1
I’ve always wondered if sleep is somewhere between living and dying.
That’s what it feels like now.
Am I alive?
Am I dead?
My thoughts drift somewhere between awake and dreaming, visions and pictures floating through my mind in a muddled confusion of colors and faces, things I can’t quite grasp. All I know is the rush of air from my lungs. In and out it goes, keeping me alive. Blood pumps through my veins.
Not dead, then. At least, not yet.
Something is wrong. It tugs at the edges of my mind, scraping at my consciousness like barbed wire. But I’m not quite sure I’m ready to face it. I’d rather stay here in this peaceful, empty space than go back out into a world of saints and sinners.
Sinners.
My breath catches in my throat. A pulse of aches and pains flutter to life in my body as an unfamiliar room spins into focus. Head thick and groggy with confusion, I blink away the stars that prickle the sides of my eyes. Shadowy forms loom over me, backlit by the light in the ceiling. I blink again, and the faces come into better focus.
I know them. I know these faces.
Gray, Elias, and Declan.
The Sinners.
My vision is still blurry and not quite right, but I can clearly make out all three of them. Their heads are gathered in a tight knot over mine, all looking down at me with nearly identical worried looks on their faces.
“Sparrow. Thank fuck.”
Tension fades away from Gray’s face as he speaks. The line between his knitted brows vanishes as he scoops up my hand in his, bringing it to his face. He hasn’t shaved, and his jaw is rough with stubble. From the other side of the bed, Elias brushes my blue-streaked hair away from my face. Declan grabs my free hand, squeezing it tightly as his deep brown eyes watch me intently.
Each of them seems to hold their breath, either waiting for me to speak first or unable to speak for themselves.
It’s almost like… something is wrong.
Wrong with me?
My gaze flickers away from the guys’ faces when I realize that I’m not in my own bed. I’m in a bed that angles upward a little at the top, surrounded by a tangle of cords and monitors. An IV is hooked up to the crook of my arm, and a thin gown and sheet cover my body. The room I’m in is lit by bright sunlight, which means the clock on the wall must read seven in the morning, not in the evening.
It’s a hospital room.
I would know. I’ve been in my fair share of them. This one is way fancier than any of the hospital rooms I’ve ever been in before though. Like the stuff you see on those TV shows about medical practices, not the beatdown, shitty establishments I’ve been housed in for various injuries, the ones where you don’t know if someone else has died in the gown you just put on.
I tear my gaze away from my surroundings and look back at the guys.
Why am I here?
I open my mouth to ask the question out loud, but no sound comes out at first. My mouth is dry, my lips a little chapped. It feels like I’ve got sandpaper in my throat, and words seem to get lodged somewhere between my lungs and my lips. The feeling of not being able to speak sends a sudden rush of panic through me. I don’t like the feeling of being silenced. I fucking hate it.
“What… what happened?” I manage to say, forcing the words out even though they don’t want to come. My voice is barely more than a croak. “Why am I… here?”
Gray is the first to speak, and his voice is low and serious. Gentle. It reminds me of the way he spoke the day he told me it wasn’t the three of them who wrecked my paintings.
“You fell down a flight of stairs,” he says, “at the end of semester party we were at. Don’t you remember?”
Do I remember?
I wrack my brain for something, anything, but I come up empty. The only party I can think of is the party where I put Gray’s little game to an end, where I stripped in front of the entire fucking school, but that can’t be what he’s talking about. That was weeks ago.
Is he talking about the night I kissed Elias after the football game?
But I didn’t fall down any stairs there either. Life went on afterward.
Goddammit. What is he talking about? Why don’t I remember?
“No,” I rasp. “I… fell?”
Something shifts in Gray’s blue-green eyes, and his jaw tightens a little. Declan’s grip on my hand is on the verge of cutting off my circulation.
Elias opens his mouth to say something, but he’s interrupted by a crisp knock on the door. A middle-aged man in a white coat opens the door a second later and steps inside. He’s clean cut, accessorized with a silver Rolex that glints in the sunlight, flashing little light bubbles on the ceiling.
“Ah. I’m glad to see that you’re awake, Ms. Wright.”
The doctor sets down a slim laptop on the small desk along one wall before coming over to the bed.
The guys take a small step back to give him room, but their stances remain protective as the doctor takes my vitals. He returns to his laptop and checks something on the screen before typing out a few notes. Then he looks up at me.
“How are you feeling?”
How am I feeling? How am I fucking feeling? What sort of question is that?
I want to say something rude. Want to ask him if he thinks I feel good about falling down a flight of stairs that I don’t even remember.
The man, whose name tag reads Doctor Cohen, purses his lips when I don’t say anything.
“You fell down a flight of stairs, Sophie,” he says, dropping the formalities and telling me what I already know. “It’s likely that you’ll have short term memory loss from the head injury you sustained. When we did a brain scan, we saw signs of previous trauma, so frankly, I’m glad to see that you don’t have more side effects. How are you feeling?” He repeats the question.
“I’m…” My voice is still rough. Low and throaty. “I feel… all right. A little sore.”
The doctor seems content with that answer. For now. He gives me a small smile over the glow of the laptop. “Good. You also sprained your ankle, not to mention the bruises you have. The worst damage was to your head, but luckily you seem to have taken that like a soldier.” He glances down at his screen again. “Which is no surprise, considering the injuries you’ve already received,” he adds on an exhale.
A familiar prickle of annoyance and embarrassment crawls up my spine as he begins to read off my charts, as if I’ve somehow forgotten about the damage my body has sustained. As if I could forget about the other head injury or the small scars that decorate my body alongside the tattoos I’ve collected over the years.
I shove the prickling discomfort down, refusing to let it fuck me up in the head. I know for a fucking fact that I had a rough childhood. I don’t need to be reminded of it by this asshole.
If I could forget it, I would, trust me.
Well, that’s not exactly true. I don’t remember much at all about my life before the age of eleven, and I’ve always wondered what I’m missing from my past. The social workers’ best guess was that my mom was a drug addict, which would account for both the scars on my body and the previous brain injury. They think she might’ve dropped me on my head at some point, and that eventually, she either abandoned me or I ran away.