Chapter 28

CHAPTER 28

Ayen

A soft beeping hummed in the distance, just out of reach.

The dark, inky black of forever stared back at me—a void so cold and desolate that it made it hard to breathe or move anywhere that wasn't right in front of me. I was bound to this place, unmoving and unfeeling aside from the deep searing pain of loneliness that consumed me from within.

I couldn't remember anything before this.

Who was I?

Where did I come from?

Where had I been going before I reached this place?

The unsettling thought that maybe there was nothing and no one that I'd been trying to find—that I was no one—hovered in my peripheral, pulling me down further into the darkness. I choked on it, breathed it in and let it take hold of me.

This would be it, then. I would dissolve into oblivion.

How sad.

But then, a single memory, or maybe it was a dream, foggy in recognition at first but becoming clearer with more concentration, suddenly began to flourish in front of me. Faces that I couldn't place but felt like home, voices that I could recognize even in my sleep.

And a touch that I'd become so intimately familiar with that I craved it even now...

The touch of a hand gently running through my hair, soothingly and loving.

I missed it.

I wanted to drown in it. Let it bleed into me. Filling every crevice that the darkness had frozen over and consumed and hoped that it could pull me away from this awful place.

Distant voices were beginning to break apart the silence that cocooned me in a straightjacket. Where were they coming from?

"—maybe. We'd have to wait and see."

"How long will it take?"

"I had to do a lot of sweet talking to get into his chambers, but the judge was interested in looking over the files sometime this week."

Silence.

The air surrounding me suddenly felt charged somehow.

"Will he wake up?"

The hand moving through my hair froze.

I reached out in front of me, heartbroken at the obvious fear in the voice that had stopped it. I didn't want those warm feelings to disappear and leave me trapped here with the cold darkness again. My limbs felt numb, hard to move and sore while I fought against the binds that tethered me to this place.

I wanted out. I wanted to be set free and go to where I was meant to be.

To who I belonged to.

Wading through the never-ending void was a hard fight, the current strong as it tried to drag me under again.

A something soft touched my cheek. A teardrop that wasn't my own.

" Please …"

A deep breath.

A sorrowful voice.

"Please, wake up."

Where are you? I wanted to say, but my lips felt sewn shut. Come find me.

But there was nothing. No one to reach out to me to lead me like I wanted them to. I would have to make this journey alone, chasing after the one thing I'd been desperate to find all of my life.

I wouldn't let it be just out of reach this time. My regrets weren't going to keep me from having what I wanted. Life was too short to live in fear of the what ifs and I was tired of sabotaging myself from what I really wanted.

Fingers brushed through my hair again, giving me a sense of hope as they traced along my temple. A soft kiss placed there.

Didn't I deserve happiness, too?

Yes , is what the void answered back, the voice sounding suspiciously familiar. Of course you do.

Coming back into my body was nothing like the movies. It was not a slow and gradual awakening that felt peaceful or finite. It was a hard slam of my consciousness being forced back into my body that left me gasping for breath and practically rocketing off of the bed that I was lying on.

There were things strapped to my arms and on my chest, wires that got tangled when I tried to lift up my arms and shield my eyes from the blinding light above me. Tears clouded my eyes, keeping me from seeing straight.

"Ayen, don't ." A firm hand gripped my wrist, pinning it back by my head.

Panic flooded into my system. I was being restrained just like the void had done to me.

Claustrophobia was closing in on me?—

"Baby, stop." He grabbed my other arm. "Just breathe, you're okay."

My body twisted in the bed sheets, battling against the body hovering over me and trying to grab at my other arm that I flailed around wildly. Something was covering my face, tight and uncomfortable, that sent me into a blind fight or flight. The machine next to me was blaring loudly, some kind of code going off that was making me dizzy to listen to.

I want—I want...

"Shhh." Warm lips brushed along my forehead, strong fingers lacing with mine. "I'm right here. You're okay..."

My body heaved a heavy sob with the familiar feeling of safety suddenly surrounding me.

"I know, sweetheart." More kisses along my temple. "You've got to keep everything on, though. You breathed in a lot of smoke. They need to monitor your oxygen levels."

Smoke?

Memories slammed into me.

The fire.

Barker falling down the incline.

Me radioing for help.

Jackson rescuing me ? —

Jax.

"That's it," he murmured. "Just relax for me. You're okay. I'm right here."

The machine next to me gradually stopped screeching, settling down to a slow and steady beeping that reminded me of my dreams. I let my body relax back into the bed, suddenly feeling how tired I really was from fighting both in and out of my head.

How did I even get here?

The last thing I remembered was Jackson throwing the rope down to me and being pulled up over the overhang. My lungs still burned a bit from the memory of choking on all of that smoke. Overwhelming darkness had hit me so suddenly that I could barely piece together what happened after that.

