Branded

  If only I would have stayed.

  “Jesus Christ! Get me a gurney and some oxygen! MOVE, MOVE, MOVE!”

  I hear shouts and the rustling of leaves from somewhere in the distance, but it feels like a dream. The voices are muffled, like people are shouting underwater. I don’t want to open my eyes. Everything hurts. My head is pounding, my skin feels raw and my throat burns. I can feel someone poking and prodding at me and I want to scream at them to stop, but I can’t make any words come out. Each time I try to speak, it feels like someone is rubbing a hot coal against my vocal chords.

  I just want to sleep. I want to stay in this beautiful oblivion between sleep and waking up where I don’t have to think about everything that’s sitting right at the edge of my mind, waiting to take over – rope, threats, kitchen, fire, guns, daddy…

  “It’s okay, Phina, try not to move. We need to make sure nothing’s broken.”

  I must have made a noise of pain. I want to tell the voice it’s not the physical pain that’s killing me right now; it’s the mental pain. I see his face through the fire, the one that haunted my dreams and called me so many bad names. I see him in a different light, one filled with love and regret and apology. He traded his life for mine, the ultimate act of love. I don’t want to think about it, I don’t want to remember. It’s so much easier for him to be a monster in my mind than a savior.

  I’m gently rolled onto my back and something hard slides under me. I finally open my eyes, hoping the memories fade as I let go of the darkness.

  I blink rapidly when someone shines a light into my eyes while my arms and legs are strapped to something hard and uncomfortable.

  “Hey, there you are! How do you feel? Can you speak?” Brad asks as he leans over me with his stethoscope, pressing it against my chest.

  I look down and notice my sweatshirt has been sliced in half right up the front of my body. Before I can say anything to him, a plastic oxygen mask is pressed against my nose and mouth. Brad gently lifts my head to slide the elastic band around my head to hold it in place.

  “Just breathe normally and take it easy,” he instructs me as I feel cool air inside the mask begin to float down my throat and put out the fire in my lungs.

  I feel a prick in my arm and have the sudden urge to start giving Brad instructions on how to properly start an IV. That makes me want to laugh, which immediately makes me start to cry. I cough into the oxygen mask as my eyes sting with tears and my throat swells with emotion.

  “It’s okay, you’re going to be okay,” Brad tells me softly as he continues to move the stethoscope around my chest.

  I’m lifted suddenly and I stare up into the trees, watching them float above me as I’m moved until the night sky filled with stars is above me. I hear the rumbling of trucks, the wailing of sirens and so much shouting when we break through the trees that it makes my head pound.

  “Oh, my God! Get out of my way! GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY WAY!”

  A face comes into my line of sight, blocking out the stars, but it’s shadowed in darkness. All I can make out is short hair and I start to cry harder.

  “DJ,” I croak with a raspy breath, my voice sounding like Darth Vader in my ears with the oxygen mask over my face.

  I try to speak again, to tell him I love him and how sorry I am for everything I put him through. I want him to know that I was never really alive until I found him again. I want him to know that I can survive anything because of HIM. Because of his love and his belief in the type of person I could be.

  “Sorry, princess, you get the consolation prize.”

  I blink through my tears and the flashing lights from one of the vehicles illuminates Dax’s face as he stares down at me.

  “Jesus Christ, I can’t believe you’re alive,” he whispers, resting his palm on top of my head as he shuffles along with the group carrying me.

  Reaching up, I pull the oxygen mask away from my face as I suddenly stop moving and Brad leans over the opposite side of me, tightening straps and pulling blankets tighter around me.

  “DJ,” I whisper, wincing at the pain in my throat. “Where’s DJ?”

  I’m lifted away from Dax and pushed into the back of an ambulance, but I didn’t miss the look of sadness and worry on his face when I asked him where DJ was.

  Once I’m inside the ambulance and locked into place, I twist my head to the side to look down beyond my feet where Dax is still standing by the ambulance doors.

