by Zoey Parker
“Yeah, I think you’re right,” I said. My teeth were clenched so hard, I could barely talk.
She shuddered. “Oh my God, I thought I was dead. I prayed that they would kill me fast. Isn’t that sick? But it was all I could keep thinking. I didn’t want them to drag it out and make me suffer. I wanted to go fast. I never thought I would think something like that, ever. Be he said the boss was going to take me, and then the rest of them would get a turn. I can’t imagine anything worse than that.”
“I’m so sorry.” It was all I could do, hold her and apologize over and over. Like it was my fault. I felt like it was, really. I was the one who pulled her into my bullshit. I could have let her go, but no. I made her stick around. For what? To be kidnapped?
She calmed down after a long time. It must have been Gareth. There was nobody else who would have thought to do it, nobody else sick enough to terrify a woman that way. He was one step ahead of me, always trying to catch me off guard. I had to get in front of him somehow. He had to know he wasn’t playing with a little kid. I learned a lot in prison, thanks to him.
One thing was for sure: Michelle couldn’t leave the house until I got things settled. I dreaded bringing it up, since I knew she would hate the idea, but it had to be that way. I went back to the living room, where she flipped through channels like a zombie.
“Send your friend Mac a message. Tell her I’m sending a pair of my guys to the house to keep an eye on her and your mom. Also, tell her I want you to stay here with me until this blows over. Okay?”
I expected a fight. I expected her to jump up and give me a list of reasons why there was no way she was going to stay with me. I couldn’t lock her up, I couldn’t tell her what to do, she was a smart, independent person who could make her own decisions. That was what I braced myself for.
Instead, she pulled out her phone and sent a text. “Done,” she said.
“Just like that?”
She frowned. “What did you think I would say?”
“I didn’t think you would go along so fast.” I sat across from her on a chair by the TV. “I thought you would hate having to stay here with me.”
She sighed deeply and looked at her lap. “I would have, before this happened. I really would have. I was pretty mad at you as I was leaving my house. But now? I just need you to protect me. Okay? I know none of this would happen if it wasn’t for you, but I know it’s not your fault, too. It’s whatever people you’re fighting with, or whatever’s happening. I don’t know anything about it. I just know that I need to feel safe. Okay?” Tears filled her eyes. Something about her voice made it sound like she was pleading with me. All I wanted was to gather her up and hold her and keep the world away from her forever.
I nodded. “Okay.” I moved closer, sitting next to her. She curled up and leaned against me, and we watched TV for hours. I didn’t do anything except put an arm around her shoulders, and she seemed to appreciate it.
We spent the rest of the day like that, going back and forth between movies and TV shows. I ordered food. I got up a few times to take phone calls. At one point, my phone rang. It was Spike. I hurried out of the room to take the call.
“What’s up?” I answered.
“We have a few guys on the streets, asking their contacts if they heard anything about a kidnapping gone wrong,” he said.
“And?”
“It was Gareth, of course.”
I groaned. “Of course. I half hoped it was somebody else trying to pin it on him. Do we know the names of the guys who did it?”
“No. Nobody seems to know that. I wouldn’t worry too much about that part if I were you. If you take Gareth down, you take down the entire club.” He wasn’t kidding. They were all a bunch of stupid, mindless thugs who did what he told them to do but couldn’t have an original thought if their lives depended on it. No way any of them could take over the club.
“I know. Still, it doesn’t make me feel much better to know they’re doing whatever they want tonight. Between Slash and Michelle, they have to pay dearly for what they did.”
“I know what you mean.” He paused. “How is she?”
I glanced into the living room. She was curled up on the couch, picking at a few leftover dumplings. I was glad to see she had an appetite. “She’s okay. I think she is, anyway. It’ll take a little time. I just wanna make sure she feels safe. After long enough, she’ll believe it.”
“What’s her name?”
“Michelle.”
“Tell Michelle we’ll get these fuckers for her. They didn’t do anything to her, did they?”
“No. They didn’t have the chance. Though they wanted to.” I told him what she told me, how they threatened her.
“Jesus Christ. Somebody needs to put these dogs outta their misery.”
“My thoughts exactly,” I said. “And I think I have an idea how we can do it. Come over tomorrow morning and I’ll tell you what I have in mind.”
###
It was bedtime. This was the time of day I was dreading most. I didn’t know what she would expect from me. I wanted to be close to her, but I didn’t want to be closer than she wanted me to be. She’d been through a lot of shit. I couldn’t push my limits. Would she freak out if I got into bed with her? I thought about sleeping on the couch without even bringing up the idea of sharing my bed, but I didn’t want her to be alone if she had a nightmare.
She was ahead of me, though. “You’re coming up with me, right?” she whispered.
“Uh, yeah. If that’s what you want.”
