Maybe not, but if I go down, I go down fighting.
I didn’t know I had that in me, but apparently I do.
I’m still shaking and ready to pee myself, but I push us forward. The outside that I’d glimpsed at the end of the hall looks like it’s actually a second or third story balcony. Maybe not my first choice. But before we get there, the hall opens up to the right to a large common room.
Where Lively is waiting with what looks like a small army.
Okay, maybe it’s just six guys. Or eight. I can’t count.
I can’t think.
“I told you this is silly, Hailey,” Lively says, smooth as poisoned silk. “Because of the special relationship I have with your father, I’ll forgive you this indiscretion. I should have welcomed you to the island myself. I apologize.”
I stare at him, dumbstruck. I just killed a woman. I’m holding another one hostage. I’m buck-fucking-naked, and he’s talking to me like he’s just been a bad host for a weekend away.
My skin crawls as it dawns on me that maybe this is all this is to him. Murder? No big deal. Drama? He eats hostages for lunch.
That shallow breathing thing gets me again, and I wobble on the spot. Damnit. I was so close, and now it’s all slipping away.
Literally, as one of his armed guards approaches and my hand shakes too hard to pull the damn trigger. No! I did it twice, I can do it again…
But I can’t. Hot tears splash on my cheeks as I realize I’m done for. Kimber is wrenched from my arms, and as the guard takes the gun from me, twisting my arms behind my back, the window shatters and he drops to the ground.
I stare at him for a second—because I didn’t just shoot him, and then I know.
I feel Cole the second the doors crack open. He’s like a hot Caribbean wind, swirling in, wrapping around me, ready to suck me back out again. Because I’m his, even from across the room with a dozen bad guys in between.
And like a hurricane, he’s an unstoppable force, taking out the two men closest to him with his bare hands, then shooting the guards at the other entrances.
Behind him, a man I don’t know comes in, and Cole issues him terse commands as he sprints toward me, reaching me at the same time Lively does.
—three—
Cole
Hailey calls out my name, and for a split second, I can’t see anyone else.
I leave the round-up of the incapacitated men to Harry and his helicopter pilot friend, who, it turns out, is ex-military and far more switched on than Harry is. And right now, they just need to hold rifles straight.
It takes me three seconds to cross the room and get my shirt off and around her naked form. Another millisecond to realize that Lively has a gun, and it’s pointed at my head. I drop, swinging my leg around in a vicious sweep that brings him down, then I’m on him like a cage fighter.
“Break into my house and attack me? Prison orange will look good on you—” I slam my fist into his jaw.
“Deluded motherfucker,” I growl. “You think you can stop us? You’re the one going to prison. And any other guests you’ve got here, too. Every single last one of you will fry for taking her.”
Lively sneers up at me. “At least she was a decent fuck. Chubby girls are always gagging for it.”
Slamming his head into the ground isn’t nearly as satisfying as I want it to be. I drag him back up onto his knees. Seeing the blood drip from his battered nose onto his pristine tennis whites? The snot and tears as he gags on his pain?
That’s better.
I zip-tie his wrists, then haul Hailey against me.
“Beautiful,” I rasp.
“I’m okay,” she says, her chest heaving and her body shaking. Her hands scrabble at the sleeveless shirt I’m left in.
“He had you naked.”
“Just that. He didn’t…what he said…” She starts crying. “I shot someone. In the hallway.”
“Good girl.”
“I knew you’d come, but I didn’t…I couldn’t let him…”
“I know. You did the right thing.” I kiss the top of her head, and look across to Harry. “You guys should call this in, then get the hell out of here.”
“How many people are you going to get tangled in the law with you today, Cole?” a familiar, disappointed voice says from the terrace we just came in from. Jason steps into view and nods at Harry and his friend, gesturing for them to scram. “Step away from Lively.”
“Fuck off, Jason. If I was going to kill him, I already would have.” I cock my pistol and jam it into Lively’s temple, just for fun. “Or maybe I still will.” I glare at my best friend.