  “He thought…we saw…it didn’t look good, princess. They brought two body bags out of the house and, well…he pretty much lost it,” Dax tells me as Brad and another paramedic jump up into the ambulance with me and start hooking me up to all sorts of equipment.

  Oh, God, DJ. It would have killed him to see something like that.

  I don’t let myself think about the fact that one of those bags would have been filled with the remains of my father, the man I hated for most of my life, but who tried as best he could in the end to make up for everything.

  “Don’t worry, I’m going to find him and get his ass to the hospital as soon as I can, okay?” Dax reassures me.

  I nod and close my eyes as Brad presses the oxygen mask back to my face.

  I just need DJ. I need the sound of his voice and the feel of his arms around me to make everything okay. My heart won’t hurt with the memory of the look on my father’s face when he told me I deserve to be happy because DJ will erase all of that pain with just his smile.

  I just need DJ.

  “You can’t leave,” Collin argues with me as I rip the heart monitor stickers from my chest and pull the surgical tape holding the IV in place off of my arm.

  “I can’t stay here. You idiots already let me sleep through the night,” I complain, wincing as I gently pull the IV needle out of my skin.

  “Look, I’m going to find him. I’ve been to almost every fucking bar in the whole damn city and anywhere else I thought he might go. When I find him, I’ll bring him right to you. After I kick his ass for turning his damn cell phone off.”

  Jumping down from my hospital bed, I grab the pair of jeans, tennis shoes and t-shirt that Collin brought from my house in the middle of the night and head towards the bathroom.

  “I’ll find him myself. You’ve already spent enough time away from Finnley and she’s going to be released in a couple of hours,” I remind him.

  When I arrived at the hospital last night, I had Brad go to Finnley’s room, find Collin and explain to him what happened. I didn’t have the strength to go through it all over again. He came right down to the ER pushing a sobbing Finnley in a wheelchair in front of him. We hugged and cried while the doctors checked my lungs and looked over my body for burns. They commented on the marks on my hips and Finnley stared at the burns in shock. I knew she could tell I didn’t sustain them during the fire, they were too round, too perfect and nothing like the scars she has on her body from her own experience with a house fire.

  I promised her I would talk to her about them later, and it is a promise I plan to keep. It’s time for me to start being honest with the people in my life, ALL of the people in my life.

  I finish dressing in the bathroom and come out to find Collin still standing by the bed with an irritated look on his face and his arms crossed. Tossing my hospital gown on the bed, I turn to face him and mirror his pose.

  “I don’t like this. The doctors wanted you to stay here another night,” he complains.

  “And I don’t like the fact that I’ve been sleeping all through the night and no one has been able to find DJ,” I fire back.

  “You weren’t sleeping, you were heavily medicated after a TRAUMATIC EVENT,” he argues, raising his voice at the end. “DJ stole Dax’s car, believe me, Dax is pissed off enough that he’ll probably find him before anyone.”

  Dax got a ride to the hospital behind the ambulance and questioned me about what happened before they shot me full of painkillers and I passed out.

  I really wish I had been high on morphine
when I had to relive all of those details without DJ by my side.

  I made him tell me what happened with DJ even though he didn’t want to. He said it was the most painful thing he’d ever witnessed and he didn’t want me to think about it, but I had to. I put him through this shit by sneaking out of the house with Jackson instead of waiting for him to end his call. I hurt him when I went off on my own and he found out that Jackson had been the one threatening us all along. I broke him when he got to the scene of the fire and had to watch the firemen carrying two body bags out of the house, believing one was me since he had no idea my father was in the house, as well. I put myself in DJ’s shoes, thinking about what I would have done if the roles were reversed and I thought he was dead. Just thinking about it makes me want to die. I have to find him. I have to fix him. It’s my turn to pick up his pieces and hope to God he forgives me for what I put him through.