“Please. I can’t be alone tonight.” She sounded like a little girl, completely lost. My heart ached for her. I wanted to hold her, to touch and kiss her. I also wanted to make her pain go away. And I wanted to kill the fuckers who terrorized her the way they did.
I couldn’t do any of those things. I could only be there for her in case she needed me.
“Okay. I’ll stay with you.”
She took a shower, I guessed to get rid of the feeling of the asshole’s hands on her. I reminded myself that I had to chill out. I couldn’t let it get to me so much. I had to be calm for her. She was already too worked up over it. She needed someone who would be calm and level. If I didn’t act like it was a big deal and those assholes needed to die, she wouldn’t keep thinking about it.
I would think about it for the both of us. I knew I would seethe all night. I didn’t expect to sleep. I knew I’d lay there next to her, wide awake, watching in case she had a nightmare. Listening to hear any footsteps or noises outside.
Before she got out of the bathroom, I tucked my semi under my pillow. No way I was taking any chances. Gareth’s men were insane and would do anything their leader told them to do. They would go to any length to get to me, to her, if that was their mission. I never hated anybody as much as I hated them for that.
She came in, drying her hair with a towel, another one tied around her chest. “Thanks for washing the towels, by the way,” I said. “I didn’t thank you for that before. I didn’t thank you for cleaning the house either. It meant a lot.”
She nodded with a smile. “Honestly? I was only doing it to be a bitch.”
“Cleaning my house to be a bitch? Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Remind me to piss you off again sometime. My car needs a wash, and my yard needs a little work.”
She snickered. It was good to hear. “Yeah, well, I never said I ever made sense.”
I sat with my back to the headboard, watching her dry her hair and comb it out. It was so long and thick, like the color of dark coffee or chocolate. She noticed me watching and smiled shyly.
“You don’t have a dryer,” she murmured. “I hope you don’t mind damp hair in bed.”
I wanted to make a joke but bit it back. I didn’t think she would appreciate raunchy humor when she was in a good mood, much less right then and there. “It’s fine.”
“Do you mind if we sit up and talk for a little bit? With the light on?”
“I don’t mind.” And
I didn’t. I would have sat up all night talking with her if she wanted to. It wasn’t like I planned to go to sleep. If she was talking, she wasn’t thinking about what happened. It was a positive thing, I told myself.
She turned away from me and stood up, and I only glanced over a couple times while she got dressed. She tried to be modest, with her back turned, sliding the panties up her legs with the towel still around her chest. But she had to drop it eventually, and when she did, I caught a look at her full, round ass and hips. I was glad to have a blanket over me, to hide the erection I couldn’t stop.
Then I thought about what would have happened to her body if I hadn’t gotten to her in time. Nothing like that sort of thing to kill a boner. By the time she turned around, wearing a massive nightshirt that reached her knees, I was flaccid again.
She climbed into bed, and I held an arm out for her to move closer to me. The warmth of her body pressing against me felt good. Too good. But I wouldn’t let myself go down that road. I owed it to her to keep it in my pants and be there for her. It was the least I could do.
Chapter Eighteen
Michelle
I felt sort of cold all over. It was strange. I knew I should feel warm, but I couldn’t get there. No matter how hot I made the water in the shower, there was still a coolness in me that the water couldn’t reach. Even when my skin turned bright red, it wasn’t enough to warm me up. Then again, I wasn’t sure if the redness was from the heat or from the way I scrubbed myself raw. Maybe a mixture of the two.
I wondered if that was what shock was like, feeling cold even though there was no reason to. Another thing I’d heard about on TV and was suddenly experiencing for real. Going into shock after a great trauma. It had been a big day for me.
Never in my life had I ever been so relieved as I was when that door opened and I saw Eric standing outside. I didn’t think I’d feel that much relief if my mother suddenly went into remission—that’s how tangible it was. I could hardly believe it was real, and for a second, I thought I had to be dreaming. No way he saved me like that. But he had.
I thought about what Mac and I joked over in the kitchen at Mom’s. A knight in shining armor. That was all I could think about as he seated me on his bike and whisked me off into the sunset, as it were. Only it wasn’t sunset. That was about the only thing that didn’t fit. Otherwise, all the pieces fell into place. He rode in, saved me, and rode away with me behind him. With my arms wrapped around his waist and the side of my face against his shoulder.
I wondered what sort of person he really was, deep inside. It took real bravery and courage to do what he did, to stop that van and rescue me. I imagined he’d chased it down for a while, too. He must have ridden hard to catch up with us. All to save me. It didn’t seem real.
But he was real. And he was waiting for me in bed when I finished showering.
When I crawled in beside him and felt his arm wrap around me, I let out a breath I didn’t know I was holding. It felt right. I felt safe. He was what I needed. I slid an arm around his waist and held onto him.
