Total pages in book: 158
Estimated words: 146477 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 732(@200wpm)___ 586(@250wpm)___ 488(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 146477 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 732(@200wpm)___ 586(@250wpm)___ 488(@300wpm)
The doctor quickly prepares the sedative, and within seconds, he’s grasping her upper arm and injecting it into the muscle. Her chest heaves, and as the doctor steps away, her body starts to relax.
I hurry in, taking her from the guards and lifting her right into my arms, and as she watches me through her sleepy stare, she gently shakes her head, a tear still sitting on her perfect cheek. “How could you?” she whispers, and not a moment later, she gives in to the sedative, her body going limp in my arms.
37
HARPER-RAYN
Heaviness sinks into my muscles as I peel my eyes open, taking in my blurry surroundings. Unease immediately pounds through my veins. Is this . . . fuck. This is the psych ward. How the hell did I end up here? Did somebody have me committed?
My brain is foggy, and as I try to sit up, something pulls me back.
My brows furrow, and I pull against my wrists, only to find them restrained to the rails on the edge of the hospital bed.
“Doll?”
My head whips around, finding Knight hovering in the corner of the room, his hands buried in his pockets and his gaze full of guilt.
“You,” I breathe as bits and pieces of the last few hours come back to me. The morgue. Laith. The guards. The betrayal. “You did this to me.”
He visibly swallows before nodding, and as he steps closer to my bed, I shake my head, tears welling in my eyes. “No. Don’t,” I cry, not prepared to hear how he thinks I’m going crazy. “Just leave.”
Knight shakes his head and pulls up a chair beside me, reaching out and holding my restrained hand through the bed rails. “Push me away as much as you want, Harper, but I’m not going anywhere.”
“How could you do that to me?”
“I’m sorry, doll,” he murmurs, his heart on his sleeve, looking just as broken as I feel. “I had no choice. I need you to be okay, and if I took you back home, you would have just pushed me away and refused to hear me.”
An overwhelming mix of rage and betrayal sneak up on me, claiming every piece of my heart. “So you had me committed to a fucking psych ward?” I demand, pulling against my wrists. Being bound this way takes me straight back to the night my stalker tied my wrists and ankles, and my panic spikes. “Do you have any idea what you’ve done? What setbacks this will cause for my career?”
He nods. “I wouldn’t have done this if I didn’t think it was important, Harper. I know you don’t agree with me, but you need to hear what I have to say. I need you to understand how we got here.”
“Don’t . . . Don’t do this.”
“I have to,” he tells me. “You don’t see it, but right now, you are covered head to toe in flames, and this is me stepping into them with you. You’re burning, doll. Let me burn with you.”
I shake my head, the weight of my situation resting heavily on my chest as I try not to cry. “I’m not crazy.”
“I don’t think you’re crazy,” he tells me, leaning right in and brushing his fingers down the side of my face in a gentle caress. “You just need the kind of help that I can’t offer you.”
“And you think this is where I need to be?”
Knight nods. “Just hear me out. That’s all I’m asking.”
“I’m restrained to a bed in a psych ward,” I tell him. “I don’t think I have a choice in the matter.”
The guilt returns in his stare, and he eventually nods, reaching for his phone on his lap. “I don’t really know where to start, so I suppose we’ll just start right at the beginning,” he explains, swiping his thumb across the screen to unlock it. “After you kicked me out of your hospital room last week, I went and spoke to one of the people who work in the hospital surveillance room, and after some begging and pleading, she was able to get me the surveillance feed from all the nights that you said something had gone down in the morgue.”
I sit up straighter, my back stiffening. “You’ve seen him,” I breathe, not knowing whether to be scared or relieved to finally get some answers.
“Not exactly,” Knight tells me.
“What do you mean? If you have the security footage, you’ll see it all.”
“I do see it all, but what I’m seeing isn’t what you’re believing went down.”
“Wha . . . What are you talking about?”
He presses his lips into a tight line and turns the phone to face me. “This is the footage of the night you first sensed someone there. I’ve scrolled through the whole thing, and while I can see you freaking out, there’s no sign of anyone entering the morgue.”