CHAPTER 20
Are they bad habits if I like them?
-Malachi to Sierra
MALACHI
Sierra,
Today you can’t open your eyes.
Today, you can’t read this letter. But tomorrow, you’ll get there. Tomorrow you’ll see all the love that I have for you.
I know that it’s hard right now, hearing things—all these really bad things—but know that I’ll always protect you. I’ll never fail you again.
I love you,
Malachi Gabriel Gnocchi
• • •
“Malachi.”
I jolted from a semi-sleep at the sound of her voice.
My feet dropping down to the ground on either side of the uncomfortable recliner, I leaned forward and pressed my head to the unbattered cheek that I could now see thanks to the blood being cleaned off.
I heard other people start moving around the room, but it was only me that was as close to her as I was.
“Sierra,” I said as I picked up her battered hand. “I’m here.”
“I knew you would be.” She tried to smile, but it was obvious that she’d felt the stitches pull in her lip, so she stopped.
That wasn’t the only place that she had stitches.
There were multiple places.
That one was just the most visible.
“Did you catch him?” she whispered.
Her voice was raw due to the inflammation from the pulling of the rope around her neck.
Luckily, the doctor said that with time, the swelling would reduce, and her voice would go back to normal.
“No,” I said, sounding just as sick as I felt. “We don’t even know who it was. But we think that whoever did this heard us coming and took off before he could…”
“Before he could drag me behind a car?” she finished for me.
Yes.
Before he could drag her behind a car.
God, I felt sick just thinking about it. What could’ve happened. What almost had happened.
“It was Adrian,” she whispered. “Mastings.”
That was what we’d assumed, too. He’d been our first guess after my parents had been questioned.
It’d been six hours now since she’d been found, beaten, battered and bruised, tied to the back of her car.
And we were still no closer to finding the little prick.
Sure, I’d assumed it was him, but without full confirmation from him or Sierra, we couldn’t be one hundred percent sure.
I heard the door close quietly behind likely Miller or Sammy, but still didn’t look up from Sierra’s face.
“The baby?” she whispered. “Is the baby okay?”
I closed my eyes and knew that the time had come.
“No,” I croaked. “You’re losing her, honey. They expect that you’re already miscarrying.”
There was so much blood.
Still, every hour that the nurses came into the room, they changed the pad underneath her. And each time, even more blood soaked it.
There was no doubt in my mind that this was happening.
“No,” Sierra cried. “No, no, no.”
I felt sick to my stomach.
“I’m so sorry, baby. So sorry,” I whispered.
Tears squeezed out from between her swollen shut eyes, and that was the breaking point for me.
My own tears came out then, too.
I just couldn’t quite stop them.
We sat like that for a long time. Her crying. Me crying. Hell, I knew that there were others in the room crying, too. I just didn’t look up to make note of who.
She fell asleep then, her face turned toward me, her lips pressed against my arm.
“I spoke with the officers outside. They’re going to relay what happened, what Sierra said,” Sammy croaked, sounding broken and torn. “We’ve already been looking for him pretty fucking hard. Now that we have confirmation, we can get the parents to cooperate.”
I felt a soft hand on my neck and I turned to see Mercy staring at me with love in her eyes. “There’s a shower in there. Use it. I’ll go find you some clothes.”
I looked down at my still bloody and dirty uniform.
The last thing I wanted to do was let her go, but Mercy was right.
I was dirty.
Really dirty.
And I had her blood soaking into my skin.
I reluctantly disentangled myself from her, and then looked pointedly at Mercy. “You’ll hold her hand?”
Mercy smiled. “Always.”
Mercy, Miller, Blue, and Sammy had come into the ER about five minutes after we’d arrived.
And, since I’d been kicked out of the trauma room upon us entering, I’d been very reluctant to talk sanely to them.
Luckily, my grandmother had arrived in that time, too. She had Axe on a leash next to her, and she very calmly explained what had happened and how we’d found Sierra.
All of them were ravaged, it was plain to see.
“I’ve got her other side!” Blue, who I hadn’t even realized was in the room, said as she caught up her other hand.
I felt like my heart was beating too hard each step I took away from her.
I stopped mid-step and turned to look at her. To assure myself that she was okay.
“She’s okay,” Miller rumbled. “We’ll keep her safe.”
Because that fucking monster was still out there.
That little prick fifteen-year-old that was way too mad for someone so young.
He was still out there, and though I had a room full of protectors in here with her, my heart still fucking hurt. I was still really goddamn scared.
“Okay,” I said as I forced myself to put one foot in front of the other.
The shower was quick, thorough, and refreshing.
When I stepped back out a few minutes later in a pair of my own sweatpants—not sure where they found them and didn’t even care—I was surprised to find most of the room had emptied.
I found out why when I heard the talking outside of the door.
It was as I exited the room, only in a pair of socks and my sweats, that I realized the entire SWAT team was outside, as well as Luke Roberts, the assistant chief Lachlan Downy, and a few other officers I didn’t recognize.
“You find him?” I asked the group at large.
