Unbreakable (Heart of Stone #7)

by K. M. Scott

  I hesitated, hoping the silence would magically nullify the sham of marriage I had been forced into. But I couldn’t put it off forever. Nina’s lawyers weren’t going to magically pull through in the next few seconds, so it was now or never.

  Unfortunately, never was no longer an option. He had to know the truth.

  “They forced me to marry Justin.”

  The color drained from his face and his shoulders sagged from my words. He said nothing, though, and I could no longer keep everything I’d been hiding inside me.

  “I swear to you I said no over and over again, but they forced me and I was afraid you were going to ask me to marry you. I’m so sorry I lied. I had hoped that Nina’s lawyers would get it all straightened out before you asked me. That’s why I’ve been distant Gage. I’m so sorry. I knew telling you the truth would hurt you.” The words came spilling out before I could stop them, and instantly I wished I could take them back.

  My confession hung heavy in the air, making me feel like there was an entire world separating us. Gage looked like he’d been smacked across the face. Finally, after a long moment, he spoke quietly, clearly trying to contain the rage boiling over inside him.

  “Jordan, you telling the truth isn’t what hurt me. How could you lie to me so many times while I was risking everything to save you?”

  He was right. I had no defense. I’d done exactly what he was accusing me of and there was no excuse.

  I hung my head. “Gage, I only lied to avoid hurting you. I know it was wrong. I’m sorry.”

  “I feel like such an idiot. Here I was, ready to stand by your side no matter what, and you were lying to me this whole time. I’ve felt terrible for lying to you and leaving you, and you turned around and did the same thing to me. I suppose you think I deserved this.”

  Looking up, I saw his hurt-filled gaze and my heart clenched. “Of course I don’t, Gage. It wasn’t like that. I didn’t want any kind of revenge. I love you.”

  I had lied, but how could he question my feelings? He knew I loved him, knew how devastated I had been when he left me. I hadn’t done this with the intention of pushing him away, but the end result was the same.

  “How can you stand there and lie to me in one breath and tell me you love me in another? How can I know you haven’t lied about anything else?”

  I moved toward Gage in an effort to comfort him, but for the first time since I had known him he recoiled and that was worse than anything he could ever had said to me.

  “Gage, you know me. I’m not a liar by nature. I wouldn’t lie to you about anything else.”

  “Do I know you? I thought I did, yet here we stand and I feel like you’re a stranger. How could you lie to me about what they did?”

  When he spoke of them forcing me to marry Justin, it looked like the vein in his forehead was going to explode at any second. I knew my being married would anger him but this…this was more hatred than I thought Gage could ever harbor in his heart.

  “Gage, I didn’t…”

  “No, Jordan. It’s bad enough that they did this to you, but what’s worse it that you won’t even deal with it to the point that you lied to me about it! You were drugged, kidnapped, and forced to marry a man and you sit there pretending to be fine, except for lying to me.”

  His fists clenched so hard that I could see the whites of his knuckles. The anger that filled him over what had happened to me was palpable.

  In that moment, it was like the cabin, the woods, the world, melted away and all I was left with was the searing pain of Gage’s words. Who the hell was he to decide what I was and was not dealing with? It wasn’t good to lie to him, that was true, but this was unfair. He wasn’t the one who had been kidnapped and drugged. It was me, and I would deal with it how I pleased.

  Turning away from his angry stare, I said, “I can’t do this right now Gage. I said I was sorry. What else am I supposed to do?”

  My world felt like it was crumbling around me. How could all of this have happened in such a short time? All I had wanted was what Nina had, a comfortable life and a man to love me. I hadn’t meant for any of this to occur, and now Gage was telling me I wasn’t dealing with it? Of course I was, but dealing with something didn’t mean obsessing over it every damn second.

  “Well, you could start by taking care of yourself and addressing the abuse you’ve gone through, not to mention the husband you have now.”

  As soon as the words left his lips I could tell he regretted them. The venom that dripped off every word was too much and my already crumbling world collapsed.