Jackson slowly lightened up on his hold on me, his fingers coming up to brush under my eyes where tears had collected, wiping my skin clean of them. Having him here with me made it easier to be at ease again—I didn't have to worry about being claimed by that awful darkness again.

Not when I knew Jackson would be here to pull me back out of it.

When my eyes finally focused on him again, he smiled lightly at me. The bags under his eyes were prominent, as was the shadow of his facial hair coming in. He looked tired, like he hadn't slept in days.

How long had we been here for?

My arm was heavy when I lifted it, like it weighed a hundred pounds more than I remember it being before all of this. There was one of those heart rate monitor clips attached on my pointer finger, the wire falling down somewhere off my bed to the right of my hip. An IV line stuck out from the hollow of my elbow, prickling me slightly when I tried to bend my arm up to grab at Jackson.

I wanted to touch him—needed to. I had to make sure all of this was real and not a trick of my mind.

He caught my wrist easily, gently kissing each of my knuckles before placing my hand back down onto the bed next to me.

"Jax," I mumbled, feeling miserable all over again.

He planted himself down onto the bed by my hip, the mattress slightly dipping while he was being careful to keep from sitting on any of the wires that were hooked up to the other sets of machines on my other side. Those monitors displayed all sorts of confusing looking graphs, too intense for my muddled mind to make any sense of.

"I'm right here, Ayen. I'm not going anywhere."

"Promise..." More tears were collecting along my lash line.

"Oh, honey. Of course I do." He dragged the pad of his thumb under my eyes again. "I think the drugs are making you a little weepy."

Probably.

Or the fact that I almost died trying to save an idiot.

What would've happened if Jackson never gave me that radio?

Or if he never heard my whistle?

I'm certain that I'd be a piece of fried chicken by now, never having gotten to tell him that I regretted ever pushing him away, or that I?—

My heart thumped.

That I loved him.

"The doctors should be in soon to check on you," he was saying, completely oblivious to my world-shattering realization. "Once they give you the all clear, then we can sit you up and get some food in you. It's been a few days, so I'm sure you're starving."

A few days?

Jesus, now I really felt bad for dragging him into my mess. Getting involved with me like this was probably never on Jackson's agenda. We'd started out by giving in to our mutually shared spark of passion, and now he was stuck tending to me at my bedside in a damn hospital.

Why wasn't he back at the program?

Why was he torturing himself by sitting with me?

Was it because I had no one else to stay with me?

"Ayen, stop."

My gaze snapped to him, catching him shaking his head at me.

"Whatever you're thinking. Stop it. I'm here because I want to be. You have no idea how worried I was about you."

How did he...?

I couldn't be that transparent, right?

"Seeing you down there like that." His Adam's apple bobbed visibly. "I thought I was going to lose you."

My chest tightened when his voice cracked and a thin, wet sheen grew over his eyes.

How could he cry for me when I absolutely didn't deserve it?

Him being upset over my well-being was the last thing he needed to be dealing with. Getting hurt while in his program was probably going to cost him so much more than just me lying in this damn hospital bed. I wouldn't be able to live with myself if it resulted in the program getting shut down because of my stupidity in not dragging Barker back to the group when I should've.

"You must hate me," I mumbled.

"No, I don't."

I reached up again toward his face, desperate to wipe his tears away like he had mine. He tangled our hands together instead, twining our fingers in a tight hold that he pressed against his chest.

"I will never ever hate you, Ayen."

"Why?"

How could he not?

I could've cost him everything. Maybe that was why he was sitting here with me in the hospital—he had no job to go back to.

His mouth opened to answer me, but was soon cut off by the door to my room sliding open. Lifting my head up slightly, I was surprised to see a tall woman walking in with a cardboard tray with two coffees in her hand.

She stopped short at seeing us, her eyes bouncing between me and Jackson before she slowly lifted a brow. She was striking to look at, her features reminding me of those high-end fashion models that would be plastered all over NYC billboards promoting some kind of luxury perfume.

"Am I... interrupting something?"

Jackson sighed, letting go of my hand and devastating me even more when he slid off the bed to walk over toward her. "No."

She offered him one of the cups and then worked her own out of the holder that she then tossed into the small trashcan by the door. My gaze was glued to Jackson as he popped the small lip of the cup up and took a generous swig of it, clearly needing the caffeine.

He needed to go home. Now that he knew I was fine and wasn't going to die and cause him a mound of paperwork, there was no more obligation to stick around.

"Ayen, it's nice to meet you," the woman said. "I'm Nina. I'm going to be handling your case."

Oh, his lawyer friend.

In response to that, I forced myself to sit up.

"Shit—" Jackson darted back over to my side of the bed. "Ayen."

His arm quickly hooked around my midsection, holding me up when I began to sag forward. Clearly, my body was still exhausted with what it had gone through during the fire, enough that I was barely able to sit up on my own. Or maybe that was from whatever drugs they'd been giving me to keep me sedated while I recovered.