  I lean up on my tiptoes and kiss Collin’s cheek, thanking him for running to my place to grab some clothes and for leaving Finnley for most of the night to search for DJ. He opens his mouth to argue with me again about staying, but he can see that he’s fighting a losing battle. Nothing can stop me from going to DJ right now. My blood work came back fine, and even though I breathed in a lot of smoke, my lungs are clear. They only wanted to keep me another night for observation because of the blow I took to the head when Jackson hit me in the car. My head still throbs from the goose eggs on either side of my skull, I feel like I have the worst case of strep throat ever and I swear there are knives scraping around in there whenever I swallow, but it’s nothing I can’t handle.

  Holding my hand out in front of me, Collin sighs regretfully as he drops the keys to his car into my palm.

  “Be careful, and call me as soon as you find him,” Collin tells me as I walk around him towards the door.

  I nod my agreement, keeping my head down as I sneak around the nurse’s station and make my way to the elevators.

  A few minutes later, I pull into DJ’s driveway and shut off the car. I probably could have taken up where Collin left off and started searching bars, but it would be like chasing my own tail. DJ has to come home eventually and I’m going to be here, waiting for him when he does. I overheard Collin and Dax talking quietly last night when the morphine began to pull me under and they were worried that he might do something stupid and reckless. Something permanent that would take him from this world so he wouldn’t have to deal with the pain of thinking that he’d lost me. The only thing keeping me calm at this moment is the knowledge that he would never hurt his family like that. He would never put his parents, his sisters and his nieces and nephews through something so horrible.

  Getting out of the car, I head up to his front porch, cursing myself for not being smart enough to realize his door would be locked. Turning around, I lean my back against the front door and slide down to my butt. Hugging my knees up to my chest and resting my chin on top of them, I close my eyes and think about all the things I want to say to DJ when I see him again.

  “Buddy, wake up!”

  I jerk awake, wiping the drool from my chin as I take in my surroundings. Ripped and stained black leather seats, window partition splattered with fluids I don’t even want to know about and an irritated man staring at me through the dirty window.

  Shit, taxi.

  Leaning to the side, I grab my wallet out of the back of my pants and toss all the bills I have through the open section of the partition and get out of the cab as fast as I can. Thank God I slept for the entire hour and half ride or the smell coming from that thing would have made me throw up the entire bottle of whiskey I consumed through the night that is currently churning in my stomach.

  I stand on the curb in front of my house, staring after the cab as it pulls away, squinting in irritation at the bright sunlight that amplifies my headache. When I turn around, I groan at the sight of Collin’s car in my driveway. I don’t want to fucking see him or talk to him right now. I don’t want to be around anyone, which is why I threw my cell phone to the ground as soon as I got to the bar last night and stomped the shit out of it until there was nothing left but teeny, tiny broken pieces.

  Just like my goddamn heart.

  I don’t want to walk in that fucking front door. She lived in that house with me and everywhere I look I’m going to see her, smell her and remember her. I’m going to picture her curled up on the couch watching a movie, standing in the kitchen loading up the dishwasher or lying on my bed, tempting me as I tried to get dressed. I’m going to see her in the shower, in the hallway, in the reflection of every motherfucking plate. I could walk away and never step foot in that house again, never have to feel the pain of losing her breaking apart my chest every time I take a breath. I seriously consider it, just walking away from my house, wandering aimlessly down the sidewalk until my legs give out. Not packing up my things, not saying good-bye, just disappearing into the wind like she did. I think of my mother, my father, my sisters and their children and I know that as much as I want to leave, I can’t. They love me, they depend on me and their hearts would ache as much as mine is right now if I did that to them.

  Like the dumb fuck I am, I turn and make my way slowly up the driveway, giving Collin’s car the finger as I walk around it. I’m a glutton for punishment. Even though I don’t want to go inside that house, I have to go inside. I have to smell her on my sheets one last time, I have to pick up the clothes she strewed at the end of my bed, lift them up to my nose and let the scent of her skin and perfume surround me. There’s also extra strength aspirin in the kitchen that will hopefully put an end to the marching band that’s taken up residence in my head.

