Eluding Nirvana (The Dark Evoke Series Book 2) (39 page)

The largest Band-Aid in the box was torn open and placed over the four inch laceration, with Laurie’s gentle fingers smoothing down the edges. “I knew all along something wasn’t right. I’ve had a bad feeling about that man for months,” she said softly, her attention still directed at dressing yet another one of my self-inflicted wounds. “You could try calling the institute, maybe they could help. Other than that, you know whatever you need, I’m always here,” hazel eyes peeked up at me from the seat.

“That’s why I fucking love you. Where’s my phone?”

She made a disapproving, whinnying noise as I stepped back from her touch and grabbed for the cellphone on the table. Holding the handset to my ear, I shushed Laurie with a wave of my hand and asked the operator to put me through to Pinewood Institute.

“Good morning, Pinewood Institution,” the depressed voice greeted me after several rings. By that point, Laurie was standing on tiptoe with her ear against the phone, eavesdropping.

“Hi, I wonder if you can help me. I have a friend that has been admitted. Her name is Kady Jenson. I was wondering if I could come and visit her.”

“Are you on the approved visitation list, sir?”

Pulling away, Laurie mouthed, “Visitation list?” with a frown.

“Um…no, I’m not––”

“I’m sorry, sir, but there’s no way I can authorize the visit unless you’re on the list…”

A small hand came up to cover the speaker, “Ask them to ask Kady if she will see you.”

I nodded and licked my lips.

“Couldn’t you ask Kady yourself if she’d see me? I really need to see her. Please…Just tell her that Walker wants to see her.”

Seconds, that felt more like fucking minutes, passed before the voice muttered, “If you’ll hold for a moment, sir. I’ll see what I can do.” Then the line went silent. “Hello, sir––”

“Yes.”

“Kady has agreed, but the visit will have to be supervised.”

I heard my sigh of relief crackle down the speaker. I didn’t care how many people would have to be in that room. All that mattered was that I got see her. “That’s fine. Can I come in this afternoon?

“You can come by at 3:00 p.m., and please bring identification with you otherwise I can’t let you in.”

“Thank you. I’ll be there,” I sighed before ending the call. I could feel my face falling and a scowl spreading when I looked down at Laurie. Was I being selfish? I knew I had to see Kady, and make sure she was alright. After everything that had happened, it seemed only Laurie and I were the ones in her corner, attempting to support and comfort her from within the shadows. Going to see her that day was really only going to benefit me. It was for my own peace of mind that I could help her keep fighting through this. But what would the consequences be for her if Liam discovered I’d been there to see her…

“Hey, wipe that look off your face. She agreed to see you. And I can promise one thing: we’ll find out what’s going on, Walker. You know we will.”

I put the truck into park and stared up at Pinewood Institute. My heart feeling as though it was going to explode in my chest at any second, knowing that my Kady was in there, somewhere where she didn’t need to be, being force fed medication that didn’t need to be administered.

Dropping from behind the wheel, I slammed the door shut and made my way through the silent grounds, passing the small garden which was situated beyond the entrance steps, with a colorful array of flowers and benches. It had that contrasting peaceful quality which screamed that this was a garden of an institute, and that alone was enough to cause a fire in my blood.

How the fuck he could put her in here, I have no idea.

“Good Afternoon, may I help you?” the woman behind the registration desk asked, looking up at me with uncertainty.

“I’m here to see Kady Jenson. I called in this morning.”

Her skeptical look deepened.

“If you check on your systems you’ll see that she agreed to see me.”

Fixing her glasses into place, she focused on the computer screen and clicked on the mouse a few times before asking for my name and identification. My wallet was pulled from my navy pants pocket, and I tapped my foot impatiently as the woman behind the desk studied my driver’s license. Finally, she smiled back at me.

