Page 90 of Shattered In Darkness

Shit. Shit. This is pathetic.

I wipe my mouth with my wrist. My hand shakes, feeling like a bird with broken wings, flapping, useless. My chest rattles.

Brody touches my forehead. It shocks me more than the yell. His palm is so cold I almost sob. I think I do, a little. It hurts. It hurts in a weird way I don’t have words for. His fingers stay tight on my face, thumb hooked at my jaw, eyes boring holes into me.

“You got a fever?”

I breathe in. Out. My ribs seize. “I’m fine.” I try to pull back, but there’s nowhere to go.

He presses his hand harder to my cheek, not believing me. His jaw ticks, and his face does this thing I hate, this crack of worry so fast I almost think I made it up.

“You’re burning up. Fucking hell, Lola,” he hisses.

I try to smile. “Don’t tell me you care.”

He grabs my throat. Just for a heartbeat. Not to choke, just to feel the pulse. It jumps wild under his thumb. He rips the blanket away. My body shivers itself off the mattress. It hurts. My skin crackles. I’m burning up.

Brody claws the blanket off me. I hear the wild hitch of his breath, that punched-up sound in the dark. His hands are on me, rough, searching for proof. His palm flattens against my ribs, then my stomach, then up to my throat. He’s mapping the fever like he hates every second.

“Fucking hell,” he spits. I feel the fist of it, the dread. He’s angry, but not at me. Or yes, maybe at me. At the world. At the way I’m falling apart right in front of him. “You couldn’t just stay put, could you?” His grip is mean, but there’s something rattling in it. He yanks me upright, shakes me once. My vision is just static, white and blinding, his face breaking up at the edges. I sag forward, useless. He cups my face, thumbs digging into my jaw. “Look at me. Open your eyes.”

There’s a demand in it. A panic buried under the snarl. I try. My eyelids scrape open. He’s a blur. Wild hunger, anger mixed with worry. I know that look. I hate that I love that look.

He rubs his thumb along my lower lip, almost absent. “You’re fucking sick.”

Yeah. I could’ve told you that.

He stands up so suddenly the blood in my ears roars louder. He paces, shadow zipping back and forth. A caged animal deciding if he’ll eat me or die trying to save me.

He mutters, but I hear the words. “Fucking stubborn. Why now? Why this…” His boots thud the floor. Then he’s back, looming over me, pulling me up like a doll. “We’re not doing this here,” he growls. “You’ll die in this shithole.”

My bones rattle in his grip. My legs don’t work. He half-carries me up the stairs, holds my body like a sack of something he never wants to drop. I shiver in his arms, hating that my face presses his neck, that I can breathe him when all I want is air.

Brody lays me out on the couch in the living room. Stripping the sweat-soaked shirt from me, he drops it on the floor before his hands peel away the rest—pants, panties, everything. I want to bite him. I want to bite my tongue first.

He leaves me shivering to rifle through cabinets, slamming doors. Angry, frantic violence in every gesture.

When he returns, he’s got water, painkillers, and a cold pack. He sits behind me, props me against his chest. The touch is all business, but I feel the tremor in it. He hates needing this. Hates needing me.

“Open your mouth.” He shoves the pills between my lips, pours water after.

I gulp it down. My throat aches when it hits. I barely get the pills down without choking. Maybe I do choke, actually, a thin string of water coughing out the side of my mouth. I wipe it away on the back of my hand. My skin is so cold it burns.

Brody holds me propped against his chest. Not a comfort, not a gift. Just because he wants something: compliance, a pulse, another day to interrogate me. He’s a fucking furnace behind me, and still I’m shivering, shaking so hard I can hear my bones rattle.

The world is smeared from fever. Faces bloom at the edges of my eyes: Marcus, lips twisted in disgust; my mother, mouth frozen open mid-scream; Brody’s face, carved from stone, eyes burning with loss and want.

I can’t get them out. My head is a trap. I’m spinning. I’m nowhere and nothing.

His arms tighten around me. I think he’s worried I’ll snap in half or spill everywhere. “Stay awake,” he rasps. He shakes me like I’m a bad dog. “Not done yet.”

I want to laugh in his face. I want to smack him. But I can’t even lift my hands. My wrists are limp against the curve of his arm, fingernails digging useless little moons into his skin.

He stuffs a cold pack under my armpit. The shock is so severe I nearly yelp and try to wiggle away but he clamps me tighter. My sweat goes freezing, a layer of ice on burning flesh.

“Knock it off,” he growls. His breath is right at my temple. “You wanna fucking die? You want to go back to Marcus and let him finish what he started?” He leans in, voice splitting with disgust. “Pathetic. You’re nothing like the Lola I remember.”

I can’t stop the tears. They come out before I’m even aware of them. Just water, slipping down my jaw, soaking his shirt. I hate that the shirt smells like him. I hate that I still want to disappear under it.