Hansel 1-4: The Complete Series (10 page)

CHAPTER FOUR

Leah
 

The second he hits the floor, everything is pandemonium.

The crowd around him is shooed away, and those referee-looking people in the black pants and gray jackets swarm him while the crowd around me goes insane.

I quickly notice that the guy, Howard, is still lying on the mat, surrounded by support staff and someone in a medic vest.

My eyes fly between Hansel’s body and the man in the vest, who ducks out of the ring and sprints toward Hansel.

I start to sweat. My heart races. I can’t gulp down enough air, so my head spins.

Why isn’t he moving? What the hell happened?

Everyone is hissing, whispering. Their chatter rises to a dull roar, and I want to scream.

My legs move on their own, carrying me to the stairs, where my feet fly. I’m pushing people out of the way to get down to him, and when my feet finally hit the smooth cement of the lowest level and I lock my eyes on him, someone grabs my elbow.

“Hang on a second! Who the fuck are you?” a male voice asks. My eyes collide with angry brown ones half a second later. It’s one of those referee people in the jackets, looking at me like he thinks he’s going to have to mace me.

“Let go!” I throw his hand off my arm. “I’m his sister! What’s going on with Edgar?” It pops out so easily, so naturally. As I try to push past the barrier of the man’s arms, he locks his eyes onto mine, assessing.

“Sister, what’s your name?”

“Leah,” I cry. “What’s wrong with him?”

He rolls his eyes, and then we’re striding side-by-side toward Hansel. He’s lying on the ground, turned on his side, and I can see a tiny pool of blood below him.

“Shit,” I cry as I sink to my knees behind the row of fight staff.

I reach between the bodies crowded around him so I can touch his arm. I flatten my palm against his skin and drag it gently down the inside of his forearm, the way I always used to when I wanted to comfort him from the other side of the wall. His eyelids flutter in response.

“Don’t know what’s going on,” the guy beside me says. “We’ve called an ambulance.”

“No.” I jump as Hansel wrenches his upper body off the cement floor. “No—” I see blood drip from right behind his ear, where it runs down his nape. He coughs into his hand. “No hospital.” He pulls himself full up into a sitting position and looks woozily around. “I got…a car,” he rasps. “I’m…
fine
.”

He looks like a liar. His face is stark white, his hazel eyes appearing almost brown. The left one is ringed by various shades of purple and black, and swollen half-shut. His mouth is bleeding, and his cheek is bruised up by his temple.

“I can drive.” He slurs the last word.

“I don’t think so,” one of the guards says sternly. “I’m an EMT and I can see you’re either drunk or suffering the side-effects of a concussion, sir. You were hit repeatedly in the head and chest. You need to take it easy till the ambulance arrives.” The EMT raises his brows at me, and I nod quickly.

Hansel’s eyes roll back a little in his head, but he manages to shift his shoulders, and his gaze, my way. When he sees my face, his eyes bulge.
“Leah?”
I watch a shudder ripple through his arms and chest. His face loses a little more of its color, and for a moment, his lips tremble. “Leah?” He swallows one time; twice. “Leah?” he whispers. He looks around, at all the people crowded around him, then back at his lap before he lifts his eyes to me. “Leah—help.”

My whole body heats. I push through two of the men around him and look into his eyes, search for the echo of significance of what he just said—my name—but his eyes are wide and glossy, panicked.

“Leah.” He grabs onto me, and shocks me by getting on his hands and knees and standing slowly up. I rise with him, reaching for him as he wraps his long fingers around my arm. “No…hospital. Just need…to sleep it off,” he says, looking around him—but his words are slurred.

“You may have a concussion,” one of them reiterates.

He rasps out a laugh. “I’ve got…no concussion.” He squints a little as his hand squeezes my arm. “I’m just…fuckin’ drunk.”

He starts moving, dragging me behind him, as we head toward a pair of metal doors topped by an EXIT sigh. He doesn’t turn to look at me again as we move, his hand tugging my arm. I move in front of him to hold the door open, and when we step through it, into a hallway that runs underneath the bleachers, toward the building’s edge, he stops and looks down at me.

