“Sir, I’m going to need you to step back and give us some space,” said a male voice that I didn’t recognize. I felt a beating against my chest that was rather unpleasant, and I wanted to speak up to tell them to stop, but I couldn’t make a sound. “Can you tell us what happened here?”


    I was cold. Unreasonably cold. And damp. But this couldn’t be that mythical “hell” that Christians were always talking about. I still wasn’t sure I believed in hell in general, but if this was it, I thought, it was kind of a letdown after the horrors of that hallway.


    “She went for a bath and must have passed out,” Liam said. My blood ran somehow even colder at the sound of his voice. So he wasn’t actually dead, I thought, fighting the shiver that ran down my spine. “She hadn’t been feeling well, so I came to check on her, and I found her under the water. I pulled her out, but I wasn’t sure how long she’d been under.”


    The beating on my chest stopped for a minute while people hurried around me, and then I heard another unknown voice say “We’ve got a pulse!”


    “Your quick actions might have saved her life, boys,” the first man said again. “We’re taking her to Cedars-Sinia. We’ve got room for one person to ride with us.” Liam must have stepped up, because the man continued, getting quieter as I was apparently being wheeled away. “Okay, we’re going to get her into the cab first, then we’ll get you your spot. She spit up a lot of water, so her oxygen levels are getting back to normal, but we’re going to want to monitor her for a bit and do some tests to see what toll the lack of oxygen took. I don’t want to worry you too much, but generally someone would be awake by this point.”


    I was awake, even if the man didn’t know it, but I could tell that wasn’t going to be the case for long - even as they were loading me into the ambulance, I was starting to feel myself drift back into that black abyss. And I sure as hell did not want to go back - after that narrow escape, it wouldn’t surprise me if the demon was still sitting there waiting for me. But despite how I tried to fight it, as I felt several more people getting into the back of the ambulance with me, Liam assumedly being one of them, I lost that battle.


    ***


    When I woke up, thankfully without any dreams of that hallway, my entire body was sore. I took a deep breath in and cringed slightly at the pain in my chest.


    “Andi?” asked a worried voice from next to me.


    “That was definitely more than just a sleep movement,” said a second voice. Luke, I realized. “I’m going to get the doctor.”


    A hand grasped onto mine, and I winced slightly again, although it hurt significantly less than breathing. “Andi, if you can hear me, I need you to open your eyes, okay? For me?”This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author''s work.


    With a shuttering, painful gasp, I realized that the voice was Liam’s. For some reason, it didn’t sound exactly like I remembered it. Then I realized that the voice itself wasn’t that different - it was just that it lacked any of the pep that his voice tended to have. I couldn’t help but wonder if that was a result of the demon, too.


    Slowly, I opened my eyes and focused on him. He’d looked like he’d aged five years since the last time I saw him, and he clearly hadn’t showered in at least a couple of days. When my eyes met his, I could see the water glistening in his eyes. Carefully, he lifted a hand to run his thumb along my cheek gently. “Hey,” he said quietly. “I sure am glad to see you. We weren’t sure if you were going to make it through this one.”


    As he spoke, all I could think of was him working with the demon and slitting his own throat it front of me. I turned away from his touch, wincing at the stiffness in my neck.


    I saw a flash of the hurt in his eyes for a second before he hid it again, moving his hand back down beside him. His other hand was still grasping mine, and even though there was a part of me that wanted to pull that from him, I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Liam cleared his throat, but when he spoke, there was still a gravel to the tone that hadn’t been there before. “I was really worried about you. Sorry about breaking into your bath without permission, but when I saw you under the water…” He squeezed my hand slightly harder, but I could tell it was subconscious. His eyes stayed glued to me, as though scared to look away. “I was worried that, no matter what we did, it wouldn’t be enough,” he continued after a beat. “That the demon finally had its clutches in you and it wasn’t going to let you go.”


    I looked down as he looked at me - anything to keep me from meeting his eyes that were much more clear than my thoughts were. Eventually, I decided that not speaking up and confirming whether or not what had happened in the dream was true would be more difficult for me in the long run. Sure, I could assume it was just the demon and go on living my too-happy little life all of a sudden, but eventually, that would turn around and bite me in the ass. “Why didn’t you just let the demon take me?” I asked, my voice raw from both the pain and the emotion.


    Liam started back in his chair for a moment, his eyes suddenly sharper than they were a minute ago, with a small flare of anger. “And just why in the hell would I do something like that?” he asked.


    I shrugged, wincing at the pain in my shoulder at the movement. Who knew that drowning was a full-body workout? “While I was in the hallway, you said it,” I said, looking anywhere but at his eyes that were now piercing into me. “You said that I was stupid and fell for the first person to show me any affection. And that it had all been part of the demon’s plan. And then you…” I trailed off, not wanting to open that door right now, even for myself.


    Liam reached up and lightly grabbed a hold of my chin, moving my face in his direction. “Look at me. Please.” I held off for another moment, but then I slowly slid my eyes to his. There were no more tears in his eyes, or pain. There was just something that rhymed with anger as they pierced into me. “That wasn’t me, and you know it wasn’t me. Why you’d even think it could be is beyond my comprehension. But Andi, this is a demon,” he said, punctuating the last two words. “Getting under people’s skin is like their whole thing. And it took whatever fucking preconceived notition that you had that I wouldn’t actually like you, and it used it against you to keep you occupied. Whatever you saw, it means nothing.” He let go of my chin to pull lightly at his shirt. “I’ve been sitting by you in this hospital room for two days. I need to shower and change out of these gross clothes, and I need to sleep somewhere other than this crappy chair, but you can sure as hell bet that I wasn’t going to leave you when I wasn’t sure if you were going to make it, and you’re worried about me letting the demon take you?” He sighed, and the sound echoed in my bones. “The only thing I want to do with this demon is make it leave in the most physically painful way possible for it. Do you understand?”


    I nodded, feeling the pricks of tears starting in my own eyes. “Just don’t die on me, either,” I asked, squeezing his hand back in return.


    Liam looked exhausted, but the frustration left his face as I joked with him. “I wasn’t planning on it, but I’ll make sure to put it on my list,” he answered.


    We sat there in silence until Luke managed to return with a doctor. Even then, Liam’s hand never left mine.