“Please wake up,” she murmurs in my ear. “You’re worrying me. Please…”
A moan escapes my lips as I shift to my side, pain flaring from my right side.
“Raf? You’re awake?”
“I…think…so.”
“Oh my God! Thank God!” Noelle exclaims as she barely stops herself from jumping on me.
Her eyes sparkle with unshed tears and optimism as she looks at me.
“What happened?”
“I think you passed out from the pain,” she says as she points to my torso. “I don’t think you have a concussion, and thank God for that, otherwise I don’t think you would have woken up. I tried to dress your head wound as best as I could. It’s not a pretty sight, but I think it’s just a bloody flesh wound. It’s your ribs that I’m worried about…”
“Wait!” I put my hand up. “Slow down. I can barely follow what you’re saying.”
Seeing me about to move, she hurries to my side as she helps me in a sitting position.
“The good news? Your head isn’t as bad as it looks. The bad news? You hurt your ribs. Your entire torso is bruised up. I just hope that…” she trails off as she bites her lips.
“That I’m not bleeding internally,” I add grimly.
She nods.
“You need to take this,” she thrusts a small tablet towards me. “It’s for pain. The best we can do is bandage everything up and manage the pain until we can get help.”
“Shit! That’s right. Help. The satellite phone. We need to send a SOS.”
“I already did that,” she tells me proudly. “I also scouted the area and…”
“Wait a moment,” I interrupt her again. “Just how long was I out?”
“I’m not sure how much time passed to be honest. But a few hours?” Her lips flatten in a thin line. “I was so worried, Raf,” she finally breathes in relief, scooting closer and taking my face between her two small hands.
Leaning forward, she places a light kiss on my skin.
“I’m still trying to catch up,” I add drily. “But I can’t say I’m not impressed with your efficiency.”
“I think there’s a river a bit further in the distance. I didn’t get to it, but I could swear I heard the sound of water.”
“I didn’t realize you were so good at finding your way in nature,” I raise a brow.
She shrugs.
“There’s a lot you don’t know about me, Raf. But I’m willing to tell you everything.”
“I’m glad to hear that, but it might have to wait.”
I grimace as I pull myself to my feet. Swaying a little, it takes me a few moments to stabilize myself enough to walk. At all times, Noelle is by my side, ready to help me.
Despite the pain, a small smile pulls at my lips.
In regular circumstances, I guess I would have expected her to cry and scream, maybe have a panic attack at the situation we’re in. And I wouldn’t have blamed her. After all, we’re in the middle of nowhere, having just survived a deadly pain crash. We have plenty of injuries and just one small first aid kit that is unlikely to help much. We have no food or potable water, and no shelter. Most of all, we have no way of knowing when help will come—although I’m sure Carlos will mobilize people the moment he can’t get in touch with me.
Yet at every step of the way, Noelle has surprised me with both her attitude and her ingenuity.
“Tell me how far you managed to go and what you saw,” I tell her in a stern tone.
As prompted, she recounts everything she saw and what her impressions were, telling me that the terrain is a mix of forest and arid desert and that we’re most likely in a valley between mountains.
“Ok, I think we need to make a plan. First, we make a shelter, preferably within walking distance of a water source. I think we have maybe four or five more hours of daylight—if we’re lucky—so we need to make the best of it. We need to treat our injuries, and don’t,” I shush her when she’s about to speak. “You think I didn’t notice you didn’t do anything about your wound?” I point at her arm. “You had plenty of time and you didn’t, so that’s the first we’ll deal with.”
Once more, she protests, but I don’t let her.
“It’s non negotiable,” I raise a brow at her.
“Fine,” she grumbles.
“Good. After we’re at least a little settled we can worry about food. We’ll have to hunt.”
“Well, as it happens, that’s one thing I’m good at,” she adds smugly.
“We’ll see,” I chuckle, sending her silent dare.
She gives me a knowing look, a smile tugging at her lips.
We start slowly, and Noelle sticks a little too closely to me in case I might need support. The more we walk, though, the more I feel the effect of the pill I took, my pain numbing to a bearable degree.
“There,” she points to a clearing not too far away from us. “Do you hear?”