  “I…I can’t do this right now,” I muttered as I rushed past Gage and out the door. He moved to stop me, but I ducked out of the way and kept going.

  I had no idea where I was running as my feet carried me down the stairs and to the front door of the cabin. It didn’t matter that all that surrounded us was dense woods. I couldn’t stay in that room one more second. I let my fear and anger rule me, and my feet followed their orders.

  All of this over a lie? How had everything gone from being happily engaged to a millionaire to running out into the unknown outside of Gage’s cabin? I was a school teacher, not someone who got kidnapped and forced into a marriage.

  With my mind racing faster even than my feet, I didn’t notice I wasn’t alone until it was too late. With one hand around my neck and the other twisting my arm behind my back, Justin pulled me toward a car parked just out of sight from the cabin.

  “Let go of me!” The pain shooting through my shoulder was like nothing I had ever felt before, and every fiber of my being cried out in agony.

  Hoping Gage had followed me outside, I screamed his name as best I could through the pressure of Justin’s hand crushing my windpipe. The pain was excruciating, and it took everything in me to not just give in and let whatever terrible plan Justin had for me just happen.

  I summoned my strength and did my best to wiggle free from Justin’s grasp, but every move I made resulted in him constricting my airway further. It wasn’t long before my eyesight started going fuzzy and I felt myself slipping away. For the second time in mere minutes, my world was fading away, but this time it was for real. Try as I might to control the situation, Justin was stronger and more determined.

  As my vision started to fail, my mind flashed to Gage as I prayed that he would find me before it was too late. If I ever needed him to protect me from something stupid I’d done, it was now. I closed my eyes and saw his face so calm and reassuring like the man he truly was. I knew what I had to do and worked to focus on surviving the way I knew he would.

  Jamming my elbow from my free arm into Justin’s side, I connected squarely with his ribs. Howling in pain, he pushed me forward toward the car as he cursed me out for fighting him.

  Despite my flailing, Justin nearly had me in the backseat when Gage found us. Pulling him off me, he threw Justin to the ground as I gasped for air, finally free from that bastard’s hold on my throat. Gage quickly glanced at me to see if I was okay and then went at him like a wild animal, lunging at Justin to pin him on the ground. Rearing his arm back, he punched him over and over until he knocked him unconscious. I collapsed, breathless, onto the backseat as I clutched my already bruising throat.

  “Jordan!” Gage cried out, pulling me from the car and held me tight in his arms.

  I wasn’t aware that I was even crying at first until I saw the mascara on Gage’s shirt as I pulled away to look up at him. “Gage, I’m so sorry,” I sobbed as I looked away from his eyes.

  “Shhh. That doesn’t matter right now,” he said, using a finger to guide my chin and my eyes up to his. I stared up at him and the rage he’d shown Justin was still in his eyes, those gorgeous dark blue eyes I loved so much.

  “We need to get him inside and tied up so we can finally get some damn answers.”

  His tone was sharp but his hands softly ran up and down my back comforting me. I knew the issue between us wasn’t over, but Gage was right. We needed to figure what Justin
and Hailey were up to.

  “What can I do?” I answered, looking at Justin in a heap on the ground. It was a look that suited him, in my opinion. Though I spoke as if I was resolved to help, in reality I was barely holding it together. My throat was on fire, and it was still difficult to see straight.

  “You can stay with me while I carry him back to the cabin. Actually, there’s some rope in the trunk of the car. Can you grab that as we go up?” he said.

  This was the Gage I knew and loved. He was calm and focused, ready to handle the situation, after I was almost getting kidnapped once again. I hadn’t meant to, obviously, but my running away had been foolish and stupid.

  I nodded and wiped my eyes as I wondered how Justin had found us here. I thought Gage had said that no one would connect him to me, at least not right away. It seemed like he’d gotten here awfully fast. After all, we’d only been in Wyoming for a day and a half. How had he figured out that not only was Gage helping me, but that he had brought me here? There didn’t seem to have been enough time for him to drive here and know exactly where to grab me.