“Tell me something good about you,” I whispered, closing my eyes.
I felt the rumble of laughter in his chest a split second before I heard it. “Something good about me? I don’t know that there’s such a thing.”
“Bullshit.” I glanced up at him, his blond hair glowing in the light from the lamp by the bed. Like a halo. A fallen angel, I thought. Wasn’t Lucifer the most beautiful of all the angels? Eric definitely qualified. “There’s gotta be something good you can tell me.”
“Let me think.”
I settled back in while he thought it over. He smelled so good and felt so good. Heavenly, really. Another tie-in. I laughed at myself for being corny, and knew he would laugh at me if he had any idea what was going through my head.
“I like animals,” he said. “Dogs, mostly. I’m a dog person.”
“Why don’t you have one, then? Oh, right, you were away.” I could have slapped my forehead, I felt so dumb for asking. Talk about awkward.
He didn’t make a big deal about it, though. “Right.”
“But you’ve been back for a while. Why not adopt one?”
He took a deep breath. “The sort of life I live…I don’t know that I wanna bring anything into it. Or anybody.”
He must have felt me stiffen against him. “I’m sorry if that sounds morbid or whatever, but it’s how I feel. Like, what if something happened to me and I never came home again? That wouldn’t be fair to the poor dog.”
“I guess.” How sad, limiting himself like that because of the club.
“That didn’t turn out to be such a nice thing about me, did it?”
I had to giggle. “No, it didn’t.”
“Maybe it would be easier for you to tell me something good about you. You probably have more good things in your life than I do. I’m not trying to get sympathy. It’s just true.”
I thought about it. “My best friend’s name is Mackenzie. She’s been my friend since we were kids. She’s like a sister to me. I never had any brothers or sisters.”
“Me neither. Slash is my best friend.”
“Slash?”
He snorted. “Stephen. But he goes by Slash. I don’t know why.”
I snorted, too. “So you were an only child, like me.”
“Yeah. It kinda sucked sometimes.”
“I know what you mean. I always wished I had a brother or sister to play with. Even though my friends always complained about theirs.”
“I know, right? They didn’t get it.”
“Where are your parents? Did you grow up around here?” He flinched. “Oh. I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay,” he said, but his voice was tight. He was holding back some sort of emotion. “They, uh, they died a long time ago.”
“I’m so sorry.” I hugged him a little tighter. He knew the pain I felt, then.
“Yeah. A drunk driver hit them. I was at school.”
“How old were you?”
“Twelve.”
“Jeez. That’s terrible.”
“So I joined the club as soon as I was old enough to get through the door. Or, not joined. I told you about it.”
“Yeah. They sorta let you hang around.”
“I guess you could say they raised me, for the most part. Spike’s like a father to me.”
“I’m glad you had something, at least.” Even if it was a bunch of criminals who made you a criminal, too.
“Yeah, it could have been a lot worse.” I wondered how, exactly, but I was smart enough to keep my mouth shut.
“My dad died a while back. It was very sudden. I know how it feels to have somebody you love with you one day, and then all of a sudden, they’re gone. And you wish you had known when you woke up that morning that it was going to be the last time you woke up when your life was normal.”
“Whoa. That’s exactly how I used to feel.” His arm tightened a little.
“It’s so hard to move forward, even when people tell you that you should.”
“I know what you mean. People either expected me to keep breaking down or cheer up. It was either one or the other, all the time. They wouldn’t just leave me the hell alone and let me figure it out for myself.”
“I get it.” I thought about my mother again. I would have to go through that with her after she died. Nobody would know how to act around me. Everybody would either try to cheer me up or want to weep and wail on my shoulder—Mom had lots of friends. They would bring food, and they would want to share stories of her life. They would think it was helping me somehow, when I would just want to be alone with my thoughts and my memories. I had already gone through it once. I knew how my grieving process went.
I didn’t want to talk about that out loud, though, because I didn’t want to bring up the subject of the money again. We walked such a thin line together, Eric and I, and I didn’t want to disturb the delicate balance we had going on. The last thing I needed was for him to get angry with me
and tell me to get the hell out of his bed.
He wouldn’t do it, though. I had a feeling about him. The man who saved me wouldn’t kick me out of bed. He wouldn’t do anything to hurt me when I’d already come so close to being hurt. He only wanted to protect me and make me feel good and safe. He didn’t have to say it. I could feel it with every beat of his heart just next to my ear.
The rhythm of his heartbeat must have lulled me to sleep. Before I knew it, I was dreaming. In the dream, I was a princess, trapped in the uppermost tower of a castle. I wore a short dress and dangerously high heels, and I waited by the window for a prince to save me. I knew he was out there somewhere. The land stretched on for miles all around me.
