I blank out my mind, ignoring the killer who’s smashing through the door.
Strategy—battle consciously, not emotionally, Josh would say. Turn your hip—elbows move with knees—use your every muscle to feed torque into the blow.
I pivot away from Jim’s rush and crack the chair over his back with all my might.
Jim drops while the chair breaks free from my hold.
I race to my bag and my fingers catch hold of the fabric.
Jim’s arms lock around my waist, and as he throws me onto the floor, the bag falls with me. The air knocks out of my lungs and now he’s completely got the advantage as his full weight crushes my stomach. I can’t breathe.
“Fuck it, bitch. We can do it this way instead.” He smiles. Blood cakes his teeth and mingles with his spit, dripping to my face.
He slides my bag out of my reach. My hope goes with it.
The front door splinters and crashes open.
“What the fuck!” Jim looks up angrily and shouts.
A boot sails over my head and catches Jim under his chin, sending him vaulting away from me.
I don’t know what kind of altercation he and his partner had or what is going on. I have to move, but the edges of my vision blur … maybe from a lack of oxygen. I ignore it and crawl behind the overturned table. I have to reach my bag!
Looking up to see where the two men are, I see Josh. He’s fighting Jim.
Josh?! I blink. Am I hallucinating?
I shake my head to try to bring myself to my senses and crawl madly toward my bag. There’s so much blood coming from my leg, I keep slipping.
“SOPHIE!” It’s Josh’s voice.
I look up. In a matter of seconds, Jim has his knife in front of him, ready to cut Josh. Josh backs away just enough to get out of range, but still close enough to get control of Jim’s knife arm. The knife clanks to the floor and Josh punches Jim ferociously.
I don’t know how it’s Josh, but it is.
I stand and move shakily into the tiny hallway, where I see the bathroom on one side and a room on the other. There’s my baby. Charlie is laid out over the top of a bare mattress with only the clothes she was captured in—her pink coat and pants.
She looks lifeless. I can’t tell if she’s breathing!
“SOPHIE?!” Josh’s voice shouts.
“Back here!” My hoarse voice shakes and cracks.
Josh races into the room.
“We got to get her warm,” I cry.
He takes a quick look at me, pulls off his coat and wraps it around my shoulders before picking Charlie up from the bed. In one arm he holds Charlie, in the other he holds all of my body weight as he gets the two of us out of the bedroom and to the front door.
To the right, I see Jim sprawled over the floor, knocked out in a bloody heap.
Josh stoops and throws me over his shoulder before carrying us to the car. “We have to get you two to the hospital.” He sets me in the bucket seat of his Vertigo first, then lays Charlie over my lap before closing the door.
Relief floods through me at our rescue. I hold Charlie’s little body against me; reaching my hand under her coat, I can feel the weak rising and falling of her chest. She’s breathing, but only barely.
Before Josh gets to the open driver’s side, a silver sedan tears into the parking lot, kicking up snow and gravel.
“Jim has a partner!” I say as loud as I can between the brutal grinding of my teeth.
The car stops and a man leaps out and shouts, “Who the fuck are you?”
“Jim is inside,” Josh states matter-of-factly. “You should go see him.”
The guy throws him a sideways glance, and then he sees me in the front seat.
“What are they doing in there?” he barks.
“Asshole, the police are on their way for that sorry fuck inside, so get back into your fucking car and get the hell out of here,” I hear Josh say.
It’s then that Charlie starts to cough. Immediately, it becomes choking and sputtering. She could be drowning in her own vomit! I flip her over onto her side between the two front seats, and she immediately throws up.
When I face forward, Jim—broken and bloodied—is out of the cabin and pointing a shotgun at Josh.
“Motherfucker thinks he can come in here and FUCK UP MY LIFE!” Jim’s voice cracks.
My bag is at my feet, I must have clutched onto it as Josh moved me out here.
When the gun goes off, the sound of it reverberates through the empty, snow-encrusted landscape.
Out of my peripheral, I see Josh turn his head toward me, but my focus is on Jim as he falls face-first into the dirt.
Police sirens scream in the background of my haze-filled mind. Jim’s partner runs toward his car. Josh runs to me.
I’m almost surprised my numb fingers were able to pull the trigger.
Chapter Twenty-three
Sophie
“Come on, scrapper, come back to me.” Josh’s voice is pained and choked.
Where’s Charlie? I think I form the words, but I don’t hear them come out of my mouth.
“Nurse! She’s opening her eyes!”
I swallow. “Josh.” It barely comes out.
“Oh God, Sophie! I’m right here.” His warm hand squeezes mine gently.
“Charlie …”
“She’s fine. She’s safe at home with my mom,” he says quickly.
I’m confused.
Josh continues. “The doctor kept her here for 24 hour surveillance. Once the ketamine was expelled from her body, she was fine.”
Ketamine—Jim.
“She’s okay,” I say. Emotion overtakes me; weakly, I begin to cry.
“You’re my scrapper.” Josh leans over, buries his face in the crook of my neck and holds me. His tears fall, warm and wet, down my neck. “The doctors weren’t so sure about you, though. You’ve been out three days.” He sits up to look at me again and swipes the tears away from his face before he whispers huskily, “You fought real good, scrapper.”
A nurse comes rushing to the bed. “The doctor is on his way,” she tells Josh, then holds a small pen light up to my eyes. “Hello, Sophie. Can you follow the light with your eyes?” She checks my eye movement, then shoots a barrage of questions at me, like what my name is, when and where was I born, what year we’re in and my profession.