I nod. It is the sound of water, most probably a river.
Noelle turns giddy under my eyes, and she barely stops herself from running forward.
“You can go,” I nudge her gently, smiling at her.
She shakes her head.
“No. I’m not leaving you,” she says staunchly, leaving no room for discussion.
In no time, though, we reach a small river.
“We’ll need to boil the water,” I add pensively, already thinking how we could do that.
“Before that, why don’t we tend to your head injury?”
Noelle is already laying out our medical supplies, ready to clean and bandage my wound again.
“You first,” I give her a warning look.
“I thought you’d forget,” she mumbles under her breath.
Before she can make more excuses, I grab the hem of her shirt and pull it over her head. She squeaks in surprise, but she allows me to undress her until she’s left only in her black bra and underwear.
“Let me look at you,” I murmur as I circle around her, taking note of every little mark on her body.
Fuck…
Sometimes it’s easy to forget just how small and slight she is, and my chest constricts with a pain that has nothing to do with my injuries as I take in the gaping wound on her arm. The blood is mostly crusted, but some is still fresh. There are a few bruises forming on her body, but I’m relieved to see that’s all.
“Let me clean you up,” I say as I steer her towards the river, inviting her to sit on her blouse as I open up the first aid kit and remove some gauze.
At first, I simply clean the dried blood with a damp piece of material, trying to soak everything in.
There aren’t too many items in the kit, but we’ll have to make do with what we have.
“I’ll tie this up tightly for you but it’s highly likely you’ll need stitches when we get back to civilization.”
Noelle gulps down, her eyes on me.
“It will scar, won’t it?”
“Just a small hit to your vanity,” I joke.
“It’s not that. It’s just… I already have a lot of scars,” she whispers in a small voice. “I’d rather not get more.”
I stare at her for a moment.
“You know I’ve never minded your scars,” I give her a tentative smile. “Despite being an idiot about it the first time I saw them, I’ve never thought of them as anything but beautiful. Because you are beautiful. Every inch of you,” I say, surprised by my own words.
“You’re supposed to be mad at me.”
“I know.”
“Why are you nice to me?”
“Do you want me to stop?”
She shakes her head.
“I just want to be deserving of it when it happens.”
She averts her gaze.
“You surprise me sometimes,” I say as I continue to tend to her arm. Where is the Noelle who just a few hours ago was begging me to forgive her?
“How so?” Her lashes flutter. She turns her head, leaning in until we’re a mere breath apart.
“You’re full of contradictions. I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone like you. Someone so…complex. You’re you, the you I know—because I refuse to believe everything was a lie…”
“It wasn’t,” she interrupts, a certain vehemence to her voice.
“But there’s another you. One I don’t think I’ve ever met before, have I?”
She licks her lips, her eyes on me.
“Even back when I thought you were Lucero. You still showed me this side of you. The sweet, vulnerable side. But there’s so much more, isn’t there? You are so much more.”
Suddenly, her hand comes to rest on top of mine, stopping my movements.
“You’re the only one I’ve ever shown that side of me, Raf,” she whispers. “I’ve never been described as sweet by anyone other than you,” she chuckles.
“Why?”
“Action and reaction,” her lips strain in a sad smile. “I’ve only ever behaved as a reaction to how others behave towards me. And besides you…” she takes a deep breath. “No one’s ever been nice to me before.”
“That can’t be right,” I frown. “What about your family?”
Cisco had told me that they had been close when she’d been younger, and both him and Yuyu had treated Noelle like their own child.
“Maybe Cisco and Yuyu in the beginning. But when they sold me… That suddenly negated everything that happened before. I couldn’t look at them and remember the good times anymore. I could only see their betrayal. And then you came along and…” she lets out a soft laugh. “Do you know that I wore feminine clothes for the first time with you in mind?”
“What? Really?”
She nods.
“This is so embarrassing, but I had the biggest crush on you before I even knew what you looked like. You could say I was young and going through a little personality crisis, but I tried my best to imagine what you would like. You’d told me you preferred dainty girls so… I tried to be one,” she blushes as she looks away.
“That’s…flattering,” I stifle a laugh, not wanting to embarrass her further since she looks as if she wishes the earth swallowed her up.
