Eluding Nirvana (The Dark Evoke Series Book 2) (31 page)

I nodded.

“Do you remember breakfast at Tiffani’s the following morning?”

I nodded again.

“I told you to make me a promise, and you did. I told you that I wanted to help you and to let me be your anchor. Do you remember that?”

“Yes,” I whispered through the lump in my throat.

“So I am going to be your anchor. Say after me, Kady: I didn’t attack, Liam.”

“No, I’m not saying that. Refusing to believe it is why I’m here, Walker. I’m not saying that. I did attack him. I did. He has the cut to prove it, I’m a nut-job, I’m delusional––”

“Yes Kady, you are delusional. You’re delusional because you believe his lies, his deceits, his fabrications call them whatever you want, it all comes to the same thing.” His breaths came in tiny, shallow, uneven gasps, while my mind was haunted by the mere intensity of his eyes as he bored them into me. He was riled, that was clear. “Kady, you told me not to say anything to you when I saw your ribs. I’m not doing it any longer, I’m not keeping my mouth shut so you can continue with this twisted world that he’s made you believe you deserve. I’m done.”

“No, no, no,” head shaking
, frenzied, my own inhalations were sucked up into my lungs in wild, pleading pants. I tried to shift away from his hands which were framing my face, but it was fruitless. He was determined, and I was terrified of the truth he was compelling me to listen to.

“He is abusive, darlin’.
You are in a physically and psychologically abusive relationship, Kady. That is the truth and you know it, you just deny it over and over. But look where it’s got you, darlin’,” His words of truth were hitting me full force in the face.

I had known this, I had known it for a while, but justification and plausible deniability always won hands down. Countless tears swept down my cheeks at his words, and I watched as his own e
yes began to shimmer and glaze.

“
You’re in this place, taking medication you don’t need, questioning your own sanity, Kady, this isn’t right. You’re worth so much more, darlin’.” He faltered for a brief moment, but when he spoke again, his voice was both pained and sincere, “I can’t offer you the world at your feet like Liam can, but if you were mine, I would offer you a world of happiness, a world of safekeeping and respect where you wouldn’t have to walk on Goddamn eggshells. I’d never treat you the way he has.”

I couldn’t keep listening to his truths. I needed him to stop.
“Walker, you have to stop, please stop.”

“Repeat after me, Kady: I didn’t attack, Li
am.” When I remained quiet for an age, and twisted my head a margin to peer back at the flower on the lawn, his insistent hands which had been framing my face for an age, tugged me back, holding me steady to focus on him and the words he spoke. “I don’t have time, Kady, please, repeat it––say it, say: I didn’t attack, Liam.”

“I didn’t attack, Liam,” I whispered just to shut him up.

He shook his head before tipping it forward to brace himself on my brow once again. “Do you trust me, darlin’?”

“Yes.”

“With trust, comes belief. You didn’t cut him. Say it, Kady, please––” his voice shattered beneath the straining of his unrelenting words. “Just say it, say it for me, say: I didn’t attack him.”

“I didn’t attack him.”

“Again…”

“I didn’t attack him.” He told me to
repeat it once more, and with each time I repeated it, I felt a little resolve filter into my statement.

“
I want you to do something for me. Tell the shrink whatever you think he wants to hear, simple yes and no in the right places. Slip the pills under your tongue, I don’t care where you put them just don’t take them, you don’t need them. Do you understand?”

I nodded.

“One more thing,”––my eyes fluttered closed as his thumbs skated over the arches of my cheeks––“cling onto this conversation. Hold on with everything you have, keep replaying it and keep remembering these words. Don’t lose yourself, Kady. I couldn’t bear it.”

When I opened my eyes,
his brow was creased and lips quirked. Staring blankly into his eyes, his left hand fell from my face, to pinch the bridge of his nose.

I heard the handle of the door behind me squeal as it was pushed down, and a slight breeze filtered into the room.
“Is everything okay in here?”

I saw him
nod as he glanced up and put the orderly at rest as he assured her. “I gotta go. Keep remembering,” his words came tersely and he set a quick, chaste kiss on my forehead before quickly shunting himself from the seat in front of me, and left.

The cool
ness of her flesh journeyed through the fabric of my pajama top as she wrapped her hand around my upper arm and guided me once again on shaky, lifeless legs back to the dayroom.

The chairs and tables were set as they normally were, the TV on mute, while a woman sashayed from each black tile, avoiding the white ones, to the softly emitted music
from the radio. There was no evidence of an uproar, everything was as it was. And once again, I was alone on my seat, gazing longingly out of the window to my left; there was no evidence of any visitor. No staff saying goodbye, I didn’t even hear the door close.

The transition was done so quickly, too quickly for my head to acknowledge.
That alone prompted the worrisome thought in my mind: was Walker even here in the first place? Or was it just the mere voice of denial manifesting in the form of the only person I could truly trust, in a bid to sway me back after I admitted defeat?

Like the
saying goes: the truth is hard to swallow.

“There she is,”
I heard his voice echoing from the furthest end of the corridor, beyond the painted iron gateway and check in desk.

Being escorted down the corridor, I couldn’t stifle the fixed, overawing sense that I was being escorted down The Green Mile and t
he bald, coffee skinned mammoth beside me, discharging me into the arms of the person who put me in here in the first place, was more like the guard walking me to my fate…my death.

Axle, as we came to name him, never cracked a smile, and he was one strong bastard.
In my first two uncooperative days, it only took him, and him alone, to pin me down on the old, thin mattress covering a squeaky metal frame as the nurse stabbed me with that Goddamn needle full of liquid relaxant.

