Chapter 4

Chapter

Four

April 3 rd

8:32 A.M.

Don't go to sleep.

Don't go to sleep.

Don't go to sleep.

Despite Beth's best efforts, exhaustion weighed heavily upon her, and against her will, her eyes began to drift closed.

She had no idea how many hours straight she'd been awake, time had blurred into nothingness here in the hospital. Sitting beside Axel, waiting for him to wake up, whispering words she had been afraid to tell him when he was awake. Eating only when someone brought her food and forced her to consume it. She hadn't showered in the six days Axel had been in the hospital because she didn't want to be away from him for the time it would take. She left his side only to use the toilet, nothing else.

So, it was no wonder that exhaustion had finally pulled her deep enough under for her to dream.

Weird snippets of images.

A little girl who couldn't be more than three or four, with blonde pigtails and brown eyes much too serious for her age, running.

Not playing.

Running.

Like the devil was chasing her.

When her small legs finally gave out, the child collapsed onto the ground and began to cry.

Helplessness emanated from her.

But when a tall figure stalked through the trees, the tiny girl wiped away her tears, leaving dirty smudges behind on her otherwise pale cheeks, and stood, bravely facing the man with a strength that belied her young age.

"Ya know ot happen to lil girls oo run, Beth," the man snickered.

Beth?

The little girl was … her?

Although she could feel the child's fear, the little girl didn't say anything, didn't cower.

She accepted the hand life had dealt her like she wasn't a mere preschooler.

When the man grabbed the child, snatching her off the ground and holding her in a grip that hurt, she got a good look at his face.

He looked … familiar.

Her father?

No.

Her father had a large scar running across his face from just below his left eye to the corner of his mouth.

This man was her uncle.

His pockmarked face was forever burned into her memory.

Her father hurt her. Her grandfather, too. There were another two uncles and six much older cousins who all joined in abusing her. But this uncle? He was the one little Beth feared the most.

Even at four, she knew why.

The others were always drunk but not this uncle. He didn't drink which meant he wasn't impaired in any way when he assaulted her. He did it because he wanted to. Because he was pure evil .

The image faded as the man carried the little girl through the woods, back to the secluded, dilapidated house they all called home.

Her breathing was harsh, and part of Beth wanted to find a way to wake herself up. These were dreams, but they were also memories of her life as a child. She was terrified to learn more of what she had endured at the hands of her own family, and didn't want to see anything else, didn't want to remember.

But another part of her knew she had to face this.

Had to face everything.

Had to learn who she was so she could have a future.

That little abused girl had eventually found freedom, love, and safety, and adult Beth wanted to hold onto that. She wanted to have a future where she was more than just the woman who had been abused all throughout her life and who pain and sorrow constantly followed.

Fighting the urge to attempt to wake herself, she faced the next image to shimmer into her mind. This time it was a slightly older version of the little girl—of herself—who stood in a filthy kitchen attempting to wash off an equally filthy plate.

Instead of watching like an outsider like she had when she watched the little girl run through the woods, this time around she felt closer. Not quite an active participant, but she could feel rather than just see what the girl was going through. Maybe nine or ten, the young girl's stomach was growling, aching with hunger, despite having just eaten dinner.

Sitting at her feet was a younger cousin, maybe three years old, and young Beth was trying to figure out how she was going to keep the little girl quiet for the rest of the evening. A screaming child would draw attention she didn't want for herself or the toddler. Attention meant pain and she was so very tired of pain.

As she set the plate on top of the pile in the cupboard, closing the door that was mostly broken, she eyed the blistered burns on her arms. Courtesy of an older cousin who smoked constantly and had taken to putting out his cigarettes on her thin arms.

Tears wanted to fall, but she had long since learned crying didn't solve anything.

Nothing would solve her problems .

This was her life. She was trapped there on her family's property. She didn't go to school, didn't have friends, and never left the land that had been in her family for generations. When she got older— if she got older—she would be married off to one of her father's or uncle's friends.

Before the girl could dwell on the rough hand life had dealt her, she heard drunken voices from outside. Panic filled her, accepting your life didn't mean that it wasn't terrifying.

The back door was thrown open so hard it banged into the wall, causing another dent in the already battered paint. Her eyes grew wide when she saw it wasn't just her uncles and cousins, but a whole bunch of drunk men. Since she didn't know how to count, she had no idea how many there were, but it was a lot.

"Time you learn how to take care of a group of men, girl," one of her uncles said as he reached for her.

Terrified if she screamed or fought that this group of predators would turn on the helpless little girl sitting beside her, Beth forced herself to remain still as hands grabbed at her. They ripped at her clothes, they held her down, they hit, they hurt, they ripped into her small body and shattered another part of her battered soul.

