I wasn’t alone. Freddie was right there.
CHAPTER 34
FREDDIE
Liam and Rome were back before midnight, Boo-Boo didn’t see them arrive because she’d finally gone to sleep—after throwing up everything she’d eaten. I wasn’t a fan of puking. It made me want to puke. The fact I barely held on had everything to do with the fact I refused to throw up on her. The dull thud of the headache I nursed reminded me that as much as I’d avoided their drugs, I’d still taken some.
When she’d gotten all flushed and overheated once more, I ushered her in to take another cool shower. This time, I stayed close, cause she also wasn’t steady on her feet. Pretty pussy or not, I was more worried about her falling than I was ogling. Besides, she really didn’t need me looking at her. The “he touched me” explanation floated around in my head alongside that confession.
I sat up because until they were back, I wasn’t going to sleep with her vulnerable in this room. I had my knife and there was a gun in the drawer. Didn’t matter. No one was going to get at her on my watch. Whenever a little whimper escaped her, or she shifted in her sleep, I moved my leg to put pressure on the pillows between us. That put pressure on her via the pillow. It worked and I wasn’t crowding her.
“What happened?” Rome asked not even a minute after they came in. They were quiet, she didn’t even twitch. Sweat dotted her brow again and I tossed a washcloth at Liam.
“Can you rinse that down in cold water?”
He didn’t even ask, just went to do it, while Rome came around to the far side of the bed I was sharing with Boo-Boo. His grave expression said he knew something was wrong.
“Waiting for Liam,” I said. “I don’t want to have to explain this twice.” Between my own tiredness and headache, I really wanted to go to sleep. With them back, I could do that. They’d take care of her.
After his brother came back with the washcloth, Rome snagged it and began to wipe her face down slowly and gently. Yeah, he got it.
“Withdrawal,” I said to Liam’s questioning look. “They were loading her up pretty hard on drugs. I didn’t even think about it. She got sick earlier. Couldn’t keep anything down. The tremors and the shakes are there too.”
“Drugs.” Liam’s whole expression darkened. “Fuck. Why didn’t you say anything earlier?”
“One, I didn’t think about it,” I told him. “Two, I was fucking exhausted. And three, what the fuck did you think they were doing in there? You heard what the Ball-Cracker said about that place. I’m pretty sure they were doing some kind of other treatments too. I couldn’t get into that medical ward though, to see what they did.”
I hadn’t even noticed they had a medical ward until after Bodhi came to get me. The doctor’s office had been next to that ward. It would make sense, but I just—fuck, I knew they’d been doing something.
“She called it the floating place or the white static.” As much as it killed me to reveal anything she told me in confidence, they needed to know this. “There were days she didn’t know me at all.” That had scared me more than hurt though. Because in all the time I’d known her, she hadn’t once treated me like an afterthought or someone to be ignored.
The sight of her in that wheelchair, completely checked out? Yeah, that wasn’t going away any time soon. Liam glanced past me to Rome then down to her. “We don’t know what they were giving her?”
I shook my head. “Didn’t have time to steal records. The escape turned out to be a little more spontaneous than my original idea.”
Not that I was going to cry one fucking tear for that asshole. But maybe I should have tried to get her file or something. Fuck, did I mess this up?
“Hey,” Liam said and he rested a hand on my shoulder. It was light, but also brief and he let me go after one gentle squeeze. “You did good. You got her out and you didn’t get dead. We can handle the rest.”
I nodded, then glanced over at her again. I hoped he was right.
We weren’t flying back. Liam debated it with himself, cause Rome didn’t seem to have an opinion and I didn’t care. Then again, taking her through an airport meant security, which meant no weapons, which meant—yeah, we were driving.
Instead of leaving first thing the next morning, they waited for her to not be nauseated anymore. If the day before had been bad—the next morning was awful. Liam had gone out to get coffee and when he came back, she just couldn’t hold anything down.
When she fell into an uneasy sleep, I caught the twins looking at each other. At least I didn’t have to hold her hair when she puked this time. I would have if she’d needed me, but Rome hadn’t moved away from her. Not once.
Late afternoon, she managed some water and some crackers without puking. She also made the decision for all of us. “I want to go home.”
Home.
Yeah.
The twins shared another of those telepathic looks. But the decision was made before Liam said a word. Emersyn wanted to go back to Braxton Harbor, then that was where we were going. Good. Doc could look at her there. Make sure she was okay.
It didn’t take us long to pack the room up, wipe it down. We still had her bloodied clothes to deal with, but I’d rather they were with us until we had a safe spot to burn them. The stapler came too.
Liam and Rome swapped out the driving, I offered to help but they waved me off and that was fine. The tremors came and went. So did the vague sensation of motion sickness. Not something that had ever been my problem. Then again, they’d been giving me shit too. But I wasn’t a mess.
Emersyn was. She sat in the backseat and had a bucket and a bag. Rome was back there with her at the moment, though Liam had been trading out with him. I needed to be more useful, but neither of them asked me.
Fortunately, the one time she’d puked in the car so far, we pulled over and opened all the doors. That was a smell that not even she could make attractive.
It was afternoon, the sun was way too fucking bright to be any other time the next time I roused. Rome was behind the wheel. Soft music played, but my brain was too fuzzy to identify what the song was.
“It’s fine, Hellspawn,” Liam said in a droll voice. “Puke anywhere in here you want. We can clean it up.”
I didn’t gag. It was a close thing.
“I don’t want to vomit anymore,” Emersyn said in a voice both exhausted and aggrieved.
“Want to try the motion sickness stuff we got you again?”
What stuff? I rubbed a hand over my face. Maybe we’d stopped somewhere while I was sleeping.
“It didn’t work last time.” Despite the complaint, it wasn’t a no.
“Just give it a shot,” Liam told in a far gentler voice than I was used to hearing from him. “We got some of the lemon-lime soda too. That helped, right?”
“Some. Okay.”
My head still thumped but it wasn’t anywhere near as bad. A bump of a bottle against my arm had me opening my eyes. Rome held out an unopened water bottle to me. Yeah. Hydrate. Probably a good idea.