Part 26 (1/2)
Just like that, all of the panic and fear I'd felt drained from my body. Wherever I was, whatever I was here for, I would be okay because he was here. Knox was with me-I was safe.
Safe. Safe. For some reason, the word brought with it an image that didn't seem safe-it didn't feel safe either.
”Knox.” My voice was so hoa.r.s.e, I sounded like an eighty-year-old woman who'd been smoking seventy years of her life.
Hoa.r.s.e or not, his eyes flashed open. Before he'd blinked a few times to clear the sleep from his eyes, they flitted my direction. A smile broke across his face as he untangled himself from the chair. ”Thank you.” That was all he said as he got up and came closer, inspecting me like he was trying to decide if I was really here.
”For what?” I asked.
His hand touched my temple, his finger brus.h.i.+ng the corner of my eye. ”For opening your eyes.”
I swallowed, scared to ask my next question. ”What happened?”
”How much do you remember?” Knox asked, filling a cup with water and lifting it to my lips.
It felt so cool and calming on my throat I sighed. ”Nothing really.” I took another sip. ”Flashes. Images. Nothing that makes any sense.”
Knox's sigh sounded relieved. I didn't understand how he could feel relieved about me having no memory of a chunk of my life.
”That's not a bad thing, you know?” he said. ”Not remembering anything. I was there, and I'm not sure I want to remember the things I saw. The things I did. The things I wanted to do.”
My hand reached for his. When his fingers wove through mine, I couldn't imagine anything I couldn't deal with when he was holding my hand. ”Please, Knox, just tell me. The highlights if nothing else.” I pinched my hospital gown. ”I just woke up in a hospital, feeling like my entire body has been run over by a steamroller, with no memory as to what happened to put me here. Now you're telling me I don't want to remember what happened. I'm about to go insane, so please, just tell me.” The water had made my throat feel better, but my voice was still hoa.r.s.e.
His head fell back, and though I knew everything inside him didn't want to tell me, I also knew he would because it was me asking. Knox had never been able to tell me no-at least not very often or for very long.
”I don't know how you got there, but when I found you, you were in the bas.e.m.e.nt of the Sigma Nu house. That was two days ago.”
I felt my forehead crease. ”Sigma Nu? That's Beck's frat . . .”
Knox's face shadowed, and I had another flash. It made me realize he was right-I didn't want to remember everything. ”It was him. Beck. He was the one-” A small sound slipped past my lips when another flash almost flattened me. ”Did he . . . you know . . . did he-” I couldn't seem to say the word. It got stuck in my throat every time.
”No, he didn't.” Knox's head whipped from side to side. ”And you don't have to worry about him ever again. You don't have to worry that he's going to try something like that again.”
Beck. My ex-boyfriend. The guy everyone liked and had what people would describe as an infectious personality and smile. The same one Knox had warned me to be careful with was the one we'd been looking for all year.
”Why? Is he in prison?” My hand curled into the blankets as the pieces fell into place.
”Not yet.”
”Why not?” Without knowing the rest, the flashes alone were enough to earn Beck some solid orange-jumpsuit time.
”Because they can't throw him in prison until he heals from his injuries first.”
”What injuries?”
Knox's jaw set, his eyes darkening. ”The ones I inflicted on him. The ones that ensured he'll be walking with a limp and a crooked nose for the rest of his life.”
It wasn't an image that flashed through my mind then. It was a sound-a noise like flesh pounding flesh, knuckles cracking into bone. ”How did you find me? Did I tell you I was going to be with Beck? Did you know I was going to the Sigma Nu's house?” I couldn't remember how I'd wound up in that bas.e.m.e.nt with Beck, but I hoped Knox did.
”No, you didn't tell me. I didn't know. When I came home that afternoon and walked into my room and found it . . . the way it was, I knew I had to find you to explain. I didn't expect that when I found you, it would be the way I did.” His hand stiffened in mine.
”Your room . . . What did you find in your room?” I'd no sooner asked than I remembered. That memory came flooding back, not just as images but as a continuous stream. His desk, the lock, the metal box, the contents inside it, the photo . . . For the second time, that small sound escaped my mouth. ”I remember. I remember that part.”
His eyes closed as he nodded. ”Good. That will make the next part easier.”
”What next part?”
When Knox looked at me, he looked old. Ancient. Stubble covered half his face, dark crescents framed the bottom of his eyes, his eyes looked flat, and his shoulders sloped down. He was in the same outfit I remembered him in from the flash I had of him charging into the room that night. He was a twenty-one-year-old who looked sixty, and he'd aged another decade before he opened his mouth. ”The part where I explain.”
I didn't let go of his hand, but I wasn't sure if I'd still be holding it at the end of this. Knox had saved me from Beck, but Knox wasn't innocent. Not with the contents of that box.
”Explain what you were doing with photos of all of the girls who'd reported their rapes, along with baggies of white pills and a handbook that may keep me from ever looking at humanity in the same way?”
Knox didn't flinch away from my words or the accusation in them. ”I'm going to try, yes.”
With every moment that pa.s.sed, another piece of my memory fell into place. Not so much memories of what happened during the ”incident,” but what had taken place leading up to it. Those memories came back like dominoes falling over each other. ”How about starting with-”
”My juvenile record and the charges on it?”
My head tilted. ”How did you know I knew?” Had I left the folder behind? Had I confronted him about it? Left him a note? I didn't remember approaching Knox about his record.
”Neve gave me a heads-up,” he answered.
My expression was probably as surprised as his. ”She gave you a heads-up? As in she came up to you, looked you in the eye, and talked to you?”
”I'm not sure if she really looked me in the eye, but she did come up to me and tell me about what she'd found out and shared with you earlier that day. I think she feels a little guilty . . . If she's even capable of that emotion.”
”When did you see her?”
Knox's eyes flickered to the door like she was standing right there. ”Earlier today. She left a while ago, but Harlow's here somewhere, and Jake's been coming after work. Your parents are down in the cafeteria right now-”
”My parents are here?” I shot up higher in bed. It was a two-hour flight, but it was ten-hour drive. As Dad had something of a plane phobia, I was pretty sure how they'd gotten here.
”Of course they're here. Their daughter's in the hospital. What happened to put her here is . . .” His fingers curled around the bed rails so tightly his knuckles went white ”It's a parent's worst nightmare. And a boyfriend's too.”
”What do they know?” Even I didn't know everything, but what I did remember were things I wasn't sure I wanted to share with any human being.
”Not much. I told them enough so they'd know this was serious, but I left the rest up to you. You can decide how much you want to tell them.”
”You called them?”
He nodded. ”Harlow gave me their number. I know how close you are to them, and I figured you'd want them here for support . . . just in case.”
”Just in case of what?” I squeezed his hand.
”Just in case you woke up, saw my face, and started screaming and throwing things. Pretty much everything you didn't do when you woke up.”
Seeing Knox's face the way it was now reminded me of how it had been when I'd woken. ”Is that what you were dreaming about? Me screaming and throwing things at you?” I smiled, though it wasn't all that funny. I'd very much wanted to scream at him and throw whatever was in reach when I saw him after finding that metal box.
But now . . . now everything was thick with confusion. Knox was in possession of a box of horrors, but he wasn't the one who'd been preying on other girls and me. I wasn't sure what that box meant anymore, or why he'd kept something like his juvenile record from me when he had to have known, given my personal experiences, that was a piece of information I should have heard from my boyfriend.