Page 109 of Yours to Keep
My body jolted upright, tears already streaming down my face before I was even fully awake. My chest burned like it hadbeen split open. My heart slammed so hard it felt wrong inside me, as if it didn’t fit anymore.
I didn’t know where I was, and for a second I couldn’t tell if I had escaped or if I was still there. Everything was so dark. I knew there was a door, so I reached for it.
There was no door.
Am I still there?My breath hitched. The line between memory and reality blurred until I couldn’t tell which one I was in.
Did I get out?
Then arms wrapped around me, and I fought them immediately: instinct before thought, screaming again and again. Thrashing. Panicked. Wild.
Fighting Adrian even though he wasn’t in front of me.
I didn’t stop until my voice tore, until my body started to give out on itself. But then I smelled him. It wasn’t antiseptic, or that room.
CJ.
That grounding, familiar scent I knew better than anything. I dragged it into my lungs like it was oxygen I’d been missing for years. And slowly… my body stopped resisting.
I sagged against him: heavy and shaking, broken.
I breathed him in again, and again, until my breath started to match his.
“Hey,” his voice was rough, close, real. “I’ve got you, Baby Boy.”
That name pulled me back harder than anything else.
His voice. His scent. His heartbeat under my cheek. Him.
He rocked me gently, murmuring things I couldn’t fully make out. I didn’t need the words; I could feel them anyway.
“It’s okay.”
I opened my eyes, and CJ was right there, so close we were sharing the same breath. Like he was keeping me tethered to the world just by existing near me.
“I can’t do this anymore.” The words slipped out before I could stop them: raw.
CJ tightened his arms instantly. “Yes, you can.”
“No,” my voice cracked. “I can’t.”
Tears came again, hot and relentless, streaming down my cheeks and landing on the pillow.
“I’m so scared.”
“I know, baby.”
“What if he finds me?”
CJ didn’t answer straight away. That pause hit me like ice, because his pause meant he could.
“What if he takes me?”
CJ tipped my chin up until I had to look at him: his blue eyes steady, focused, unmoving.
“Then he comes through me first,” his voice dropped lower. “And if he does, I’ll kill him.”
“CJ…”