“I’m a different person with you, Raf. I’ve always been. With anyone else…” she trails off, her gaze far away.
“How did you find out what I looked like?” I steer the topic into a more comfortable zone.
While I continue to bandage her arm, she proceeds to tell me all about the first mall encounter and how she’d managed to track me down.
The entire story blows my mind as I realize the extent of her loneliness back then and the fact that I had been her only refuge.
Maybe I should be a little more weirded out by the fact that she’d stalked me numerous times at my school—that she’d sat in the library with me, watching me. But I’m only mad about our wasted opportunities, the lost time and all the fucked-up things that had happened along the way.
She’d been so close, yet so far…
Most of all, I see the scared teenager she’d been—the one forced into a marriage she didn’t want but didn’t know how to get out of. And that breaks my heart more than anything else.
I could have been there for her.
As she tells me she’d planned to convince me to run away with her, I realize that everything had been against us from the beginning.
God… If only she’d have come to me before… If instead of waiting to meet at the cafe she would have come forward at the convenience store, maybe none of this would have happened.
Because despite knowing myself back then—despite knowing my failings and the fact that I was far too weak to do much—I know I would have dropped everything for her.
If she’d told me to run away with her, I would have.
“Your turn now,” Noelle suddenly declares when I’m done with her arm. “You’re the one with the extensive injuries.”
“Ok,” I grunt, letting her switch our positions.
I take off my shirt and pants, laying them to the side. My injuries are mostly located on my torso, both sides purple.
“I’ll do your head injury again. I stopped the bleeding before, but I didn’t treat it properly since I wasn’t very sure what to do,” she admits with a shy blush. “How bad is the pain?”
“Better now after the pills. My head doesn’t hurt as much, but the spot is tender.”
She nods, pouring disinfectant on some gauze and gently dabbing at the wound.
“You really found me attractive back then? I didn’t look like this…” I ask, unable to help myself.
I remember too well how I used to look back then—or, rather, how I’d seen myself. My mental health had taken a hit, as had my self-esteem. Maybe I hadn’t been too bad, but in my eyes, no one could have ever found me attractive.
“I fell in love with your eyes,” she murmurs with a smile on her face. “You were absolutely perfect then, just as you are now.”
I nod, my cheeks heating up.
“Done,” she surprises me by saying. “Now we need to do something about your ribs.”
“I’ll be fine. If there’s no internal damage, they will heal on their own.”
“But it will be agonizing…”
“We have plenty of painkillers until I can see a doctor,” I note as I go through what’s left of the medical kit. “I’ll just need to not strain myself,” I grumble, already not liking the prospect of that.
We’re alone somewhere in the mountains, far away from civilization. I need my strength to protect her. And though I know I shouldn’t, if the opportunity arises, I’ll simply ignore the pain and push against the discomfort.
I may still be mad at her, but that doesn’t mean for a moment that I’m going to leave her defenseless. She is my responsibility—mine to protect.
God, but I could completely hate her, and my first instinct would still be to protect her.
How fucked up is that?
Well, not as fucked up as the realization that I don’t…hate her? Or at least hate wouldn’t be the proper word. Maybe it was the entire near-death scenario, but there’s an odd peace in my heart as I watch her fumble her way through the medical kit in her semi-naked state. There’s something utterly charming about this moment despite our dire circumstances or the fact that I still need answers for what happened at the hacienda.
Yes, there’s the creeping doubt of the past, but something inside of me tells me that I need to hear her out or I’m going to regret it forever.
I’ve already let regrets drown me my entire life. I’m not going to add Noelle to that endless list.
“This is the perfect area to hunt since animals are bound to show up for water,” Noelle’s voice grounds me as I turn my attention to her.
She’s so unabashedly naked, no trace of her previous maidenly shyness in sight. And that makes her…different. There’s a different confidence about her. I’ve noticed this from the moment she dropped her act. It’s still her, but now it’s more. And I’m equally wary as I am fascinated by it.
“It’s also the worst area for us to build our shelter in. I think we should go back to the crash site and use what we can from the collapsed half to make a shelter,” I point out.
Noelle is pensive for a moment.
