But as the reality of having her here started to sink in, I began to feel like I’d fallen down the rabbit hole, like my life was spinning out of control. Maybe I really have finally cracked after all.
I’ve wanted this for so long, but now that it had happened, I was finding it hard to believe that it could be real. Or that it could be this simple.
I held her away from me to get a better look at her, still not quite believing that this was real. But there was no mistaking it as I felt her slight form beneath my hands.
When I looked into her eyes there was no doubt that it was most definitely her, my Zandi. She was a little thinner and paler, but still the most beautiful fucking creature of my existence.
Anger came out of nowhere. Anger at her, at the past two years and the hell I’d been through. I was shaking her before I could think better of it. “Where the fuck have you been?” I yelled the words in anger.
I was happy and pissed and a million other things at once as I looked down at her tear stained face. But joy was the leader of the pack. There was such immense joy in me that it was almost too hard to stay standing.
I kept putting her away from me, and then pulling her back into my chest, vacillating between anger and relief. She wasn’t saying much, just sobbing uncontrollably as she clung to me. “Where Zandi?”
When she shook her head the lost look in her eyes made my heart squeeze. I pulled her into my arms and held her close. I didn’t know what to feel as emotions ran amok inside me.
No, that’s a lie. I was happy as fuck that she was home, that I could feel her body against mine again. In that moment I didn’t care how it came to be, as long as she was alive and whole I’d deal with the rest later. But there were so many questions.
An unknown fear crawled into my gut and my heart raced again. I was afraid that I was going to be sick again but there was no nausea or spinning head this time. Just love so strong it was blinding.
I fought back the fear and uncertainty as I took in her scent for the first time in way too long. Right then it didn’t matter where she’d been or what she’d been doing, all that mattered was that she was here, in my arms, whole, alive, finally safe. “Where were you baby?”
This time I tried to keep the anger from my voice as I held her as close as two human beings could possibly be to each other. Wherever she’d been she’d come back to me. I held on to that thought even as I wondered.
“I don’t know…they took me.” Her voice sounded scratchy and hoarse. What was she saying? How was she here? And then her words registered. It was something I’d always feared, but the only thing that had made sense at the time.
Since I never believed that she’d left me, I always believed that someone had taken her. Now her words seemed to confirm that fear. Someone had taken my woman. What the hell had they done to her all this time? My mind ran the gamut and none of it was good.
Oh baby, oh fuck. I held her so hard I was afraid I’d break her in half. I didn’t want to imagine the things that went through my mind. Didn’t want to think that someone had violated her. My wife!
“Who took you?” For the first time I realized that she looked drugged and out of it when I held her away from me to get a better look at her.
Beneath the pale ashen shade of her face and the limpness of her usually beautiful hair, she was still my Zandi. “I asked you a question.”
She bit her lip and scrunched up her face the way she does when she’s trying hard to remember something. I’ve always found that adorable.
I felt the bones in her shoulders under my hands as I looked down at the shabby rags she wore. Where the hell had she been that she was dressed like this?
She had a closet full of furs and designer clothes, some still with the tags on them. Why the hell would she leave all that to go to this?
I shook her again when there was no answer forthcoming, my anger growing by the second. I tried not to show it but it wasn’t easy. “Who are they and where the hell have you been? Do you have any idea what hell I’ve been through?”
I started to say more as I shook her harder this time but her eyes rolled back in her head, and she fainted dead away. Scared the fuck outta me.