Beth wasn't sure if there were real tears on her cheeks or if she was simply feeling the echo of the tears of her much younger self.

As badly as she wanted to reach back through the passage of time and save that poor little girl that nobody even knew existed, there was nothing she could do.

This was too much.

How had she spent the last eleven months praying to regain her memory?

She didn't want this, she didn't want to remember, she never wanted to know the horrors she had lived through.

How had she survived this?

No wonder her mind had just locked itself away. Why would it ever want her to know just how bad life had been for her?

But she was powerless to stop another image from forcing its way into her vulnerable mind.

She was older again in this memory, maybe sixteen or seventeen, the blonde had turned into brown with the same lingering natural blonde highlights that remained to this day. More scars and fresher wounds littered the exposed skin on her arms and the lower half of her legs. The brown eyes she saw on the teenager were one step away from dead.

Small, much too thin, and dirty, this girl had been forced to fight for her life every second since she had been born. No wonder she looked like she was more of a functioning zombie than a human being.

"Okay, girl, get out here," her uncle called, and the teenager wrapped her arms around her waist as she crept across the floor and out onto the sagging porch. Beside her uncle was a man who stood out in his crisp black suit and clean, slicked-back hair. Even without seeing the huge wad of cash in her uncle's hand, she knew this man was money.

What she didn't know was what that had to do with her.

"Come," the suited man ordered in a voice that sounded nothing like the ones she was used to hearing.

Confused, she looked to her uncle. She was supposed to go with this man? Why? She'd never been anywhere off the property, why was she going now?

"You stupid, girl?" her uncle demanded. "You go with him. You're not our problem no more."

More confused than ever, Beth had no idea what that meant, but it didn't matter, the suited man grabbed her roughly around the elbow and dragged her to a shiny black car sitting in the driveway.

When she was shoved inside, she found another man in there.

Evil.

It crashed into her the moment she was in his presence.

No idea if it was teenage Beth or Beth now, but a scream filled the air.

"Beth. Beth! Wake up, sweetie. Now. Wake up, Beth."

She was shaken roughly, and her eyes snapped open. White walls. A bed with a body in it. Light streaming through the windows. The hiss and beep of machines.

The hospital.

The evil man was gone, but the images she'd seen, the memories she had relived, remained in her mind.

"Bethie, you okay, sweetie? Were you having nightmares?" Tank asked. He was crouched in front of the chair she'd fallen asleep in, his hands on her shoulders, and concern written all over his face.

It was on the tip of her tongue to say it hadn't been dreams but memories that had her screaming, but for some reason, she held back. She had just taken the first step in finding the woman she'd been, but it was a painful step and the only one she wanted to share it with was the man lying unconscious in the hospital bed.

Come back to me, Axel. I need you .

What would happen to her if she lost Axel but gained herself? How was she supposed to survive reliving the hell that had been her life without the man who had become her whole world, the only safety she'd ever had, the only love she'd ever experienced?

April 8 th

2:06 P.M.

As much as she didn't want to, it was time for Beth to accept that this might be her reality from here on out.

Eleven days had passed since Axel was hurt and rushed to the hospital. While his lung was healing well, and he was breathing independently, he hadn't woken up. Hadn't so much as stirred a teeny, tiny little bit, and she was beginning to give up hope that he would ever wake up.

How had Axel survived eleven months with her all but lost to him?

It had only been days and she was about to lose her mind.

She wanted him so badly to come back to her, but there was nothing she could say or do to make it happen. The feelings of helplessness were crushing. Literally, that was what it felt like. There was a pressure in her chest she had no idea how to relieve because what she needed was for Axel to wake up, tell her he loved her, and that everything was going to be okay.

Was everything going to be okay?

With him?

With her ?

With the threat that still lingered over them and all of Bravo Team?

"Is he going to be okay here?" she asked, for what had to be the hundredth time in the last hour.

To their credit, no one complained, and no one got frustrated with her, not the guys and not the nurse who would be working the day shifts. It hadn't been her decision to bring Axel home from the hospital. But everyone else had agreed that he would rather be there, surrounded by his things, in the home he shared with his wife. They believed it would give him a better chance at waking up from the coma his brain had trapped him in.

Beth, on the other hand, was worried.

What if something went wrong?

Eagle Oswald—billionaire former SEAL and founder and CEO of Prey Security—had hired two nurses who would be at the compound around the clock to monitor Axel and be there if anything happened. But in the hospital, there was a whole lot more than one nurse around if something went wrong. There were doctors there, too, and medical equipment.

Okay, a glance around Axel's room at his cabin showed even more equipment than had been in his room at the hospital. But still, she would have felt better if a whole hospital was there if the worst happened.

"He's going to be fine, sweetie," Rock assured her. The medic had more training than the rest of them, but was it enough to keep Axel alive until they could get him back to the hospital if his condition worsened?