His eyes are wide and a little confused, as if he knows I’m someone significant, but isn’t sure who.

“Hi,” I whisper.

“Leah?” he chokes.

“Yeah.” Tears fill my eyes. His face swims.

His arms lock around me, and he’s leaning on me heavily. “Leah.” He wraps his arms around me, cradling my head. “Where’d you come from, Leah?” His voice breaks a little at the end—because he’s drunk, emotional, or both?

My breath hitches and I wait for him to say something more. Maybe he knows it was me. Wearing his mask. But he says nothing more.

“I’m here in Vegas for my sister’s wedding,” I hear myself say.

He inhales. Exhales. I can’t see his face because he’s got it buried in my hair. “You smell…like you,” he whispers.

I tuck one hand behind his head, stroking his damp hair as I inhale. My heart beats hard. “You smell like you,” I tell him back. He doesn’t move for a long time, and I don’t either. Tears drip down my face as I hold his warm, strong body. I’ve missed him since Monday. But Monday wasn’t like this. He wasn’t calling me by my name. I love to hear him say my name.

I wrap one arm a little tighter around his back, because he’s shaking.

“Hey?” His name is on my lips, but I don’t know what he wants to be called. Maybe being called ‘Hansel’ bothers him, so I avoid it. “Are you okay?” He’s leaning on me pretty heavily, and his breathing seems a little fast.

“Hey…” I tilt his head up and come face-to-face with wild eyes. “Hey.” I cup his cheek. He’s bloody; bruised and fierce. I forgot his eye was swollen, but now that I see it, I realize how banged up he really is.

“Do you feel okay?” I ask. My hand moves to clasp his.

The hand I’m holding is the one with the scar on it. I remember what he told me about how he got to Mother. How he slit his wrist, and when he was out of it, drugged up, his adoptive family gave him to her.

God, of course he hates the hospital.

His eyes hold mine. He licks his lips. One side is puffy and bleeding. “I’m a-right. Just…drunk.”

And that he is. I wrap my arm around him, and we step out into one of the parking lots. An attendant comes up, asking for our receipt, but Hansel doesn’t have it. Somehow he produces his keys. He holds them out to me.

“You can drive,” he whispers.

I hold his hand, and his hand squeezes mine.

They go and get his car, and I can feel him swaying a little.

I stroke the top of his hand, and he groans. “Leah.”

A black Range Rover—Land Rover? I’m never sure the difference—rolls to a stop in front of us.

I lean my head against his arm. “Is this your car?”

He nods, then winces, as if the motion hurt.

I open his door for him and tip the valet, and he hoists himself in, moving as if he’s being careful. I wonder why he drank so much. Is it his habit, like my pills were?

I walk around to the driver’s side and take out my phone. I punch in The Enchanted Forest, and the address comes up.

He leans back against the seat, his hands in his lap, his eyes shut.

I note the classical music on the radio and turn it down a little. Nothing to make you feel dizzy and ultra drunk like shrill string instruments.

We’re caught in traffic on The Strip. He peeks his eyes open and looks up at me. He angles his big body toward me and blinks a few times. His eyes are practically rolling in his head.

“Are you…okay…Leah?” His hand grasps at my elbow. “You…okay?”

“Yeah. I’m okay. Are you okay?”

One arm goes over his stomach and his eyes leave mine, returning abruptly to the road. “I don’t know,” he says roughly.

“Did you drink too much?”

“Yeah. I don’t ever drink,” he says. He takes a deep, unsteady breath, then looks at me as if there’s something more he wants to tell me.

“If you feel sick, tell me, okay? I can pull over.”

He puts a hand to his head.

I reach over and twine my hand through his free one, stroking his fingers as I drive. His fingers stroke mine back.

“Leah,” he whispers, his eyes still closed. His fingers on mine still.

