Chapter 8 No Home to go back to.
Vivienne's POV
I waited for Lucien but he wasn't coming. The minutes felt like they were stretching out forever, and with each one that passed, my heart started beating faster and faster. I got scared. Really scared. The kind of scared where your stomach twists up and you can't think straight anymore.
What if the men that did this to him comes back? The thought kept running through my mind over and over again. They could show up any second now. They could be watching from somewhere. They could be planning to come back and finish what they started. Every little sound made me jump. A car passing by. Footsteps in the distance. The wind rattling something metal.
The alley feels a bit too open. I looked around and suddenly everything felt wrong. There were too many places someone could come from. Too many directions I'd have to watch. The streetlight at the end of the alley made shadows that moved and shifted, and I kept thinking I saw people in them. My back was exposed. Anyone could sneak up behind me. I felt like a sitting duck just standing there in the open with him lying on the ground.
So I decided to drag him into an old warehouse. It wasn't really a decision I thought through carefully or anything like that. It was more like my body just knew I needed to move, needed to get us somewhere safer, somewhere with walls and a door I could close. The warehouse was right there, maybe twenty feet away. The door was hanging off its hinges and there was broken glass scattered around the entrance, but at least it . At least it had four walls.
I grabbed his arms first and tried to pull, but he was heavier than I expected. Way heavier. His body was completely limp and dead weight is no joke. I had to stop after just a few feet because my arms were already shaking. My hands were sweating and I kept losing my grip. I tried a different approach and got behind him instead, hooking my arms under his armpits and dragging him backward. My feet kept slipping on the dirty ground. My back was screaming at me. But I kept going, inch by inch, pulling him toward that warehouse door.
Then he opened his eyes.
Weakly, he said. "Where are you taking me to?"
I felt pity for him, I'm still scared of what he can do to me but right now he's vulnerable and maybe weak, so I'm a bit safe at least for now.
"I'm taking you to somewhere safer than the alley," I responded.
Then he closed his eyes.
It probably only took a few minutes but it felt like hours. By the time I got him through the doorway and inside, I was breathing so hard I thought my lungs might burst. My arms felt like jelly. There was sweat dripping down my face and my shirt was sticking to my back. I let go of him and he slumped against the concrete floor with a heavy thud that made me wince.
I stood there for a minute, trying to catch my breath, trying to let my heart slow down. The warehouse was dark inside. Really dark. The only light came from the broken windows high up on the walls and from the doorway behind me. It smelled like rust and old wood and something else I couldn't quite identify. Maybe mold. Maybe just years of abandonment and decay. There were piles of junk everywhere. Old crates. Broken machinery. Things I couldn't even recognize in the shadows.
That was when it dawned on me that I was homeless. The realization hit me like a punch to the gut. I was standing in an abandoned warehouse, hiding from dangerous men with a man whom I had run away from just because I don't want to marry him, with no place to go. No home to run back to. No safe place waiting for me somewhere. This warehouse, with its broken windows and filthy floor and the smell of decay, was the best shelter I had. This was it.
I had been so focused on surviving, on getting away, on helping this stranger, that I hadn't really let myself think about my situation. But now, standing there in the darkness with my chest still heaving and my arms still aching, the full weight of it crashed down on me. I had nothing. Nowhere. No one.
He didn't open his eyes when I first held his leg. I had crouched down next to him after I caught my breath, and I reached out to check on him. My hand was shaking when I touched his leg. I don't know what I was expecting. Maybe for him to flinch or groan or show some sign that he was still in there somewhere. But there was nothing. His eyes stayed closed. His face was completely still. For a horrible second I thought maybe I was too late, maybe all that effort to drag him in here was for nothing because he was already gone.
But then I saw his chest move. Just barely. Just the smallest rise and fall. He was breathing. Still alive. Still hanging on. I let out a breath I didn't know I was holding. My hand was still on his leg and I could feel the warmth of him through his jeans. That warmth meant something. It meant there was still hope. It meant I hadn't dragged a dead body into this warehouse. It meant maybe, just maybe, things weren't completely hopeless yet.
I sat back against the wall, keeping my eyes on him, keeping my ears open for any sounds from outside. And I waited. Because that's all I could do now. Just wait and hope that Lucien would find us, and hope that those men wouldn't find us, and hope that somehow, some way, we'd both make it through this night alive.