How badly she wished someone could guarantee that.

Guarantee that Axel would be okay and that everything was going to work out.

"If this is too much for you, we can take him back to the hospital," Rock said, wrapping his arms around her in a brotherly hug.

While she had continued to have memory flashes whenever she was exhausted enough to fall into a sleep deep enough for dreams, she had yet to share that with anyone. As far as they all knew, she was still suffering from complete amnesia. But because her returning memories were only of her childhood years trapped on her family's land deep in the Appalachian Mountains, she still didn't remember her life with Axel.

What would he want right now?

It killed her that she knew that while she might be his wife, Rock knew more about what Axel would want.

"Is … would … what would Axel want?" she asked softly, unable to meet Rock's gaze as shame washed over her. What kind of wife was she that she didn't even know what choices her husband would make?

Amnesia had stolen her identity from her without her permission, but Beth herself had allowed it to steal her life. Now that she was remembering bits and pieces of her childhood, she finally understood why her therapist hadn't wanted her to be overwhelmed learning about her past and whatever had happened to her with Leonid Baranov all at once. Still, it would have been nice to be able to sit with her husband's arms around her as she felt like she died inside each time another snippet of memory reappeared.

"Axe would want to be here. With you," Rock told her. There was absolutely no shred of doubt in his voice. He believed what he was saying, and since she had no evidence to the contrary, she had to believe it, too.

"Then I want him to be here. This isn't about me, it's about Axel and whatever he needs to get better," she said.

Rock's arms tightened around her in another fierce hug. "I'm proud of you, kiddo. You're doing amazing. You've found your voice, that fight we all knew you had inside you. You are the very definition of a survivor, Bethie. Don't give up on Axe and don't give up on yourself. I know you don't remember it, but what you two had was the truest, purist form of love I've ever seen. Love like that doesn't die. Not ever."

His lips touched the top of her head, and then he released her and took a step back. Usually, when one of the guys tried to talk to her about her and Axel's relationship it made her uncomfortable. None of them would tell her anything substantial so it just made her feel like a failure. That she wasn't trying hard enough to get her memories back, but at the same time, frustrated because how did people expect her to get her memory back if they wouldn't help?

"Nurse will be in the living room, you call out if you need her," Rock told her. "I'm going to go spend some time with Ariel, but if you need anything at all you call. Any of us. All of us. Whatever you need, okay? We are all here for you. All of us. You are not alone."

Although she nodded at his words, Beth didn't believe them.

How could she?

She had been alone as a child, suffering unspeakable horrors. She had been alone when she was sold to Leonid Baranov even if she didn't remember what had happened to her there. She had been alone when she was kidnapped and held captive for eight months, even though again, she had no memory of her time during those months.

The only time she hadn't been alone was when she had Axel's love and she had stupidly let that slip through her fingers.

Was it too late to get it back?

Alone now with her husband, Beth went into the bathroom adjoined to the bedroom, and filled a bowl with warm water. Grabbing a washcloth, she returned to the bedroom and sat beside Axel on the side of the mattress.

"Can't you wake up, Axel? For me?" she asked softly as she dunked the cloth in the warm water and then squeezed out the excess. There was no answer, not that she had expected one,

Carefully, she cleaned every inch of his bare chest and arms. There were bruises there and mostly healed cuts from the explosion. Even the gash on his head from where he'd hit it was healing nicely. The doctors kept saying there were no signs of permanent brain damage, and nothing was stopping Axel from waking up.

So why didn't he?

It was selfish to think that his subconscious was in some way punishing her for shutting him out, and yet it was hard to think up another reason why his brain needed to take a metaphorical time out. It needed a break. From her. That was the only thing that made sense, and it hurt so badly to know she had hurt the man she knew deep down she loved with all her very being.

Axel thought she no longer loved him, and that was completely her fault.

"I love you, Axel," she whispered, touching her lips to his cheek. "I want you to come back. I need you to come back. I don't think either of us has handled things the way we should have this last year. I know I can't really be mad at you for not knowing what I needed when I didn't tell you, but I wish you had just asked me what I wanted rather than listening to that doctor. I get where she was coming from now," she admitted as she smoothed the damp cloth over her husband's face.

She had told her comatose husband that she'd been having memory flashes, hoping he might hear her and wake up. The doctors kept saying that coma patients had been known to hear what was going on around them, so Beth hadn't held back in telling Axel how badly she needed him.

But it never made a difference.

There were so many fears fighting for control inside her that Beth didn't even know how to untangle them all. She knew the biggest fear though. And that was that even if Axel woke up, and even if she told him how sorry she was for shutting him out, it was already too late to salvage their marriage.

And once again she would be left all alone.