Toxic: A Dark Romance

Everything hurts.

My arms, my legs, my head, even my hair throbs with each dull thud of my heart. There isn’t a spot on my body that doesn’t ache, but I pull myself out of bed anyway. It’s only the thought of leaving that keeps me moving. Like a lodestone, it calls to me.

Now take a shower, it says. Wash your hair, do your face, and get dressed.

They are all things that will convince Vic I haven’t changed one bit. No doubt he still believes the thorough beating he gave me last night was enough to quell my small, ineffective rebellion. If anything, the aches and pains only serve to firm my resolve. He thinks he convinced me to stay. He couldn’t be more wrong.

Vic left by the time I enter the kitchen. I half-heartedly consider the fact that I’ll never see him again. The thought is less concerning than I imagined it would be. Mostly, I just feel tired. How can someone my age feel so damn tired?

I check my reflection in the rearview mirror as I wait for the car to heat up. At least he stayed away from my face this time. I can’t say the same for the rest of my body. My arms are so black and blue that I wear a long-sleeved Henley underneath my scrubs to hide them. I learned my lesson. The last thing I need is for Gracin to see what he did to me. I don’t know what he would do, and I have no interest in finding out.

My goal today is to keep my head down, do what little work I have to do, get home to pack and get the hell out.

It takes an eternity for me to even get to the infirmary since the cold makes my sore muscles ache even more. I feel like one big throbbing bruise by the time I get there. Luckily, the pathologically punctual Gracin hasn’t arrived yet. As soon as I turn on the machines, an officer radios for me to meet them in the main hall. At the same time, shouts come from outside of medical.

“Get the fuck down!” the officer is shouting. “Nurse!”

Adrenaline spikes, allowing me to move with relative ease. When I see what’s waiting for me in the hallway, however, I want to run right back to the infirmary and hide.

Three officers have an inmate between them, but he’s fighting like hell to get free. I recognize him from a few weeks ago. I’d stitched him up when I first met Gracin. It takes a few minutes for his name to come to mind: Salvatore. I sigh mentally. I’m already exhausted and the day hasn’t even really started. Damn it all to hell, of course I would have an emergency the one day when I need a reprieve.

I watch, horrified and a little removed, as the officers finally manage to subdue Salvatore as he laughs as if it’s all a big game to him. Like he doesn’t realize he’s in prison, seemingly the lowest of low. What must it be like to have that much certainty? I damn sure don’t know. There isn’t a single thing in my life at this moment that I’m certain of, aside from the fact that I’m in completely over my head. I’ve been like a piece of dandelion fluff floating on the wind, my only direction coming from the whim of the winds.

I gulp in deep swallows of air, trying to regain my sense of detachment and calm, but it’s useless when I realize I’ll see Gracin soon.

As though thoughts of him have summoned him from the bowels of the prison, Gracin appears at my side, and despite the way my life feels like it’s unraveling around me, his mere presence soothes my nerves somewhat. He and the prisoner lock eyes, and a silent conversation passes between them. Salvatore growls, and energy snaps around Gracin like a livewire. Do they know each other aside from the first meeting when I stitched Salvatore up?

“Follow us to the infirmary,” one of the officers bites out before Salvatore throws his weight again, trying to free himself from the officers’ hold. He has bandages, some bright red with fresh blood. Was he the one Gracin got into it with? “Damn it, you big bastard, calm the fuck down.”

Grateful for the distraction, I follow the team of officers as they wrestle Salvatore through medical and onto a gurney. My fingers shake as I push them through my hair. When had my life spiraled so spectacularly out of control?

Salvatore calms down by the time we reach the infirmary. He allows the officers to muscle him over to a hospital bed where he sits as though it’s his throne. Gracin follows silently behind me, and I gesture for him to get my kit from the storage closet as I snap on gloves.

“You all right here?” one of the officers asks as the others shackle the inmate to the bed. When he sees Gracin coming back from the cabinet, he starts shouting.

The doctor who oversees both medical and the infirmary and the nurses blows in as he often does when he remembers to do his job. With cold precision, he swipes a wipe over Salvatore’s shoulder and then presses the needle into his skin. Salvatore tries to fight the sedative, but he’s no match for its potency and succumbs within a few minutes. The doctor gives me instructions to check on his previous wounds, bandage the new ones, and monitor him for any change until he can be dismissed.

The officer waits in the doorway until I look up from checking the bandages. “Yes, I have it handled. You can go,” I tell him.

“You sure?” the officer asks, his eyes going to Gracin’s intimidating form at the bedside.

I roll my eyes as I strip off an old bandage to replace it with a fresh one. “I’m sure. Let me do my job.”

When we’re alone again, I turn to Gracin and meet his gaze over the unconscious inmate, the words bubbling free of their own accord. “What do you want from me?” I ask. “Since we’ve met, you’ve turned my life upside down. I want to know why. What’s your endgame here?”

His body goes preternaturally still. How does he do that? How is he in such phenomenal control when it feels like I’m falling apart?

“Tessa,” he says, his voice a low rumble. “I think we both know why.”

I busy myself with cleaning the blood from Salvatore’s brow so I don’t have to answer his question. Then I say, “Help me turn him so I can change these bandages.”

I don’t want to ask why he won’t just leave me alone. I don’t want to get involved. The questions are burning me up, but I bite my tongue to keep them from demanding an actual answer out of him. As I clean and bind Salvatore’s wound, I repeat over and over in my head that it isn’t my business. Do my job, get out. Do my job, get out. Once I’ve patched Salvatore up, I’ll keep my head down and finish out my shift. Then I’ll be free.

“Can you throw these away for me?” I say absently and thrust a handful of soiled bandages in Gracin’s general direction. My mind is so thoroughly focused on the task, I don’t realize that he hasn’t moved to do what I ask right away. When I look up, ready to reprimand him for not doing his job, I freeze.

At first, I don’t understand what I’m seeing. It’s as though the connection between my eyes and my brain is experiencing a disconnect. Gracin, who had to move to the other side of the bed to help me flip Salvatore, is holding a pair of medical scissors in his right hand. The blunt tip is pressed into Salvatore’s neck and a bead of blood forms, spilling down the side of his throat and into the shadows toward his back.

What seems like hours pass, and the weight pulling on my neck and shoulders lifts, allowing me to meet Gracin’s eyes. I’d seen them closed down before, like the day I first met him in this very room. But this expression is worse. My first instinct is to run. To get as far away from danger as fast as possible, but I can’t leave my patient. Part of me, the part that submitted to his touch, can’t leave him, either. Not without understanding.

“What are you doing?” My breath is harsh, and my head is roaring. “Get your hands off him.”

Those same hands that brought me such pleasure are steady as a surgeon’s and prepared to kill. I can’t let him do it.

I wait for him to say something, make demands, beg, but he does nothing except stare at me with an unreadable gaze. His body telegraphs his intent before he ever moves a muscle, but I’m not fast enough to stop him from plunging the scissors into Salvatore’s neck in one efficient, deadly strike.