All eyes turned to me and widened.
I looked down at myself and realized that my scars were fully on display.
I mean, they’d assumed that I was fucked-up based solely on knowing what I’d gone through, but assuming and knowing were two very different things.
None of them said a word, and I was thankful.
“No,” Miller grumbled, sounding pissed as hell. “But we’ll find him.”
I knew that he would try, anyway. If they didn’t find him, I would. And when I did, things were not going to be good, that was for sure.
“How is she?” Saint asked.
I looked at him and saw the fatigue, as well as barely concealed horror.
He’d been there, just as I had, when things had gone down earlier. I was sure that the look of her tied to that fucking car would haunt him just as long as it haunted me—for the rest of my life.
“She’s…” I hesitated, not sure what to say. Okay wasn’t even a good enough word for that moment in time. “She’ll make it.”
And she would. I’d make damn sure of it.
It would be a long, hard road, but she would make it.
“She has lacerations all over her body from him pulling her through the weeds to get to where he tied her to the car.” Miller’s throat bobbed as he spoke. “She has bumps, bruises, contusions, a concussion that is quite severe. They believe that she’s miscarrying, though the baby still has a viable heartbeat. We’re playing a wait and see game, there. Her face is so swollen right now that she can’t open her eyes, and each time she wakes up she’s scared because she doesn’t know that she’s safe.”
I saw Bourne’s arms ten
se as his hands clenched in anger.
“That piece of shit,” Bourne growled. “I hope we find him and roast him alive. Just spit him like the fucking pig he is and burn him over an open flame.”
Booth elbowed him.
“What?” Bourne asked. “I’m so fucking tired of our women getting hurt. This is getting goddamn ridiculous!”
It was.
The only one that hadn’t had his girl hurt, per se, was Sammy. But Sammy had also been hurt instead, so it was definitely not a good time for his girl, either.
“A-fucking-men,” Hastings grumbled.
I crossed my arms over my chest just as a blood curdling scream came from the room behind me.
I was back inside and at Sierra’s bedside in two seconds flat.
“I’m here,” I said to her, getting close so that she could feel me.
My hands on her face had to hurt her, but the instant that she felt my hands, she calmed.
Mercy, who’d been sitting at her bedside holding her hand, looked ravaged.
“I’m sorry,” Mercy whispered brokenly. “It’s just me, baby.”
Sierra sighed and turned her face into my stomach and I left it there as I calmly spoke to her.
I wasn’t really sure what I said for the longest time. Just weird, inconsequential things that would make her laugh. A reminder about something she wrote when she was seventeen. A comment about how she made me laugh last week with something she said. A tease about how she loved pulling my hair.
“That last part isn’t something I really want to hear about,” Sammy grumbled from the other side of the bed. “I mean, do I really want to hear anything about how you and her are doin’ it?”
“Samuel Adams Spurlock,” Mercy hissed from the other side of the bed. “You damn well know that’s not where he was going with that.”
Sammy grumbled under his breath. “I don’t know shit. What I do know is that he’s talking about her pulling his hair. When else would she have done that?”
Sierra turned over, laughing lightly, and held her hand out to her brother.
Sammy took it, his eyes softening.
“I’m glad you’re back, brother,” she said to him. “I just wish I didn’t have to get beat up for you to get here.”
Sammy’s face fell just as Sierra started to snicker. “I’m just kidding.”
Sammy’s eyes narrowed. “Just for that, I’m going to make sure I feed your dog some cake the night that you come home.”
Sierra settled farther into her bed and smiled, cracked lips and all. “That’s just mean.”
“Why is it mean?” Dax asked.
I looked up to find him standing in the doorway holding his infant son. He was asleep with his mouth wide open, drooling on his chest.
My heart gave a painful pang that had me wishing that this day hadn’t happened. That it didn’t mean that I wouldn’t be able to have a baby in my arms for all that much longer.
“Because our dog farts like the dickens when you give him food that disagrees with his stomach. Like cake,” Sierra said, squeezing my hand.
I started to laugh then and recounted a story to them of when Axe was a puppy.
“When Axe was a puppy and I’d just gotten him from a buddy of mine, I made the mistake of leaving my bowl of broccoli cheddar soup on the coffee table to take a piss. When I came back, the bowl was gone. I’m talking, the entire fucking paper bowl that it was in was completely gone, along with the soup inside of it. About five hours later I’m woken up in the middle of the night by my dog just going fucking nuts in his kennel. I go into the room I’d locked him and his kennel in and walk into a fog of the foulest smell I’d ever smelled in my life. But when I look at the dog, expecting the worst, neither him or the kennel is dirty. I let him out, and he literally shits for like fifteen minutes straight. It was awful, and I learned that he has a sensitive stomach,” I described.
There are snickers all around, but it was Dax who had my girl crying again.
“My dad fed my child ice cream last week and he didn’t take it all that well. A couple of hours later he had a huge blowout,” Dax said, giving his boy a jiggle.
His son gave a small whimper and Sierra’s face turned toward the sound.
