Haltingly, she leaves the couch and crawls over to the bed I’m lying on. She takes my hand in hers and presses it tightly to her forehead. She has a black eye that’s starting to fade. Her body is wracked with sobs. She starts mumbling and I lean closer to hear.
“Thank you, thank you, and thank you. I was so scared. I’m so glad you woke up.” She looks up through tears. “I’m so sorry. Words can never express the regret I have for not being able to help you.”
“Where am I?”
“The Gypsy Bastards’ clubhouse. You’ve been unconscious for six days. Doc said you would wake up when your body was ready, but we were so worried,” she replies.
Tears still stream from her face. Watching her intently, I try to remember what happened. Realization dawns on me as I remember who she is. As the memories come flooding back, all I feel is anger. Anger at Viper for taking me, for hurting me, for making Kaiya part of what he was doing and for making her feel guilty over something she had no control over.
“You don't owe me an apology. I know you were just as much a victim as I was. Actually, I know you had it worse than I did.”
Her shoulders fall as she relaxes. This was clearly a great weight for her to carry around. I squeeze her hand until she looks at me again.
“But I could use a favor?”
Hopefully, she will help me because I feel like I’m going to burst. She nods her head and I feel a slight smile tug at my mouth at her willingness.
“I need to pee. Can you help me to a bathroom?”
“I’ll help you,” a sleep-roughened voice answers.
Looking up, I find myself staring into Brandon’s storm-gray eyes.
“You can’t walk until Doc gets here to clear you and his text says he still has two clients left for the day, so it might be a while.” He looks right at me as he explains all this to me and I am completely under his spell. I can’t answer him, so I just nod.
“Okay, I’m going to pick you up, so tell me if anything hurts. I don’t want to pull any of your stitches. Okay?”
Again, I nod, still at a loss for words. He leans down and picks me up gently. For such a big man, one would think he couldn’t do anything gently, but he doesn’t even jostle me. He takes me into the bathroom across the hall and sets me down on my feet. He looks me over and nods.
“I’ll be right outside, so just holler when you’re done. Don’t try to walk. Please,” he implores me with his eyes. “I don’t want you hurting yourself.”
“Okay.”
He leaves the bathroom and closes the door. After doing my business, I flush the toilet and then just sit on the lid for a while. How did they find me? How did I get here? All this swirls in my mind when there’s a knock on the door. He enters immediately after knocking, not giving me a chance to answer.
“What are you doing? Why didn’t you call me? I thought something had happened.”
I watch him run his hand through his hair as the panicked look on his face starts to fade. Tilting my head to the side, I study him for a moment. “I’m just thinking. Trying to get all the pieces together in my mind.”
He strides up to me, picks me up again, and starts moving back to the room. He doesn't just hold me for the sake of carrying me, he holds me against his chest so I’m close to him. Like I’m somehow something precious to him.
He looks down at me and his eyes darken. I see him scan my face and then shake his head and continue to the room. As soon as he puts me down on the bed, hurricane Storm rips into the room.
“Oh my God, you’re awake. Fucking finally!”
I laugh at her exaggerated gestures as she expresses herself.
“Don’t laugh at me!” Her face falls and her demeanor changes. She starts crying. Never in the four years that I’ve known her have I seen my best friend cry.
“Storm. No, don’t cry. God, please.” I try to move toward her but a large hand holds me down. I glare up at Brandon, but he just shakes his head. Turning back to look at her, I find her sitting in the lap of the club president, Pope. Her head is buried in the crook of his neck as she continues to cry.
“Storm? Honey, talk to me. What’s wrong?”
Storm sniffles into Pope’s neck as he watches me intently. Brandon makes me move forward and gets onto the bed behind me. He pulls me to his chest and I feel comfortable and immediately relax into him. Pope has his eyebrows raised into his hairline while looking over my shoulder. They must do that silent communication thing that men do because his face relaxes into a smile.