“You’re right. But first let’s get food.”
Nodding, I watch her step closer to the water, dabbing some water over her body and washing herself before putting on her clothes again. I do the same, and when we’re ready, we find a good position alongside the riverbank and we wait.
Noelle insists on taking one gun.
“You said you shouldn’t strain yourself. The simple act of holding the gun and attempting to aim is going to cause a strain. I’m handling this,” she says confidently.
My first instinct is to argue. But then I remember how she’d shot Santiago—which I’m still mad about. She’d had perfect aim, and she’d done it without much fuss. That tells me she knows exactly what she’s doing.
“Fine,” I shake my head, a slight smile playing on my lips. “The stage is all yours,” I say as I lean back, simply watching her.
Her brows are pinched together in a frown as she focuses on her surroundings.
“I used to hunt with my brother before,” she adds “I’m not a stranger to this if you’re wondering.”
I raise a curious brow at her but don’t comment. I think I need to stop being so surprised by every little thing she does since it’s clear that I only ever scratched the surface with her.
“I haven’t said a thing,” I laugh. “You’re in charge.”
The corners of her mouth tip up.
“I’m in charge, huh? And you’ll let me?”
Her head turns slightly to me as she watches me intently.
“I know I’m in charge where it matters,” I add vaguely, but she clearly gets the innuendo as her cheeks redden.
She looks away.
Well, I might have been wrong on one account. She might be oozing confidence most times, but there’s still something oddly innocent about her and some of her reactions.
And that… Strangely, that warms my heart.
Because it tells me my Noelle is still there. That it wasn’t all a lie.
“You’re taking this better than I thought,” she notes.
“What do you mean?” I frown.
“I haven’t injured your male pride yet?”
“Why would my pride be injured because you can handle yourself?”
She shrugs.
“I don’t know. Other men would take offense to it.”
“I’m not other men, Noelle. You know exactly what I take offense to, and it’s not that you’re a good shooter,” I add drily.
She purses her lips, undoubtedly knowing what I refer to.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers.
“We’re not discussing that now. We have something more important to do,” I say as I nod to the small clearing right up ahead where a deer trots towards the river.
Her eyes widen before a quiet determination washes over her as she assumes her stance.
I might have promised to hear her out, but God is it hard to put aside all my hard feelings and keep an open mind. Especially since I know what little snippets I do remember, and they don’t paint her in a good light at all.
Not for the first time, I find myself assailed by doubts again, wondering whether I’m doing the right thing by giving her a chance to explain herself.
Maybe it’s just the situation that we find ourselves in that makes me question everything and wish there were some other explanation for what happened at the hacienda. Certainly, facing death right in the face might have messed a little with my senses.
Still, despite my willingness to keep an open mind, my heart remains the most bruised part of my body—and it has nothing to do with the accident.
There’s only the ever-remaining dilemma: I love her, but I don’t fucking know how to forgive her.
And that’s the crux of the issue.
My feelings for her have never been in question. I loved her then; I love her now.
But is love enough?
I stare at her as she focuses on her prey, aligning the weapon perfectly before slowly pulling the trigger. It’s methodical and calculated—speaking of years of experience with a weapon.
And that reminds me exactly why I’m wary about this.
Yes, the Noelle I fell for might exist only for me, but there’s still the other Noelle—the scary, immoral one willing to do anything to achieve her goals.
I might love the former, but can I love the latter too?
Can I love all parts of her even when our moral codes don’t align?
In a way, I must confess that I’m afraid to hear what she’s going to tell me because I know it’s going to change my perception of her forever. And once we open that Pandora box, everything will change.
At the end of the day, what scares me the most is not what I will find out, but how I will feel about her afterwards.
Her shot is clean, her aim perfect.
The deer drops to the ground, and we go to her side.
I remove my knife as I make the initial incisions, cutting purposefully so we can get to the best part of the meat.
Since there’s quite a bit of walking distance, we shouldn’t take the entire carcass with us—just what we can eat today and tomorrow. Any more could attract another apex predator, and the last thing we need is to compete with a vicious animal in our conditions.
“This should be enough for now,” I say once I’ve cut plenty of stripes.