The doctor comes in next with more nurses and machines.
After talking to me and giving me some physical tests—they check my reflexes, and test whether or not I can feel my feet, toes, fingers and hands—he seems satisfied and smiles at me and Josh, “I think Sophie is going to be just fine.”
Josh moves his face close to mine. “Do you remember that you love me?”
A strained laugh wheezes through my lungs. “That I remember the best.”
*****
Dalloway taps out.
The referee comes over and hands the coveted golden belt to Josh “The Jackhammer” North, who then lifts his arms victoriously into the air.
I’m so proud of him!
The audience goes insane and the Jumbotron shows a close-up as the ref saunters over with the microphone and asks Josh about his motivation for the fight.
“One word,” he says. “Sophie.”
The crowd cheers and Josh shouts into the mic over them, “Sophie, I need you to come up here for a minute. I have a question to ask you.”
Phillip Phillips’ song “Unpack Your Heart” plays through the sound system. Caruso, who’s standing on the side of the cage, reaches down for my hand. He wears a big, knowing smile as he, Silva and McGee pull me up and into the octagon.
I’m more than a little disoriented as I walk tentatively to the middle of the mat. Josh’s beautiful, albeit bruised, smile puts me completely at ease in front of the thousands of people yelling in the stands and the millions watching on the television. I walk right into his chest, and he closes me in with his perfect, muscled arms, where I feel so safe and secure.
The music is tu
rned down and plays softly in the background as Josh speaks through the microphone.
“Sophie Garner …
I’m going to make you forget every man you ever knew
I’m going to heal your heart from every broken I love you
I’m going to take on your old demons, chase the shadows until day;
I’ll cherish you forever and never go away.
I’m going to love you, like you’ve never seen
Darlin’ I’m the only man that you’re ever going to need.”
The words sink in. I pull back and our eyes meet. He moves his finger and, from the title belt, drops a string with a gorgeous platinum and diamond ring hanging at the end of it.
“You’re everything to me … let me be everything to you.”
“You already are,” I say, crying as if it’s just the two of us.
“Say yes, Mommy,” Charlie’s sweet little voice tells me. I look beside me and there she is, tugging on my long blouse.
I turn my head as if I need to see how she got here.
The entire North family clan, along with the Ink and Steel clan, are now standing ringside next to Silva, McGee and Caruso. They’re all smiling—guess they were all in on the big secret.
“Mommy?”
I lift Charlie onto my hip—we are a package deal after all.
“What do you say, scrapper?” Josh touches his forehead to mine affectionately.
I tumble into the depths of his warm, brown eyes. Lifting a soft palm I rest it over his jaw, which clenches sexily with the action.
“Yes.”
Epilogue
Sophie
I wake up to the obnoxious noise of a hammer. What in the world?
Wrapping myself in my robe I take a quick peek at the clock—six a.m.—Josh! I move into the hallway and in the direction of the offense.
Charlie is giggling.
Josh says, “I told you I was going to do something special with it.”
“What is going on?” My voice is still sluggish with sleep.
“Sorry for waking you, but I had to do this before I left,” Josh apologizes. He doesn’t look the least bit sorry as he smiles proudly at his handiwork.
Charlie jumps up and down in excitement, then squeezes Josh’s leg for all she’s worth.
My eyes follow his. There on the wall, next to the black frames I got him for Christmas, is a big pink frame showcasing Charlie’s pink hand-printed wrapping paper.
“You framed it.” The loving sentiment fills me. “Oh, Josh, it’s beautiful!”
When I left the hospital, Josh told me he was “bringing me home’—that meant to his place. Charlie and I have been “home” ever since. And even though I like his style, he wanted to give me the gift of putting my own home together. We shopped together, and I got to pick out all new furnishings, linens and décor. Charlie now has her very own room, just the way she’s always wanted.
Now Josh has hung the frames I gave him in the living room and added—as a surprise—Charlie’s art right next to them.
“These totally belong here,” he says, still admiring the wall. “Especially that one.” He points to the fifth frame with the hammer.
The fifth frame is the one I’d left empty, telling him that he’d have to fill it with a picture of the next thing he achieved, even if he had to go through fear to do it.
Tears well into my eyes. “Josh.” I pull my quivering lip into my teeth to still it. Tears spill down my face.
“Our first family photo,” he says as he picks Charlie up and settles her on his hip. “What do you think, scrapper?” Josh tosses the hammer to the couch, gets his arm around my shoulders and yanks me to him.
It’s a photograph of me, Charlie and Josh. It was an impromptu picture taken by his mom. When I gave him the frames, I never thought for a second that there would be a picture of us in any of them.
I cry happy tears.
Peaceful tears.
We’re finally at home tears.
The End
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Allie Juliette Mousseau writes sexy, emotionally-charged New Adult and Adult Romance.
She can always be found writing, playing in puddles with her children, hiking with her husband, or adventuring somewhere in the world. Allie’s home is in Montana where she lives with her loving husband, four out of her six children, and a golden retriever named Titan
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Other books by Allie Juliette:
“The True North Series” – A New Adult Contemporary Romance Series
“True North Book One Finding Home Livie and Jake”
“True North Book Two Finding Us Jules and Nate”
“True North Book Three Finding Now Kate and Sam”
Music by Allie Juliette Mousseau
True North Soundtrack - (purchase directly from alliejuliettemousseau @gmail,com) Track 1 – Run With It
Track 2 – Promised Land
Track 3 – My Heart Is Your Home
Track 4 - Kiss Me Light the Kindling
Track 5 – Keep Your Faith
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