However, peeking
up at his towering, beefy form at my right as we approached the gate to the outside world, he was grinning down at me. It was like watching a dog walk on its hind legs. That alone bred an inward giggle.

“Kady
baby,” Liam mouthed while Axle opened the gate, the loud groaning and squealing of old hinges journeyed down the hallway. It felt like I was being freed from prison.
Out of one, into another,
I thought to myself as I stepped over the hold.

In an instant,
Liam’s arms crashed around me, swallowing me whole with a tight embrace that had me tapping out on his arm to loosen up. Finally, arms outstretched, he held me at length, giving me a once over perusal. “I’m so happy to have you back,” he grinned and placed a kiss on my forehead.

I couldn’t
bring myself to smile; I couldn’t reciprocate his level of eagerness at getting me home, or leaving this place. I didn’t know what it was, but it was something about spending just over two weeks locked up, drugged to the eyeballs that had me realizing how vulnerable I had been. Even worse, people who knew me on the outside saw my vulnerability before I did.

“Mr. DeLaney, here is Kady’s medication.” Liam took the bag
handed to him by Axle. “She
must
take them. I can’t stress that enough. The stabilizers will keep her mood exactly that…stable, so there should be no repeat of her aggression or anxiety. The tranquilizers are to be administered if she grows agitated and distressed. The doctor will continue with a follow up appointment which will be sent to you.”

Liam nodded.

“The tranquilizers will knock her out, so Kady,” turning his beefy attention back to me, I couldn’t help but notice the rolls at the back of his neck over the white scrubs. “There is to be no driving or operating machinery once you have taken them, you understand that don’t you.”

“Yep, I’ve already heard it. No need to lather, rinse, repeat,” I
joked, my mouth caving in to a lopsided grin.

I was gestured to the gate, “Go on, get outta here, girl.”

Tossing the friendly giant a wave and a forcing a smile over my shoulder, I did what I was good at: I did as I was told.

Hand in hand, we made our way through the entrance, down the steps and into
the parking lot. The sun was beaming, the breeze light and refreshing against my flesh. Breathing in deeply, I delighted in the scent of wildflowers from the patients’ garden which housed the odd scattered benches, as it drifted along the gentle breeze. I peeked back at the structure, which was now growing smaller as we moved further away.

It
was a strange feeling. It wasn’t a place I’d particularly want to visit at the best of times. I most definitely didn’t want to go there against my will. But, for just over two weeks, that place had been a little haven for me, a place where I could hide away, lick my wounds and discuss how to get better. In Pinewood, I was surrounded by other patients who were in the same boat as me, who were vulnerable and couldn’t see it.

Now, I was being dragged away from that distorted form of securi
ty, where no judgment was passed, back into a world full of people who do nothing other than pass judgment, criticize, and frown upon the sick and diverse…

That scared me.

“Come on, baby, in we get,” Liam held the silver door open as I stood stock-still in the gravel driveway frowning at both him and the car.

“What happened to the BMW?”

“Oh, we needed a new car; Liv needed a car, so I bought this and gave her the BMW.”

My eyes widened with blatant cynicism, my jaw fallen open.
He did what? “You gifted her with a BM-fucking-W?”

“It’s okay, I got you a gift too, baby,” he smiled a little too happily. His gifts were one thing I had learned to have great apprehension about. Either, it wasn’t a nice one or it was going to come at a price. “But you need to get in the car.”

Fixed in place was the wide grin on his face. So much hesitancy stewed in my body. I was unsure how to cope with the ever changing colors of Liam DeLaney’s attitude. If I was to be truthful, I was on tenterhooks in his presence, and my paranoia knew that dreaded fact. In spite of my worries, I reluctantly did as I was bid and slipped into the Mercedes.

Thirty minutes of deafening silence proved too much for the man at my left. A hand, which I grew used to cringing from, crashed down on my denim-clad thigh, causing me to jolt with
the expectancy of an uncongenial, harmful touch.

“Hey, why are you so jumpy, baby?”

He thought that was jumpy? That flinch had nothing on how the beating mass in my chest was functioning. Lips moistened with a sweep of my tongue, I faintly shook my head. “I…umm…I…”

“For God sake, Kady, what’s the matter?” My body
quailed at the sound of his scaling voice as my mind worked overtime. He was going to blow his fuse if I didn’t talk.

Out of one prison
, into another,
the small voice in my mind echoed.

“I’m just feeling like a burden.”

“Burden?” his attention was torn from the road ahead, to me then back again.

“I couldn’t see that I was sick, Liam. You could, and I’m sure everybody else could. I…I just feel like I’m spreading my wings again, entering the big wide world, and knowing how people judge and frown upon people, I just…”

“What?”

I shook my head once more then
redirected my observation to the people and buildings flying by outside my window. “Fuck it. I just want to go home, snuggle down, not answer questions, eat when I want to, or don’t want to, and just enjoy not having to be on a routine.”

When I was told that there was going to be a problem with my daily preference, my blood instantly turned to ice, my heart ceased to beat in m
y chest. Instead, the throbbing came from my eardrums, spawning a compressed sensation in my head. “What do you mean?” I asked with a great deal of caution.

He flashed a shrewd grin in my direction, his eyes glimmered with secret knowledge…a secret knowledge which I had great trepidation over. “I told you, it’s a surprise.”

Once we took the first right turning bypassing Bricksdale Square, I was told to fetch the flight mask out of the glove compartment. My timid refusal was countered by Liam’s presentation of an evil, demanding sneer. I’d been out of Pinewood for less than forty-five minutes, Liam had already raised his voice once and in conjunction with that expression he was honing, I knew that fighting back would cause me to be more fearful, than doing what he instructed. So, I conceded, recovered the black satin flight mask, and put it into place, making sure my vision was completely absent.