“Hi, Hadley, I’m Colin. But everyone just calls me Pope. I don’t know if you remember me.”
Of course, I remember him. That accent is enough to make any woman swoon.
I yelp as I get pinched on the butt. Storm stares at me while trying not to burst into a fit of giggles.
“Shit, did I say that out loud?” I can feel the heat from my full-face blush
Storm and Colin burst out laughing. I roll my eyes at both of them and even that fucking hurts.
“Urgh. At least you're not crying anymore,” I tell Storm.
She instantly sobers. She leans forward and takes my hand while looking me in the eyes. “When Wolf got here with you—” She inhales deeply, like she's trying to gather her courage. “There was so much blood. You were so white and I, I thought you were dead. Doc wouldn’t let me in to see you until they were done working on you. Only this stubborn ass and Kaiya were allowed in and it was driving me insane.”
Tears run down her cheeks again. “I thought I was going to lose my best friend.”
“Shit, Storm. I’m so sorry you had to go through that but I’m fine, girl. Viper is a fucking asshole and if I ever see him on the street, I’m going to run his ass down with Justice’s truck.”
Folding my arms over my chest, I huff. Silence envelopes the room and just as I’m about to ask what is going on, an older man walks in.
He’s short and a little pudgy, balding on the top of his head, in the center of his snow-white hair. When he sees me, he smiles brightly. “Hadley, it is absolutely wonderful to see you awake.” His smile falters and he glares behind me. “Wolf, get your damn ass out of her bed. Jesus Christ, man. She’s fucking injured.”
Wolf laughs behind me, but he slides out of the bed. The strange thing? I want to pull him back. The doc checks me over. Temperature, blood pressure, my stitches, and all the rest of me. I watch him as he makes notes on a clipboard.
“Any questions?” Doc looks at me with a grandfatherly smile on his face.
“Yeah. What was the damage?”
“Oh, well, I don’t know if it’s necessary to talk about all of that at this moment.” He blushes and looks anywhere but at me.
“Well, Doc.” I wait until his gaze returns to me. “I want to talk about it now. And I have a feeling everyone in the room already knows the answer to that except me.”
I glare at him. He seems uncomfortable and starts to squirm.
“Hadley.” A deep growl from behind me raises goosebumps all over my arms. “Leave the old man alone. He just doesn’t want to discuss the intimate details in front of everyone. He doesn’t know how much you want us to know.”
Brandon frowns at me and I have this insane urge to take my finger and smooth out the frown lines between his eyes. Instead, I flip him the bird, earning another growl from him.
“Brandon.” I sigh dramatically and hear a snicker from the other side of the room. I’m quite sure it was Pope, but I’ll find out later. “If you found me after fucking Viper shot me”—I raise my eyebrows at him—“there isn’t much intimate about me you don’t know. Especially since you’ve seen me naked. I go shopping for underwear with Storm and Pope, as club president, probably knows more about me medically than I do ’cuz that’s his job.”
Looking to Pope, I wait for affirmation. He smiles and nods. Storm is trying not to laugh and Doc looks relieved. A growl sounds over my shoulder and I sigh.
“Don’t you fucking growl at me. I have a right to know
anything and everything that asshole did. If you don’t want to be here, fucking leave.” Twisting in the bed, I look up at him.
“You’re not my brother or my husband or my damn father. You rescued me and for that, I will be forever grateful, but you can fuck off if you think that gives you some fucking claim over me.”
He stares at me with his mouth gaping open. As I look around the room, my gaze falls on all their shocked faces. Truthfully, I am shocked myself. Usually, I let everyone walk over me and just accept the decisions made for me. Brandon is the only person who can rile me up to the point of becoming a raging bitch.
“Out.” He growls yet again. Everyone, including myself, just stares at him.
“I said get the fuck out,” he bellows so loudly I am sure he’s heard in every room.
Everyone starts leaving and I simply glare at him. My eye catches Storm leaving and she shrugs.
