Finding Me (The Bad Boy Series) by S.K. Hartley Read Free Book Online

my nostrils, stinging my eyes even though they weren't open. My eyelids felt swollen and heavy as if paralyzed by a weight that won't let up, keeping me suspended in the dark. I wanted to open my eyes, but the more I tried, the more the darkness pulled me under, casting its black blanket over my fragile body.
    I could hear a noise beside my head, but I couldn't move to see what it was.
    Beep … Beep … Beep.
    The noise was continuous, a steady pace that softly hummed to my ears. Lulling me into a sense of calm that I hadn't felt for so long that it pulls at a knot in my chest, but the knot isn't painful, it's soothing. As if someone were singing to me softly while gently plucking the strings of a guitar, it feels warm and comfortable. I could feel the blanket tightening around my body, the more I listen, the more I fall.
    "We will fix this, we will fix her."
    I could hear him, I could hear Logan. I tried to speak, tried to ask him what was going on but nothing came out. My lips were numb and heavy, and all I wanted to do was speak to him, see him. I just wanted to be held, desperately. Nothing was making sense, where am I? What was going on? I couldn’t move, I couldn’t move a single limb.
    "Oh, my beautiful girl. What did he do to you?"
    Mom? My mom was here? I tried to move my tongue in my mouth, but it wouldn't move. I wanted to scream out and ask why I was so numb and heavy, but at the same time weightless. I tried to move my fingers, nothing. My feet, nothing. Why was I feeling like this?
    I was suspended in a world that I was neither in nor out of, a world full of pain and anguish. I was in limbo, not able to find the direction I needed to walk towards. I felt nothing, no pain, no trauma, no guilt. I wanted so much to stay in limbo, but at the same time would give anything to be back to where I need to be, where I wanted to be, where I should be . But limbo was slowly fading into black as the blanket constricted and tightened around me. I was falling into a deep, dark hole with no indication of it ending. Just like my nightmares.

 
     
    Chapter Six
    Logan
     
    "Lorena, the doctors said she would be fine. They have given her enough pain relief so she can get some rest, her body and mind need to heal," I whispered as I hold Lorena tight.
    The night has been long, so fucking long. Doctors had been waking in and out of the room for the past, shit, I didn't even know how long. Time seemed to just stop the moment I answered Neva's call. The call that I would never be able to erase from my memory.
    Would she be okay? Shit, I had no fucking idea if she was going to be okay, emotionally anyway. She had been through so damn much over the past ten years that I didn't know if she would ever come back from this, I didn't know if she would be the same Neva that I fell in love with. The same Neva who broke my damn heart.
    "How did this happen?" Lorena asked in a shaky voice as she wiped away her tears.
    Christ, question of the year. How the hell was I going to tell Lorena about this? It would break her, it could break this whole damn family apart. I didn't want to tell her; how the hell did I tell her the man her daughter fell in love with used her so his scumbag father could beat the living shit out of her? How did I tell her that I could have prevented it all if I hadn't walked away from her?
    It was painful enough holding Neva in my arms, broken and shattered.
    "I don't know," I lied. "I don't know, Lorena."
    As I held her close, my gaze landed on Neva, her face battered and bruised from the torture of what that fucker did to her. I quickly blinked away tears that threatened to fall as I took in the extent of her injuries, her bandages and her still body.
    Fuck, the sick bastard had done a real number on her, using her like a damn punching bag. Christ, I never wanted to hurt someone so much in my life; what I would give for a few minutes with him, to let him feel just an ounce of the pain Neva went through.
    "I'm going to get