  I try not to, but I silently curse Collin in my head as I go up the walk, digging through my pockets for my house keys. He’s going to tell me how sorry he is, he’s going to tell me it wasn’t my fault, and then he’s going to go home to Finnley and get to touch her, hold her and stare at her as much as he wants.

  My feet angrily stomp up the steps and I stare down at them as each one pounds into the wood, wishing I could rip my heart out of my chest and do the same to it. Just pound it to dust like my phone so it didn’t have to sit there like a half-dead fish inside my chest, coming back to life every few seconds to flop around and remind me it’s trying to live, but is missing the one thing it needs the most – oxygen. Phina was my oxygen. I don’t want to breathe without her. It hurts too much to even try.

  I get to the last step and pause as I finally manage to pull the tangled set of keys out of my pocket, flipping through them to find the gold house key. When I finally find it, I look up, and the keys slip through my fingers and clatter to the floor of the porch.

  Goddammit. God fucking dammit.

  I knew walking up to this house was going to be hard, but I thought I’d have at least a few minutes before I started to lose my fucking mind. I see her, clear as day, curled up on her side at the foot of my door, fast asleep.

  I clench my eyes closed as tightly as possible and bring my fists up to rub them angrily. When I open them again, she’s still there, looking more beautiful than anything in my memory. Her knees are pulled up to her chest and her hands are tucked under her cheek just like they always are when she sleeps.

  Oh, God, it hurts. It fucking hurts so much!

  I close my eyes again, rubbing my palms over my face, begging the image go away. I can’t do this right now. I can’t stand this pain. I just want it to go away. Just like before, when I open my eyes, she’s still there. My legs give out and I drop, my knees slamming into the wood. My arms hang uselessly at my sides as I slump my ass back on my feet and stare at the vision in front of me. I watch as her chest rises and falls with every breath she takes, I watch as a small gust of wind blowing though the porch plays with a piece of her hair, lifting it off of her cheek and swirling it around before it drops back down like a feather. Her lips twitch and she sighs softly in her sleep. The sound guts me and my useless arms finally move, wrapping themselves around my wai
st as I rock back and forth.

  “I can’t do this, I can’t do this. I want you to be real,” I whisper as I finally let the tears I’ve held back slip down my cheeks.

  I see movement behind her eyelids and then her eyes flutter open. I wonder if I’m making this happen by sheer will alone. I need to see her eyes. I don’t want to see her fucking eyes that have been haunting me through the night. I can’t tell what’s real and what isn’t. I feel the cold, hard wood beneath my knees, I feel the wetness on my cheeks and I hear birds chirping and cars driving by. I know those are real. I can feel and hear that they are real. What’s happening in front of me can’t be real. She’s dead. She’s gone. She can’t be waking up on my front porch, her green eyes locking onto mine as she quickly pushes herself up into a sitting position.

  “DJ.”

  She breathes my name and it tortures me. Her voice sounds real, but I know it isn’t. I close my eyes and shake my head back and forth, trying to make it all stop.

  “Open your eyes,” her voice commands softly.

  My head keeps shaking back and forth. I won’t do it. I can’t do it. It’s too much, too hard. Goddammit, it’s too hard!

  I hear something sliding against the wood and I squeeze my eyes closed tighter when I feel the warmth of her body right in front of me.

  “Drake, please. Open your eyes and look at me,” she pleads with a sob.

  I feel her warm hands press against either side of my face and it throws me. Warm, not cold like a fucking ghost or whatever the hell this is.

  “I can’t, I can’t…you can’t be real,” I mumble even as my face turns into her palm and I nuzzle her skin with my nose and breathe her in.

  In the next second her lips are against mine, warm and soft and so fucking real. I taste tears on her lips and I wonder if ghosts have the ability to cry and then realize I don’t fucking care. I don’t care if my mind is completely gone and I’m so fucked up in the head that I’m imagining this. I’ll stay a fucked up mess the rest of my life if I can have her lips on mine and it can feel this real.