“What the fuck is your problem?” I shout at him.
His nostrils flare. “You’re my fucking problem. I’m trying to be nice here and give you some privacy and you just shit on it.”
Shit, I didn't think of it that way. Now I feel like a complete bitch. He runs his hands through his hair again. I’m coming to realize this is a frustrated gesture.
“I didn’t fucking find you, I found what was left of you. I thought you were fucking dead.” He sits down in the chair that Pope vacated and looks over at me.
“I was fucking terrified of moving you because I could hurt you worse. I covered you with my cut to keep the guys from looking at your tits. It was one of the top three worst goddamned moments of my fucking life.” He inhales a deep breath. “So please, for me, no more talking about this shit when there are other guys around? It’s too personal and it will drive me fucking insane if they think about you that way.”
His elbows rest on his knees and he lowers his face into his hands. He looks so defeated. I’m trying to understand what’s going on, but I feel like I’m missing a major piece of the puzzle. Slowly, I lower myself out of bed in front of him. I am on my knees when I touch his hand. His head jerks up and he focuses his steely gaze on me.
Chapter Eighteen
Wolf
Even bruised and full of stitches, this woman is fucking magnificent. She’s a goddamned hard-ass, which is probably good. Everything could have been so much worse if she was a softer woman.
“What’s going on?” She stares straight into my eyes. Piercing me and seeing down into my soul.
“Can this wait until you’re better?” I implore her. I have never begged anyone for anything, ever. But at this moment, I am begging this wisp of a woman.
“No.” Her gaze never strays from mine and I know she won’t waver. She will not let this go.
“I can’t handle the thought of anyone touching you or knowing anything too personal about you. Finding you like that nearly snapped my mind. Every time I think about it, it takes everything I have not to burn down the whole goddamned town looking for him. It’s driving me up the fucking walls, Blue.” I end my little speech on a sigh.
This woman, she’s going to think I’ve lost my ever-loving mind.
She takes my face in both of her hands. Her palms are warm against my face and my skin tingles. “Okay.”
“Okay?” I must look confused because she smiles. Even with all the bruising on her face, that smile lights her up. She’s fucking spectacular.
“Yeah, just let me know when you figure it out. You’re very domineering and apparently, I need to watch what I say and who I let close to me for a while. Your hero complex will fade, and then we can just go back to avoiding each other.”
She takes her hands away from my face and moves to get back on the bed. How easily she dismisses me. My feelings—whatever they may be—are legitimate and I don’t appreciate her dismissing them. Instantly, my blood heats and I’m pissed off.
“Will you tell me?” She asks this so softly that I almost miss it.
Her soft voice instantly cools my temper. She looks fucking terrified and so small sitting in the middle of the bed. Moving to sit behind her again, I gently pull her to me and with her back to my front, I tell her.
“He shot you on your lower left side. Luckily, he’s a shitty shot. He missed everything vital. There was a lot of bleeding but Doc put a stop to that real quick.”
Her hand goes to her left side. Instinctively, I cover her hand with mine. There’s a moment of silence between us before she nods and I continue.
“Cracked a couple of ribs and Doc says you have a hairline fracture in your skull from where I saw him kick you. Doc says he can’t do anything about either, but he did prescribe some kick-ass pain meds. And then basically lots of bruises and some scrapes. Two or three of the cuts needed stitches. You have three stitches above your left eyebrow. But in total, after Doc went in to stop the bleeding, forty-eight stitches altogether.”
I wait quietly while she digests the information.
“Did he … um…”
Her voice fades away and I know what she’s asking and shake my head. “No, babe. Kaiya says he was about to, but she knocked him on the back with a chair.”
Her entire body relaxes. “That’s good. At least there’s that.”
We sit in silence for a few moments. Just being there. I wonder what she’s thinking about and feel glad that I could give her that tiny amount of good news.
“So you saw me naked, again?” she asks over her shoulder.