  Gage threw Justin over his shoulder like firefighter carrying someone out of a building and gestured for me to walk next to him. I did as he asked and placed a comforting hand on his free shoulder. On the other, Justin’s head bobbed lazily as his mouth hung open making him look incredibly stupid.

  “I want to keep you in my sight until this mess is over. I’m getting pretty fucking sick and tired of this asshole taking you away from me,” Gage said with a small smile that signified he was trying to lighten the mood a little. It was a fruitless effort, but I appreciated it, nonetheless. I was lucky to have a man who, despite all the craziness, still wanted to be with me after the things I’d done. I knew it bothered him just as much as it did me that things between us had become such a mess.

  “Thank you for protecting me always. I want you to now that I really am sorry and I believe you can protect me. I don’t know what I would do without you,” I said softly. I knew it wouldn’t fix the situation at hand, but the look he gave me said he believed me. That was the most important thing.

  I must have been running quickly because it seemed like ages until we climbed the hill back to the cabin. I was sweating buckets by the time we reached it, and my hair was starting to mat to my forehead. At my side and carrying a full-grown man, Gage didn’t even look winded, although that might have been the adrenaline still pumping through his system.

  We tied Justin to one of the dining room chairs and checked his pockets for a cell phone before Gage sat me down on the couch to examine me. Crouching in front of me, he scanned my face as he gently ran his fingers over every square inch of my body. “Does anything hurt other than your throat?”

  I shook my head and tried to swallow without wanting to cry out. “I’ll be okay. If he had manhandled me for a few minutes more I might not be, but you got there just in time. My throat feels like someone took a blowtorch to it, but I’ll be all right. Did you find a phone or anything we can use to figure out how he got here?”

  Gage leaned forward and kissed me softly, whispering against my lips, “Shhh. Don’t worry about that. I didn’t find a phone, but I’ll be asking him about how he found us when he wakes up. For now, do you think there’s any chance one of these days you’re going to stop running so we don’t have to keep doing this kind of thing?”

  I knew he was trying to make me smile. That was the type of man he was. One minute he was like a superhero, rescuing me from whatever bad guy had descended upon me, and then the next he was sweet and gentle.

  “How about I promise not to do that again?” I said with a smile that made him visibly happy. Looking over toward Justin still tied up and passed out, I asked, “What are we going to do with him?”

  Gage gently directed my gaze back toward him in front of me. “Jordan, I’m not going to be good guy Gage when he wakes up. Are you ready to see that?”

  The intensity in his blue eyes made me worry what he might do to Justin, but I had no fear of who Gage was. “I’m fine with whatever you have to do to get answers from that son of a bitch. He’s as much to blame for what happened as Hailey is. He didn’t have to set me up like he did.”

  Standing up, Gage walked over to the gun cabinet and pulled out a pistol to add to his 9mm. Never as comfortable with guns as he was, now I didn’t care what he did with it. Justin had nearly lured me to my death. Part of me wanted to see Gage rough Justin up, and I didn’t bother to hide that part of me. He deserved whatever Gage decided to dish out to him.

  “Are you sure you don’t want to go upstairs and stay up there while I take care of this?” Gage asked as he returned to my side on the couch.

  “I want answers just as badly as you do, Gage. I’m staying,” I answered, mustering whatever courage that hadn’t been sapped from me over the past week. There was no way I was about to go upstairs and hide while Gage worked over Justin for information. Of all the people in the cabin, I deserved to know the whole truth of what was going on. More importantly, I wanted to see Justin’s face when he gave his answers. I’d looked into those eyes every day for months thinking I saw love in them. Now I wanted to see the truth.

  At the dining room table, Justin groaned as he slowly came out of it. His eyes flickered momentarily before they focused on us and the realization that he had been caught dawned on him.