“Yeah?” I squeeze his hand, hoping to ground him.

His eyes flutter open. “They’re you,” he whispers to the silence.

My heart slows. “Who is me?”

He swallows as he draws one leg up to his chest, wrapping an arm around it as he lays his head against his knee.

“Too much vodka,” he moans. He releases my hand, and raises his to clutch his head.

I’m going to ask him if he feels sick when he looks up, again, at me. “You’re beautiful,” he tells me. “They’re all you.”

“Who’s me?”

“The subs.” His leg drops back to the floor, and his head sinks back to the headrest. “I’m sorry, Leah. I’m so fuckin’…drunk.”

“It’s okay. Don’t worry about me. I’m here, and I’ve got you, and we’re going to your house.”

“Not my house…because echoes. Numb. An I don’…like it. Want to feel…it hurt. ’S the only way.”

“Hansel?” I whisper. I’m worried he really does have a concussion. What the hell does any of that mean?

His eyelids crack open. “Hansel…” He squints. “Not my name.”

“I’m sorry,” I say quietly. “What’s your name?”

He doesn’t reply, just sits there very still, his shoulders almost wider than the seat, his thick arms in his lap. I wonder if I made a mistake taking him away from the ambulance. I feel better when, a half mile or so from the Forest, he looks over at me.

“You don’t have to take me, group home’s got some spaces. You’re too young, remember?”

My heart clenches. What is he talking about?

“You said you’re too young to be my mom?”

“I’m not your mom,” I whisper.

“I know.” He sighs, bringing a hand up to cup his face. “No one is.”

Holy shit. I can’t believe he’s saying this. He never talked about this when we shared the wall. As theories about his words fly through my mind, I grapple for a response.

“Everybody has a mother,” I say gently, finally.

“I don’t.” He looks at my face, and when his gaze meets mine, his brows furrow. He shakes his head. He holds his stomach. “I feel…sick.”

“Do you need me to pull over? Can you make it another quarter of a mile?”

He doesn’t answer or even look at me, but he grabs onto my knee with his big hand, holding on like he’s afraid I’ll leave. He leans against the side of his seat and holds onto me till we arrive at the club.

I park in the circle drive in front, where a few valets come our way, and his eyes open. They’re warm, but…distant. “You’ve got a pretty mouth,” he murmurs. “Want to come with me?”

He shifts his shoulders, like his upper body is uncomfortable, and as he does, his shirt tugs, revealing a compact disc-sized blood stain underneath his arm, over his ribs.

“Shit. You’re bleeding.” Not just there; the little spot on his head is still oozing, too.

His vacant gaze clings to mine. “I can still fuck you.” He reaches down between his legs, and I’m shocked to find he’s hard.

Who is this man? He’s nothing like the Hansel who greeted me earlier today, and he’s nothing like the guy I knew.

“Let’s get out. I’ll go in with you.”

“That’s why you’re not her,” he says in a low, dark voice as I reach for the door handle. “No one is. I try to find them.”

“Who do you try to find?” I ask.

“Other hers.” I’ve got one leg out the door. I step all the way out, then lean back in, despite the valet waiting behind me.

“You mean…submissives?” I ask.

“I don’t have subs... Did you read…the NDA?” His words are whispered. Someone opens his door and I rush around to that side. I find him staring blankly at the warehouse-style building, ignoring the offers of help from one of the valets and swaying slightly on his feet.

I wrap my arm gently around his back, relishing the feel of his body under mine. I follow one of the valets’ pointing fingers toward a side door, where I help him up the stairs, moving slowly, at his pace.

I keep expecting him to say something else, but he never even looks at me as we come to the door. He stands there, breathing shallowly and staring at it, and a second later, it opens from the inside.

As soon as we step into the dark, torch-lit hallway, it seems like the entire staff at The Forest rushes around us.

“Is Edgar ill?” asks one with a French accent.

“What the fuck happened to him?” one of the bouncers asks. He looks at me as if I did something to ‘Edgar’.