After My Last Rewind, They Begged Me to Stay Chapter 03

After My Last Rewind, They Begged Me to Stay Chapter 03

Julian yanked me back by the wrist, hard enough that I went flying into the room.

I hit the floor on my back, bone striking wood with a dull thud.

Pain curled through my whole body. My vision blurred at the edges.

“Eleanor. You’ve got some nerve.”

Julian’s voice came down from above me, dark with something unreadable.

I looked up at him.

He stood by the window, expressionless.

“You’re getting more and more disobedient.”

He crouched, tipped my chin up with two fingers, forcing me to look at him.

“If Nathaniel hadn’t called to warn me to keep an eye on you, you might have actually succeeded.”

“Is that really how badly you want to die?”

I trembled. His expression only grew colder.

“Why can’t you be sweet like Sienna? Why does it always have to be a fight with us?”

“You do something wrong, and instead of owning up to it, all you want is to cheat your way out with a rewind.”

“This is on us, for not raising you better.”

He dragged me by the arm to the middle of the room. I fought him with everything I had.

He stepped down hard on my leg, and the scalpel in his hand came down without warning.

Blood sprayed across his white coat.

“Ah!!!” I screamed until my throat gave out.

In moments, every tendon in my hands and feet was severed.

I writhed on the floor in agony, blood soaking into the wood beneath me.

“No hands, no feet. Let’s see you cause any more trouble now.”

The pain blacked out my vision in waves.

But my mind kept circling back to one memory.

The time a patient’s furious family had ambushed Julian with a cleaver and nearly hacked off his surgical hand.

Knowing exactly what that hand meant to him, I hadn’t hesitated—I’d walked straight to the hospital rooftop and jumped.

When I opened my eyes again, I was waiting outside the exam room ahead of time.

When the man came charging in with the cleaver, I threw myself between them.

The blade caught my shoulder; I clung to his legs and took two more slashes across my back before he was finally subdued.

Julian had held me afterward—covered in blood—sobbing so hard he couldn’t speak.

“Eleanor, I’m sorry. I swear, I will never let you get hurt again as long as I live.”

And now it was that same hand that cut every tendon in my body.

I said nothing. Tears ran down my face without my permission.

Something like regret finally flickered across Julian’s face.

“I got a little carried away just now.”

“But if you’d just listened from the start, none of this would have happened.”

He hauled me onto the bed, blood soaking his clothes.

The pain left cold sweat drenching the pillow, my lips trembling too hard to form words.

He sighed and turned to dig through a drawer for painkillers.

That was when the door slammed open.

“Eleanor Calloway! Get out here!”

Weston stormed in, furious.

“Keep it down.” Julian said, frowning. “She’s hurt.”

Weston shoved him aside, grabbed me by the throat, and hauled me off the bed.

I could barely breathe. Every wound on my body tore open at once.

Julian’s face darkened. He reached out to stop him.

But Weston turned and glared.

“She didn’t just take Sienna’s necklace. Sienna just told me her parents’ keepsake bracelet is missing too!”

Julian froze for a beat, and the ice returned to his eyes.

I shook my head weakly. “I didn’t take—”

“Still lying!”

Weston slapped me hard enough to send me tumbling off the bed.

“Talk! Where did you hide it?”

I looked at Julian. His face was blank.

“Just don’t kill her. Letting her rewind would be letting her off too easy.”

The last of the light went out of my eyes.

Weston hauled me up and strung me from the curtain rod with a length of rope.

I hung there, blood running down my arms and legs, dripping onto the floorboards below.

“Admit it!”

Weston’s fist slammed into my stomach. I retched up bile and shook my head.

“Admit it!”

Another punch, into my ribs. I said nothing.

A third punch. A fourth. A fifth. Blow after blow rained down.

My vision filled with the black shadow of blood. My ears rang.

I remembered the first time Weston went into the underground circuit—seven straight fights.

In the last one, his opponent swung a steel pipe at the back of his skull. He’d gone down and never gotten back up.

The doctors said he’d be paralyzed for life.

I’d used a rewind, rushed in behind him, and taken that blow in his place.

After he won the fight, he’d stared at me, stunned.

“Eleanor, are you insane? Why would you take that hit for me?”

I’d leaned against his shoulder and smiled, weak but real.

“It’s fine. As long as you win.”

He’d held me and wept.

“Eleanor, I swear—anyone who ever touches a hair on your head again, I’ll kill them.”

Now I hung suspended in midair while that same fist slammed into me again and again.

My head lolled to one side. My eyelids sagged shut.

“”Stop! Let go of her!”

Weston’s fist froze mid-swing.

“Nathaniel? What are you doing here?”