Then she kind of… broke.
When I looked up again after her next breakdown, everyone was gone. Even her parents.
I dropped my mouth to a clean, unbruised part of her shoulder.
“We’re going to get through this, baby. One step at a time,” I promised.
She hiccupped. “I hope so, Malachi. I hope so.”
“It’s my turn to pick you up and put you back together,” I informed her. “And you’re going to let me.”
CHAPTER 21
I love the smell of don’t fuck with me in the morning.
-Coffee Cup
SIERRA
One week later
Sierra,
Today, I woke up to you lying in bed beside me.
For the first time in a long time, I didn’t wake screaming from my usual nightmares. I screamed because I thought I’d lost you.
I don’t ever want to lose you.
I’ve given this a whole lot of thought, and there is one thing that I’m one hundred percent convinced of.
I want you to be in my life. Forever.
Will you marry me?
Malachi Gabriel Gnocchi
• • •
I looked at the letter and cried.
Again.
This was my fourth time today, but at least it wasn’t because of what had happened to me.
This was because of the letter that I’d found sitting beside me as I’d woken up.
After reading the letter, I’d found a ring attached to the letter, and I’d oh, so carefully taken it off of the letter so I could save the paper, then slipped the ring onto my finger.
I’d been crying a lot lately.
I’d been discharged out of the hospital two days ago, and today I had an OB/GYN appointment with my doctor to discuss the options that we had.
My baby was still hanging in there, but the doctor informed me that with the amount of blood I was losing, it was only a matter of time before she wasn’t anymore.
“I want to do this alone,” I said to him.
He looked at me like I was a raving lunatic. “I’m going with you, and you’re not going to give me any argument.”
• • •
“This is what’s known as a subchorionic hemorrhage,” the doctor said as he showed me a dark spot on the screen beside the amniotic sac. “In this condition, blood forms between the sac and the wall of the uterus.”
The doctor’s explanation didn’t make me feel any better.
“What’s that mean?” I asked, looking over at Malachi who’d refused to listen to my insistence that I go to this alone.
“It means that there might be another reason for your bleeding.” He paused. “Or it might be a combination of a threatened miscarriage and a subchorionic hemorrhage. At this point, it’s just a guessing game.” He looked at me. “From here on out, you’re on bed rest. You can have an hour up every single day, but that’s it. We’ll have twice weekly appointments until I’m convinced that you’re better and can carry on with your usual scheduled appointments.” He looked me over, focusing on some of the bruises on my face. “This beating that you took was very tough on your body. Your baby’s hanging in there, but I don’t want you to get your hopes up here, Sierra. This may, or may not, work out. But it’s a very real possibility that it won’t.”
“But it might,” Malachi said, sounding hopeful.
“Yes,” he said. “She’s gone this far and done well. A week of bleeding isn’t good, but it’s slowed quite a lot from the last time that I saw her. It’s possible that everything will work out just fine.”
I wouldn’t hold out hope, that was for sure. I didn’t want to think that this thing would get better when it might not.
“Okay, any other questions?” the doctor as
ked as he moved the wand around inside of me.
I shifted restlessly, not liking the way the wand felt inside of me.
Malachi squeezed my hand, recognizing my discomfort.
“No,” we both said at the same time.
I watched the screen for a few more seconds, watching my baby’s heart beat fast, before the doctor removed the wand and disposed of the condom covering it before hanging the tool back up.
Malachi pulled my gown down to cover me, and I looked at him with a smile.
He knew my wants and needs better than I knew my own. Or so it seemed.
“No sex. No vigorous exercise. I want you to be on your back, in your bed, doing nothing more than picking your phone up or the TV remote. Understand?”
At the doctor’s words, he patted my knee and walked out without another word.
The moment the door closed behind him, I looked over to Malachi to see him staring at the grainy black and white photo that the doctor printed out for him.
“You going to make it?” I asked him.
His eyes looked up. “She’s going to make it. I just feel it.”
I looked down at my wedding ring. “So much for a fast wedding. Can’t really get married in bed, now can I?”
His eyes gleamed. “You just let me worry about that.”
Together we walked out of the doctor’s office, hand in hand.
My eyes lit on the front of the building where, when we’d arrived, they were taking a plate-glass window out of the very top of the building and replacing it.
They were hoisting up a new one.
“This is some Final Destination shit,” I mumbled as we walked under the people working on the glass.
Malachi shot me an amused glance.
“I’d be more worried about it if we were actually going to be walking under it,” he teased.
We were taking it slow, and we were about two steps away from the car before a screech of tires had both of us looking up and whipping around to see the commotion.
What we saw made my heart stutter hard in my chest.
Adrian, in his brand newly fixed truck, was barreling down toward us.
Before he could get to us where we were standing on the sidewalk, however, the glass that they were replacing broke completely in half, then into even smaller shards. One deadly looking, sharply pointed piece came straight down and embedded itself through Adrian’s windshield, making him swerve wildly and hit the concrete pole to our left and not us to the right of it.
Nobody Knows Page 17