  “Wakey wakey, Justin. Time to start talking,” Gage said as he slowly walked over to stand in front of him and pointed the pistol to the spot between Justin’s eyes.

  The look on his face was almost enough to make up for how much my throat hurt.

  Chapter Ten

  Gage

  There was a strong possibility that having the gun in my hand was a bad choice after all because as soon as Justin opened his eyes it took everything in me not to pull the trigger and blow his fucking brains all over the cabin’s walls.

  “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” he mumbled, looking down at the barrel of my gun.

  “You always did have a terrible sense of humor,” Jordan said at my side. “You sit there tied up and with a gun pointed at your head and all you can think to do is be a smart ass.”

  It was hard not to smile as she showed her tough side. I loved that Jordan was sweet and kind, but I loved that when push came to shove she was ready to push right back. There was always something sexy about a strong woman, and Jordan was no exception.

  “I don’t know what you hope to get out of this. Go ahead and kill me. I wouldn’t have to deal with this stupid bitch anymore,” Justin spat back.

  His words might have been full of bravado, but I saw by the way he was trembling that he wasn’t feeling nearly as brave as he let on. Good. He needed to be afraid. Calling his wife and my future wife a bitch wasn’t exactly the way to ingratiate himself with the man fighting the urge to kill him.

  Pressing the gun harder to the bridge of his nose, I leaned down to stare into his eyes. “I wouldn’t push your luck, Justin. That whole ’til death do us part thing is sounding especially appealing right now, so I would do my best to answer our questions quickly and accurately. Understand?”

  I watched as he winced in pain and his body trembled along with his voice. “Listen, I don’t know anything, okay?” he whined. “I really don’t. Hailey’s the one you should be talking to.”

  To think I had looked at this guy as competition before. Just a short time ago, I had seen a man I had to reluctantly agree might be good for Jordan. It was amazing what an expensive suit did for a guy. As Brock, he held all the cards and the woman I loved.

  Now he was a heap of mess tied to my dining room chair and we held the power over him. It was about time something started working in our favor for once. Justin and Hailey were going to pay through the teeth for all they’d done, and this was just phase one of showing them what I was like when someone hurt the woman I loved.

  “Oh, you don’t know anything? I find that hard to believe considering you’ve had a big han
d in this, obviously,” I answered, gesturing towards Jordan with my free hand.

  “I…I got as used as she did. It’s true! Hailey is the one you should be angry with. I don’t know anything. All I was told was to marry her. It was just a job. I have nothing against Jordan, and she’s just some woman, no offense. Everything else was Hailey. I’m a pawn too, see?”

  Justin looked like he was barely holding back tears. This was a man who had spent months convincing everyone he was an enigmatic millionaire, but just a few minutes with a gun in his face and he returned to who he really was.

  A pathetic jackass.

  It was nothing impressive, to say the least. No wonder he was a con artist. Being someone who wasn’t so sad must have felt good for once.

  “Justin, you need to tell us what all this is about, and don’t give me any bullshit answer that you don’t know. Nobody agrees to marry someone without knowing something about what the hell is going on,” Jordan said as she poked him in the chest.

  “I swear I didn’t know a thing!”

  I took a step back and folded my arms across my chest. “See, I don’t believe that for a second, Justin. You’re the one up here trying to shove her into a car, so you’re clearly more than just Hailey’s puppet. So I’ll ask you as directly as I can. What’s going on?”

  The idea that he didn’t know anything was absurd. I had no doubt that he might lack the knowledge of the finer points of the overall plan, but he was holding out on us. That was obvious.

  “I was just following orders,” he answered, his voice cracking. That was a half-truth and I could spot it a mile away. He was doing what criminals always did, but I wasn’t going to stop until I found out some real information from him. His attempt to tell me just a bit of truth to convince me he didn’t know anything else wasn’t going to work.

  “How did you come to impersonate Brock Hannon?” I asked, not willing to let him idly sit and convince us that he didn’t know anything. He was the one who was around Jordan for all that time, so clearly he knew more than he was letting on.