Noelle nods, taking them to the river to wash them before returning to me.
“Here,” I say, taking my shirt off and wrapping the meat in it. “Let’s go back and see about a shelter. Nightfall is going to be upon us soon.”
We walk slowly back to the crash site, and we make our camp just a little further than all the debris.
After we manage to light a fire, I let Noelle deal with the meat while I head back to gather materials and see what we might use.
There aren’t a lot of salvageable items, but I’m able to build ourselves a little shelter with a few pieces of metal. I use the material from the parachute as a roof, securing it around two trees. It’s not the easiest to do in my condition, and every little twist of my torso makes my pain flare up.
Being quite familiar with broken ribs, I’m aware it’s going to take a long time before I’ll feel like myself again—certainly long after we’re out of this goddamn place.
With a little luck, I manage to find some remains of our suitcase, and though nothing is intact, a few tattered pieces of fabric should help keep us warmer for the night.
“How is it going?” I ask as I take a seat next to Noelle.
She looks back to our makeshift hut for the night, giving me a smile.
“That’s not too bad,” she chuckles. “I hope there won’t be any rain.”
“I think that would be the ultimate punishment from Mother Nature.”
“Here,” Noelle pulls a piece of meat and hands it to me. “You need to eat so you can keep taking your painkillers.”
“Thank you.”
The meat is hard to chew, but better than nothing.
We eat in silence, and after a while, Noelle is the first to speak.
“I sent another SOS. They should be able to find us, right?”
“I trust Carlos. He will find us,” I grunt.
When she sees I’m not saying anything else, she starts fidgeting with her fingers, her anxiety seemingly mounting.
“What about the drug withdrawal?”
“I’ll be fine for the time being.”
I’d had my last dose pretty recently so that shouldn’t pose any problems. I doubt it will take over a week for Carlos to find us. Only then would I start going into withdrawal.
“I know the original recipe,” she suddenly says.
“What?”
“I think it could help, no? If we recreate the original. I know you’re barely getting by with the cocktail you’re on now.”
“How long have you known?” I demand before I can help myself.
Her eyes flare with fear.
“Since I got my memories back,” she replies in a low voice.
“And you didn’t think that might help before?”
“I did… I was going to find a way to suggest it without revealing how I knew it,” she sighs. “But since the cat is out of the bag, I might as well come clean about that too.”
“About what?” I frown.
She licks her lips, her gaze apprehensive as she draws her knees to her chest, hugging herself tightly as she finally meets my eyes.
“I was the one who created that drug cocktail.”
The words slowly sink in just as shock and outrage overtake me.
“You…what?” I croak.
“I never meant to harm you,” she whispers.
“Somehow I find that hard to believe,” I shoot back in a dry tone. “Fuck… Come on, just tell me. What other shocking information are you hiding? Let’s have it all out.”
“I…” she trails off, looking around as if looking for an escape. Too bad we’re in the middle of fucking nowhere and for the first time, she truly cannot run.
“I lied,” she finally says.
“Tell me something new,” I roll my eyes.
“No, you don’t understand. I didn’t lie on purpose. When I…” she clears her throat. “After the fire, I wasn’t well…mentally. Amnesia wasn’t the only side effect of it. I reconstructed my entire reality so I wouldn’t hurt anymore,” she murmurs, her voice so desolate it fucking makes my heart squeeze in my chest.
“What do you mean?” I frown.
“I deleted everything that was traumatic and instead I made myself believe a different version of the truth. I think it was my mind’s way of protecting me, but all the little bouts of memory I had were manufactured scenarios that confirmed to me that I was a victim. That I…” she swallows hard. “Only by believing I’d been the victim—the wronged one—could I go on.”
“So, you’re saying that everything you told me before you got your memories back was false?”
She nods. “Not entirely false just…heavily edited.”
I gulp down as a wave of discomfort hits me.
God…nothing was real, was it?
“Did Sergio ever lay a hand on you?” I ask. And if he didn’t, then what about her scars? What could have caused those? I’ve seen her medical records and regardless of her lies, that much is true.
She was beaten. She was on the brink of death.
But how?
