he seriously fucked her up.
“Hate you.” “Trusted you.” “Hurt me.” “Lied to me.” “Forced me.”
Toward the end, she’s barely using force but merely going through the stabbing motions, her voice getting quieter as she goes. Just as I’m about to call her name, making this stop, she whispers it.
The words that changed everything .
“Ruined me.”
Calling her name, she drops the knife, turning to look at me. It’s then that I get that me and her are more alike than I ever thought possible. Jesus, we’re both a fucking mess.
“Princess,” I say, kneeling down next to her. “Look at me.” When she does, I check her eyes first. They are dilated, yet she isn’t shaking or showing any signs of shock.
“Wouldn’t call him Jacob,” she whispers. “Wouldn’t give him what’s in here.” She taps her head to show me. “Couldn’t let him hurt me anymore. Couldn’t let him hurt you.”
“Princess,” I start, “I need to get you to a hospital.”
“Venessa,” she says with conviction. “Save Venessa.”
“Rogan’s with her, all right? It’s time to take care of you now.”
“No!” she says, standing up and pushing past me. “Have to get to Venessa.”
She’s riding the adrenaline right now, so I follow her instead of yelling at her to stop. Staying close in case she falls, we enter the kitchen together to see Venessa standing there with Rogan holding her up.
Venessa walks over to her slowly, careful of Macy’s wounds, and still hurting from her own. Macy looks her over and I see her distress level rising. Venessa must sense Macy is about to go atomic, so she does what she can to calm her.
“I’m okay, Macy,” Venessa says. “Briggs?”
“Dead,” she says, flat staring at her friend.
“How’d he go out?”
“He fell on his knife,” she says. “Several times.”
“Yeah?” she laughs. “Hate when that happens.”
“He should really watch where he’s —”
When Macy starts to go down, I’m there to catch her. Lifting her in my arms, I rush her out to my truck, strap her in, and haul ass to the nearest emergency room, which oddly enough is where she also works.
Rogan sends me a text letting me know as soon as Venessa is cleaned, checked out, and caffeinated, they’ll be there. Years of police work come in handy when you have someplace to be; in this case it takes me under three minutes to get to the ER. I flash my badge and toss valet my keys then walk over, open the door, and bring her back to my arms where she belongs.
As the doors part for our entrance my anxiety spikes; I fucking loathe hospitals. No doubt because I was in and out of them a lot as a kid. My dad was not only abusive, he was a cop, too, so whatever landed me in the hospital was a vacation compared to what was waiting for me upon release if the staff didn’t buy my story. So my Mom being the June Cleaver she was made it a point to rotate hospitals, you know, so no one got suspicious. What a gem.
Walking through the lobby to reception with an unconscious woman probably doesn’t happen all too often, so the initial looks of did this douche bag beat her are quickly put to an end when I give them her name. Shock gave way to concern and she is taken to a private room immediately.
Following the nurse, I sit in the vacant chair closest to her bed. The nurse carefully undresses her, cleans and wraps the wounds, and runs an IV into her right arm. As soon as Macy is bundled like a baby the nurse shoots a look at me and lets me know the doctor is on his way. It pisses me off that this woman assumes I did this but, she also knows I’m a cop, so she keeps her mouth shut. This is the problem with the world, if someone would have defended me just once, my life could have turned out differently. Someone just needed to put their fear aside and say it.
After she checks
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