well I could picture every detail of their features even though my eyes were having a hard time staying focused.
“…Grandpa…?” I asked, the word slurring out of my mouth like thick molasses.
My gaze settled on the figure standing near the foot of the bed. His blue eyes were bloodshot, and he looked… haggard. Worse than he’d looked since he’d had his stroke. A spike of worry tried to penetrate the fog in my mind.
He shouldn’t be pushing himself. He shouldn’t be letting stress get to him. It isn’t good for him.
“Talia.”
He breathed my name with both relief and pain in his voice, and I tried to shake my head, to tell him not to worry, but I wasn’t sure if I actually did it or not. I felt disconnected from my body, as if I were on another plane of existence and merely peering through my own eyes like they were portals into this room.
“I tried…” My half-formed thoughts came out as half-formed words. “Tried… to stop.”
My grandfather’s face pinched, and he drew in a deep breath. “It’s all right, Talia. You’re all right. I’ll go get the doctor.”
He stepped away from the end of the bed, and the four faces that had hovered at the edges of my vision moved closer. Two on each side of me, gazing down with intense, dark stares. Their expressions were set in grim lines, and I thought maybe they were each touching me, but I couldn’t be sure.
I couldn’t be sure I still had a body at all.
“What. Happened?” the boy with emerald green eyes asked. Fury radiated from him like it might rip through his skin and destroy the whole world at any moment.
“Dude, Mason. Calm down.” That was Finn, and although his broad shoulders were stiff with tension too, he shot his friend a quelling look. “She just woke up. Give her a minute to just fucking breathe.”
Mason’s nostrils flared, and the muscles in his jaw popped as he clenched his teeth. I could hear his harsh breaths, and I wished I could find my hand to put it on his. To touch him. To release some of that anger and tension before it tore him apart.
But now that he’d posed the question, my brain latched onto it, spinning it around in my head like a puzzle.
What had happened?
Adena had made copies of every page in the little black book I’d spent the semester writing in as I gathered damaging information about the Princes.
She’d taken the videos and pictures and posted them online before flinging the photocopied pages out of the windows of Craydon Hall, sticking them on trees and streetlamps across campus.
I’d told the Princes I hadn’t done it. And they had believed me.
And then…
I was driving. And the brakes went soft. The pedal was all the way to the floor and nothing happened, nothing changed.
“The brakes…” I slurred again, struggling to keep my eyes open. I felt tired, and the panic creeping in at the edges of my brain made me want to sleep again. To block it all out. To deny the reality that kept trying to intrude on the peaceful place my mind had settled in. “They wouldn’t… work.”
“Fuck!” Mason snarled as his grip on my hand tightened.
“Motherfucker.” Cole’s voice was a low rumble, rage simmering underneath it like scalding water about to boil over. His ice-blue eyes narrowed, and he shifted the hand that rested on my hip.
They were all touching me, I realized. I could finally feel it. Mason and Finn held my hands in theirs, Cole’s large hand was splayed across my hip, and Elijah’s palm was pressed to my thigh.
There was something grounding in those touches, in the contact between me and them. Something that kept me from flying apart, as if they were physically holding me together.
Even their anger was comforting, in a way. It meant they would look out for me, watch over me, protect me.
It meant I could sleep, and they would keep me safe.
So I did.
Noises woke me again.
They were quiet, just like they had been last time I’d woken. But these weren’t gentle or soothing.
The room was dark. No violent white light beat against my eyelids like it had before, and there was a stillness in the air, as if the whole world was asleep.
“It’s unacceptable.” Mason’s voice was a harsh whisper.
“I know,” Cole answered.
“She could’ve fucking died!”
“I know.”
“And you heard what she said. She tried to stop. She fucking tried to stop and couldn’t. This wasn’t an