Either way, it fucking sucked.

Jackson leaned away briefly to set his coffee down on the little lip of the monitor next to me, and then wrapped both of his arms around me and very carefully readjusted me back against the mattress once more.

Nina appeared at my other side, her perfectly manicured hand reaching over to press on a button on the side of my bed that slowly raised it up into a soft incline, allowing me to sit up and still lean back into it.

"There we go," she said, before stepping back.

Jackson sighed, running a hand through my hair in an absentminded way to brush back the pieces that fell across my forehead, sending a shock of pleasure racing up my spine. Him being bold like this in front of his friend was thrilling as well as a little scary. If she reported us to the Warden, we were done for.

Surprisingly, though, she didn't seem at all fazed by it and simply walked across the room to retrieve something out of her bag that was sitting in one of the reclining chairs. A file that was probably two to three inches thick was carefully held in her hand with the pages bending from how heavy it was.

She held it up toward me. "I went through all of your documents with a few colleagues of mine. They all agree that you got pretty shafted."

My cheeks suddenly felt hot. Honestly, I never thought I'd hear a lawyer say it so bluntly. Sure, I knew it just from being in this predicament and while at the time, my court appointed lawyer had been sympathetic to a point, to hear that said from someone else other than Jackson felt... well, validating.

Of course, Jackson's opinion was important to me, but sleeping with someone tended to muddle up the brain from thinking clearly.

"Nina's planning on meeting with Judge Callahan to discuss what can be done." Jackson squeezed my hand gently. "You could have a real shot in getting out of this."

Behind him, Nina nodded. "This will all be pro bono, of course, so don't worry about any of that. But going through your case file, there's some solid evidence that your defense attorney purposefully withheld that could've swung the jury in a different direction, as well as the prosecution trying to bury witness testimony in order to win their case. That's enough to get a judge's eyes on it, at least."

This was all beginning to sound too surreal to hear.

Sure, I'd imagined this exact scenario plenty of times late at night in my cell when I let those dark thoughts get the better of me, but my fantasy rapidly turning reality was seeming to be too good to be true.

The other shoe had to drop eventually.

Right?

It had to. That was how much my luck worked.

"There is one thing," Nina went on. "About the program."

Here it comes...

God, if the program actually got shut down because of me and Barker, I was never going to forgive myself. A decade's worth of work to be put into it, only for a couple of dumbasses to fuck up and get the whole thing completely disbanded. I had no doubts that Jackson would find another path to help people as he always had, but being the cause of collapsing something that he'd taken pride in for so long would fucking kill me.

Nina's gaze darted over to Jackson expectantly.

It dawned on me then, though, that if the program had been shut down because of us, then why was Jackson here in the first place?

I would've assumed he'd be too angry at me to want to wait around in a hospital room for me to wake up.

There could be an argument made that he was simply waiting for me to wake up in order to yell at me, but then again, why go through the trouble in soothing me?

If he was angry at me, he wouldn't have bothered. Jackson was a good man, a compassionate one. But he wasn't that nice.

He slowly turned to me and sat down on the bed again, hiking up his leg so that it was resting against my side. There was no hesitation in him when he reached out toward me and dragged his hand along my forehead and into my hair once more. Clearly, he wasn't worried about Nina tattling or about her caring in general.

Though, I was kind of curious on how that conversation even went.

" Yeah, I'm sleeping with one of the inmates in my program."

"Oh wow, really?"

"Yeah, can you take a look at his case file and get the charges dismissed?"

"Yeah, sure, no problem."

How was she not freaking out?

Jackson pulled in a slow and deep breath before he spoke. "They're sending you back, Ayen."

My brows furrowed.

Sending me back where?

"To SAC," he clarified after a moment.

Oh.

And there was the other shoe.

"We're going to get you out of there, though." He blinked hard a few times, his voice growing gruff from emotion. "I swear it. You just need to hold on over there a little longer."

I had half a mind to ask him to come visit me. I'd only ever had one visitor come and see me, and that had been Alex's mom. The entire hour had been spent in silence while she cried silently to herself, her eyes fixated on my uniform and the SAC logo stitched at the breast.

Finally, when time was called and the hour was up, she'd gotten up from her seat and left without a single word said. For some reason, that had hit harder than if she'd come to scream at me for ruining her son's life. Just watching the pain and devastation on her face as she wept was enough of a message to get across that I'd irrevocably ruined their family more than any kind of speech ever could.

Better to keep Jackson away from any of that, though. Not to mention if any of the COs that attended the program with us caught wind of it, it'd rouse suspicion.

Because why in the world would he randomly be visiting an inmate from his program in prison?

Actually.

How the hell was he visiting me now?

Where the fuck were the guards?

A light kiss was pressed to my forehead before Jackson stood. "Hang tight, okay?"

All I could do was nod and wonder.