“Perfect, if I could ask you to sign in please, Mr. Walker,” she muttered and twisted the visitor’s book around for me to sign. Mr. Walker…that was enough to send a chill across my flesh and up my spine. Still, I did as I was bid. This wasn’t about me and my issues. This was all for Kady. “And for the patient’s safety, can you hand over your wallet, cellphone, any shoelaces and your belt please. You can collect it all when you leave.”

With everything dropped into the tray at the desk, I was buzzed through the door and escorted down the corridor, past a large room with ranting patients until I was outside a visitation room. The camera above the door watched my every move.

When the door opened, I felt my heart plummet to my stomach when my gaze traveled from the female orderly sitting in the corner with her hair pulled into a tight bun, to Kady.

Clothed in white pajamas, she was sitting at the far end of the room, gazing out of the window like a grounded child watching her friends playing in the fresh air, while she was forced to stay indoors. Lost to a world of her own, she didn’t even acknowledge my being there as I stepped across the checkered flooring. So when I set my hand on her shoulder, only to have her jolt so forceful at my touch, that the chair scraped across the flooring and the orderly shifted to make her way toward us, my heart shattered. Offering a soft gesture to the woman in scrubs, I muttered, “It’s okay,” before focusing back on Kady, and the woman cautiously dropped back to her seat.

Kady knew I’d never harm a single hair on her head. That being said, her need for release is something I understand. You need pain; you need to hurt physically to end the emotional hurt, to lower your adrenaline. There is a world of difference between what I had done to her, and the way Liam forces her to live. My intentions were to keep her safe from herself. His was to degrade and make himself feel powerful.

When you seek detachment and numbness through pain for an emotional release, you’re aiding someone, I was aiding her. When you beat up, degrade and cause physical, emotional and mental harm of your own freewill…that is abuse. That night when I held Kady in my arms after inflicting the pain she needed, I reassured her; I made her feel safe after I submitted to her requests. I never once made her feel scared of me. Liam is the exact opposite, the sick cunt.

“Hey,” I muttered, as I took the vacant seat ahead of her. “How are you feeling, darlin’?” Moments passed where my question went answered. I didn’t recognize this person in front of me. She wasn’t the Kady Jenson I came to know and have a deep attachment for. Instead, a hollow shell was staring back at me. The want to take her in my arms and carry her away from all the shite she had been living in, and offer her a better one, was that greatest I’d ever felt.

She hung her head defeated. “I went for him, Walker.” When she pulled her gaze back to me, my heart died in my chest. Her face was pale, her eyes dim and lifeless, confused beyond all comprehension.

Her name was a painful muttering as I shifted myself to the edge of the seat, her knees snuggled between my thighs as she wrung her fingers together in her lap.

“I attacked him and I can’t even remember it.”

Unexpected, a commotion was heard from outside, the orderly rose from her chair quickly and peeked out of the small glass window of the door. “Oh my God,” she gasped.

“It’s okay, we’ll be fine,” I reassured her as she nodded her head and dashed out of the room, leaving us alone.

“Kady, listen to me, you did not attack him,” I stressed, my hands wrapping around hers. “Do you understand me? You did
not
attack him.”

Her bedraggled tresses were swept across her face when she shook her head with unending mumbles of defeat and denial. A mass grew in my chest and practically strangled me at seeing her so brainwashed. I pressed again. “You didn’t attack him, Kady. You’re not that sort of person; you don’t have a combative bone in your body.”

“How do you know, Walker?” she challenged. “People live next-door to rapists and child abductors, but they always say the same thing, ‘We never realized, it’s come as such a shock, he/she was such a lovely person’.”

My God, what the fuck had that bastard done to her? It took every strength and effort to pool each ounce of determination I possessed, and stop myself from crumbling in front of a person who was once strong enough to endure such abuse, but had since been diminished to such a manic state. I simply grinded, “No, Kady, that’s enough. You didn’t do what he’s made out you’ve done.”

The sternness in my words had her frozen. With a faint doubting shake of her head, she frowned. “Then why would he say it?”