“Yes. At first. Before…” her voice clogs with emotion. “Before I found my footing within the hacienda, he wanted to make me pay.”
“Make you pay?” I frown.
“For what I did to him on the wedding night,” she whispers, a look of hurt flashing across her face.
Oh, God. No… No, no, no.
“Did he rape you?” I grit my teeth as I pose the question, because this was my biggest nightmare—that she’d remember the past and remember…
“He didn’t,” she says, and a relieved breath leaves my body. “I don’t know if he would have. He was the type of person who wanted willing submission, but he was also the type to get very, very mad at being defied.”
“What happened?”
“I hurt him. Bad enough that he wanted to kill me every single day but could not because of my family. So, he made me hurt, too, in other ways.”
And that’s when she starts telling me what happened. How she’d gotten to Mexico, confused about everything but still holding onto the idea that by marrying Sergio she was somehow saving me. She tells me about how worried she’d been when I disappeared and that she truly believed her brother had something to do with it.
But then come the worst details.
The damned wedding night. And she…
“My God, Noelle,” I whisper, pride reflected in my voice. “You cut his dick off?”
I’ve certainly come to realize how strong she is, but fuck me… I would have never imagined something like that.
She nods, a big smile on her lips.
“I don’t even think it was a conscious thought. I was in so much pain after he beat me that I simply struck out. That it happened to be his dick,” she angles her shoulders into a lazy shrug, but the smirk on her face tells a different story.
“So, he beat you some more for it,” I mutter, my fists clenching.
“Yes. Until I realized I couldn’t take it anymore. Until…” She takes a deep breath. “Your phone still has battery, no?” She suddenly asks.
“Yes, why?”
“Load the videos from the SD card. You’re never going to believe me fully until you see with your own eyes what happened. Watch that and then I’ll give you my side of the story.”
I frown at her.
“Just this morning you killed a man to ensure I wouldn’t get these videos and now… I don’t understand you, Noelle.”
She gives me a sad smile.
“That’s just the thing, Raf. By watching those videos, you will understand exactly why I never wanted you to see that. But if this is the only way I can erase the doubts from your mind, then so be it.”
I stare at her for moments on end, confusion swirling in my mind.
She’s a goddamn befuddling contradiction.
“Fine,” I sigh. “Let’s do that.”
Plugging the SD card into my phone, I watch as a miles long list of videos suddenly appears on the screen.
“Pick a video,” I tell her.
They are all ordered by date stamps, and I have no doubt Noelle knows the meaning of them.
She purses her lips in concentration as she browses them before her finger hovers over one particular date.
“This one. This is when you were first brought in at the drug facility.”
A little apprehensive but more than anything curious, I click on the video, fast-forwarding through the boring bits until I spot myself being injected with the drug for the first time, and the way I reacted to it.
“What was the original drug?” I find myself asking as dread accumulates in the pit of my stomach.
“You nailed it with the scopolamine compound, which affects memory and makes the subject more pliable. But at that time, Sergio was looking into expanding into other avenues. He figured that adding a downer to the cocktail would make the best sex slaves because they would be placid. But adding an upper would make people aggressive—enough to itch for a fight at every turn. The only thing they all had in common was that they would never remember anything they did under the influence.”
“Which one was I on?” I whisper, though the answer is soon evident on the screen.
She’s quiet for a moment, the sounds from the footage echoing in the stillness of the forest.
“You were still yourself, Raf. It’s just that some…behaviors were more enhanced.”
“Which one was I on, Noelle?” I repeat, wanting to hear it from her own lips even as I watch the horror show in front of me.
“The upper,” her voice is barely audible.
Noelle couldn’t have raped me, even if she wanted to. Because I would have ripped her to shreds.
I swallow hard, forced to end the video as I see myself like never before—truly behaving like a beast and not a human.
“Tell me then,” I put the phone aside, turning my attention towards her. “Tell me everything that happened after the wedding.”
She gives me a small nod.
“Just… I want you to bear in mind that everything I did was for survival. Mine and yours, Raf. I just never expected things to get that out of hand, or for there to be so many casualties.”
“Tell me,” I demand, finally ready to face the past.
“I don’t know how long I was out after the beating I got on the wedding night but…