The question catches me off guard and I don’t answer her. Looking up at her, I can see the smile she’s trying to hide. Clearly, she’s trying to alleviate the tension of this moment.
“Hello? Are you still there?”
“Yeah, I’m here. I didn’t see you naked. You were still dressed. Your shirt was just torn to shit.”
“Okay. So you saw my boobs. Can I ask another favor?”
“Sure, babe. What can I do for you?”
Watching the side of her face. I see her chewing her bottom lip as if she’s still deciding if she really wants to do this. I wait patiently for her to tell me what to do. She moves forward on the bed and turns to me.
“I want to see. I just need you to help me get the shirt off.” She sits there staring at me, probably waiting for me to deny her. God only knows I want to deny her. I don’t want to fucking see her that way. But she has gone through something traumatic and needs to deal with it in her own way. Nodding, I get off the bed. I take her hand and lead her from the room to the bathroom she used earlier. There are no words between us. We both know what’s going to happen.
We walk into the bathroom and I turn to lock the door. Stepping forward, I turn her to the mirror. I take the hem on my shirt that she’s been sleeping in and find her eyes in the mirror.
“Are you sure, babe? This can wait a while.”
With conviction in her eyes, she nods. “Yeah, I’m sure. I need to see what you all saw so that I can understand.”
Unhurriedly, she lifts her arms above her head. Gathering the shirt, I lift it gently, giving her the opportunity to stop me at any time. Her eyes are closed and her breathing speeds up. Lifting the shirt over her head, I look at her in the mirror. Rage courses through my veins at what I see. This beautiful fucking creature is black and blue all over her body. I have seconds to school my face before she opens her eyes and I pray to God she didn’t see my reaction. I know the look I wore was disgust. It wasn’t disgust at the way she looked but at what had been done.
She studies herself and turns from side to side, touching places and bruises and then moving on. My hands rest lightly on her hips and I feel her silky skin beneath my roughened hands that mold perfectly to her. She turns around and presses her breasts to my chest. There’s nothing sexual about it. She simply wants to see her back.
As I try to control my dick, I look over her shoulder and I’m amazed. Her back is one of the few parts of her I haven’t seen before this moment. It’s almost a full back piece. A full color phoenix rising from the ash
es.
“Goddammit. Now I’m going to have to go see James again.”
She’s talking to herself and living in her own head at the moment. All I want to know is who the fuck James is.
“That’s a trip to Louisiana. Going to have to work three months to save for a trip like that. Fucking expensive. If I could find that prick, I would beat the money out of him.” She’s mumbling to herself under her breath as she turns to face the mirror again.
“Damn fine piece of art ruined by an idiot.” She frowns at the mirror and her image reflected there and bursts into tears. Turning her further into me, I hold her as she cries, damn near breaking my heart.
Chapter Nineteen
Hadley
For two solid weeks, I sleep and eat and heal. When I wake, either Brandon, Storm, or Kaiya is there. We talk and everyone avoids the topic of what happened. I’m never left on my own, I feel like I am being babysat, and each and every one of them grates on my nerves. When I ask when I can go home and back to work, no answers are forthcoming and that just serves to piss me off.
The upside to this is that I now know most of them really well. Sometimes other members will come in and just shoot the shit. I enjoy Sparrow and Luna but Gage hasn’t been allowed to see me yet. We all decided to wait until all the bruising has faded from my face. He does call me every day to tell me all his news. Mad Dog is indeed mad but that’s what I like about him most. Kaiya is beautiful, sad, a broken little bird—as Mad dog continually refers to her—but she’s willing to fight for what she wants, and she wants a normal life.
Viking brings me books and chocolates and usually tells a joke or two before he leaves. We play twenty questions sometimes and I know he’s only trying to get me out of my own head. Most of the questions get asked repeatedly, but I do appreciate the effort. I always feel like I assume I would after visiting with my dad or granddad after he leaves.
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