SCARLET
The Present
They were moving me. I was swaying in and out of consciousness as someone lifted me off the ground and over their shoulder in another fireman’s carry. My broken ribs screamed at the new pressure forced on them. I cried out, but it just earned me a laugh and a hard smack on the ass.
“Don’t touch me,” I gritted out against the pain radiating through my body.
“Feisty, this one,” I heard him say before I blacked out.
I woke up once when I was thrown into the boot of a car and again when they were taking me out. At least I thought that’s what was happening. Everything in my brain was so fuzzy from lack of food and water and the constant agony I was in that I couldn’t really process what was real and what wasn’t.
I wanted to be weak and give up. All I could think about was curling up with Seb or Tristan playing with my hair. Shit, even Elliot’s scowl would be a welcome sight. It had been so long since I had been touched with any amount of kindness that I was pretty sure I would fall apart the moment I saw them. If I ever saw them again.
God, where the fuck were they?
I was thrown down onto another hard floor unceremoniously. My vision went fuzzy and black as I blinked back the tears. I might have considered myself a tough woman, but this shit was rough. After weeks—I thought it had been weeks anyway—of torture and malnutrition, I was close to breaking.
Looking up at the men who had dropped me to the floor, I watched as a black shadow moved behind them. I blinked a few more times, trying to clear my vision, but I couldn’t make it out. And then it was gone, like I had imagined the entire thing. Which I probably had considering I was so close to dying from dehydration. I was more than capable of hallucinating at this point.
I tried looking around the room, but it was poorly lit and didn’t look like anything more than a basement with concrete block walls, damp and moldy. The floor I was lying on was also concrete and so cold I could feel it seeping into my bones, making my muscles and joints stiff and painful.
When was the last time I had peed? And when I did, did I pee myself? Or had they given me a bucket or a trip to the toilet? I couldn’t remember. I really hoped I wasn’t just lying in soiled clothes.
The man that had dropped me on the floor spat on my face, and I rolled away from them, hoping they would find me less entertaining if I just didn’t interact. Maybe they would leave me the fuck alone for once. I wiped the spit from my nose and cheek as I rolled over and swallowed against the pain in my throat.
Being treated like this was wearing on me more than just physically. I could feel my sanity failing me more with each day I was stuck. I found myself praying for death as unconsciousness came for me each night. The guys obviously weren’t coming for me. Either that, or the assholes who took me were just too good at keeping me hidden.
“Sleep tight, bitch,” one of the men said with an accent. I realized early on that when they insulted me, they wanted to make sure I could hear them and understand them. When they spoke Spanish, it was stuff they actually wanted to be kept secret. But they wanted to wear my mind and body down. They wanted me to know when they were calling me names to make me feel like even less of a human.
The door at the top of the stairs slammed shut, and my entire body flinched with the sound. And then all I could hear was my heartbeat and my breathing. It was like being underwater. When I heard their footsteps above me echo through the room and I knew I was truly alone, I let myself cry.
They had turned the lights off when they left, cloaking me in darkness that was so black it made me feel claustrophobic. They kept doing that, putting me in this isolating darkness that made me lose track of time. I squeezed my eyes shut and willed my breath to be even. If I was going to be stuck in this hellhole until they moved me again, I was going to have to get used to the all-consuming darkness.
The tears poured hot and fast over my cheeks and temples and into my matted hair. My nose started to run, and the pain in my throat spread into my chest, making it hard to breathe. I was so weak physically that even just crying took it out of me. I was gasping and choking when a warm hand slid over my mouth. I tried to scream, but their fingers gripped into my cheeks.
“Shh, it’s me, scrumpo.” The Romanian word for “precious” rolled sweetly off his tongue. “It’s Tristan. It’s me.” His voice was soothing and warm, and I turned around to face him so quickly that my ribs screamed in pain, but I ignored them. I felt him move to sit next to me on the ground, picking me up into his lap as I curled my body into his. My hands and arms were all over him, making sure he was real and alive and not just a hallucination my brain had conjured up.
He held me gently, murmuring soothing sounds in my ear as I wept into his chest and neck, breathing in the clean scent of him. I couldn’t imagine what I smelled like, but he held me to him like it was nothing. He whispered against my hair, petting and kissing it like I was something to be cherished.
“Fuck, I missed you,” he said when my breathing had returned to normal. “I thought we had lost you, poppet.”
“How are you here? Where are the boys?” I asked, pulling away to try and get a glimpse of his face. I wouldn’t believe all of this was real until I could see him. I needed to see him. My dirty hands found his face, and I tried to remember what he looked like, but my mind was just a blank slate. There was a piece of cloth wrapped around the lower half of his face, and I yanked it away, running my fingertips over his mouth.
“Long story, baby,” he said, pulling my hands away from his face so that he could lean in and kiss me. I had forgotten how soft his lips were. His hands were back in my hair, holding my face to his as his tongue explored my mouth. He was drinking me in and stealing my breath. “The guys are outside. We’ll hear them any minute now. Seb is going to hand out death like the grim reaper to get to you.”
I smiled against his lips as I kissed him again.
“Can you walk?” he asked.