More than anything in the world, I wished I could have told her the answers which she deserved. She didn’t deserve to be confined by these four
walls; she didn’t deserve to be abused the way she had been for God knows how long. “I don’t know, but we’re working on it––”

“We? Whose we?”

A small wistful smile stretched across my face, and I prayed that the grit behind my words would bring her a form of comfort. “Let’s just say, the FBI has nothing on me and Laurie at the moment.”

After a moment, she returned her rapt gaze back to the garden beyond the window. I studied her silently and when she whispered, “Today was the funeral,” it was like I was hit by a fucking freight train, and the fog was lifted. I wouldn’t put it past the fucker. Every abuser breeds on control, they strive for it, what a perfect way to keep that control than by having her locked up, depriving her of her right? “I didn’t even get a chance to say goodbye and now I never will,” she added, a tear escaping over her eyelid.

I was sitting in silence, stringing each piece of new information together in my head to try and see the bigger picture.

“He deleted my voicemail, Walker. The one from my mom and everything else after that is a complete blur.”

Tearing my hands away from her, I set them on each side of her face, my thumbs catching and drying each droplet of despair as they fell. I hated seeing her cry, so I coaxed her forward and halted chewing on my chewing gum, as I pressed our foreheads together. “Please, don’t cry, darlin’,” I whispered struggling against my own tears. “Please, don’t cry.”

When I pulled away, I searched her eyes and asked if she remembered the conversation in Tiffani’s the morning after her birthday, when she agreed to let me be her anchor. With each desperate word, I hoped that I’d find a sliver of strength in her eye. That was what she needed at that moment in her life. She needed someone she could trust to help her find and grasp hold of reality. When she nodded, I told her, “So I am going to be your anchor. Say after me, Kady: I didn’t attack, Liam.”

“No, I’m not saying that. Refusing to believe it is why I’m here, Walker. I’m not saying that. I did attack him. I did. He has the cut to prove it, I’m a nut-job, I’m delusional––”

Jesus fucking Christ. I shut up when she asked me to, but I couldn’t stand on the sidelines and watch him drag her down any longer. “Yes, Kady, you are delusional. You’re delusional because you believe his lies, his deceits, his fabrications call them whatever you want it all comes to the same thing,” I gasped, pointedly. “Kady, you told me not to say anything to you when I saw your ribs. I’m not doing it any longer, I’m not keeping my mouth shut so you can continue with this twisted world that he’s made you believe you deserve. I’m done.”

I felt the power of denial behind my hands as she shook her head, frenzied, and pled with me not to burst her delusional bubble that she had been cooped up in for God only knows how long. Enough was enough.

“He is abusive, darlin’. You are in a physically and psychologically abusive relationship, Kady. That is the truth and you know it, you just deny it over and over. But look where it’s got you, darlin’.”

How was it possible to feel like the bad person just by stating the truth? Witnessing the untold tears as they spilled down her face at my words, caused my eyes to water and a lump the size of Ireland to clog in my throat.

“You’re in this place, taking medication you don’t need, questioning your own sanity, Kady, this isn’t right. You’re worth so much more, darlin’. I can’t offer you the world at your feet like Liam can, but if you were mine, I would offer you a world of happiness, a world of safekeeping and respect where you wouldn’t have to walk on Goddamn eggshells. I’d never treat you the way he has.”

The more she begged for me to stop, the more I had to keep pushing forward. She knew this. She’d known it for a long time but always justified it. And right at that point, it was my job to make her see sense if it was the last thing I did. I knew from the very moment I laid my eyes on her, and saw the forced and sad look in her eye, that I wanted nothing more than to make her smile. Now it is me, the person who wants to keep her safe, the person who would travel through Hell and back for her, who’s the cause of her sadness. More than anything, I hated that the tears which were falling were as a result of my voice, of my words. But they were words that needed to be heard.

“Repeat after me, Kady: I didn’t attack, Liam.” When she stayed quiet, I repeated myself again.