“He isn’t worth it. And the Feds are two minutes behind me, so how about you let him be arrested without incident, yeah?”
I set my jaw and grit my teeth. He’s right. I’m not acting under the protection of any arm of the US Government. We might be on a private island, but the Bahamian police would arrest me for murder in a heartbeat.
And I’m no longer the guy who doesn’t give a fuck about that.
Jason looks at me, then back at Lively. He slowly turns and slides his Glock into its holster. “Put it away, brother.”
I kick Lively hard in the back, making him fall forward onto the tile floor. I stand there, seething, my boot on his spine, my weapons securely tucked away as men in windbreakers and hats clearly labelled as the good guys swarm the room.
Hailey cries as I’m handcuffed and shoved against the wall, but I know this is the easy part. They’re just securing everyone. Ten minutes, tops, and I’ll have her in my arms.
It’s only eight, and it feels like a lifetime.
A female officer brings her a blanket, which gives her more coverage than my shirt, and I pull her closer.
But she’s in shock—there’s no embrace tight enough to hold her together right now. And that’s okay. We’ve got all the time in the world to make this better.
It’s late when we’re escorted onto a US Coast Guard vessel. I still don’t know how Jason arrived, but he smoothed over a lot with the Feds and now, as we head back to Florida, I know something needs to be said.
But there’s a lot of other stuff that’s already been said, and one good day of making bad people pay doesn’t negate all the shit that’s come up between us in the last while.
So I stick with something safe. “How were you so sure I wasn’t going to shoot him?”
“We’ve got our problems, but you’ve never been as far on the wrong side of right as you think you’ve been.”
I’m tired, and I ache in a million different ways. “That doesn’t make an ounce of sense.”
“It does to me,” Hailey murmurs, tightening her grip around my waist. “You saved the day.”
I stare over her head at Jason. We both know that it’s only the day that I’ve saved. Lively still has a million ways to get out of this.
When Hailey falls asleep, wrapped up in a fleece blanket and three layers of FBI-branded clothing, Jason clears his throat. “You know what he’s going to do.”
“He’d hire us, if we were available. So we need to figure out who he’ll go to.”
He nodded. “Wilson was already watching for noise in that direction before I left. We didn’t know how fast you’d get to her.”
“Not as fast as I wanted. Turns out your brother’s pilot has a conscience and so do his friends. They made me verify a bunch of shit and make sure we were properly armed before taking off, and we did a couple of high passes before figuring out where to land.”
“Safety bullshit?” He laughs with me, but it feels damn hollow.
“I did this to her,” I say roughly, looking down at the woman I love. Whose safety I’d risked without even thinking about it.
“You didn’t know he was watching us. None of us did. Wilson is beside himself with guilt. You’re not alone in feeling like you failed her.” He grimaces. “But your girl…she’s tough.”
“Yeah.”
“We’ll get him.”
“I will.”
Jason narrows his eyes. “This should be a team effort.”
“Some of it will be.”
But before I leave Miami, there are some conversations in the shadows that need to happen, to ensure Hailey’s never touched, ever again.
—four—
Hailey
I wake up as the boat docks at an official looking port in Miami.
“Shit,” I whisper. “I don’t have my passport.”
Cole laughs, holding me tight. “Really?”
“What?” I scowl at him. “Oh, ha ha, sure. Joke is on the girl who’s never been kidnapped before. You re-enter the county, you need your passport.”
“First of all, beautiful, your passport will be waiting for you in there. And second…come here.” He pulls me up and kisses me on the lips. It’s soft and chaste, but it rouses my usual desire for him that constantly hums just beneath the surface. He smooths his hand over my cheek, sliding his fingers into my tangled hair. “This shouldn’t be anything but a quick bureaucratic paper stamping thing, okay? There will be a formal interview tomorrow, but we’re probably only half an hour away from a hot shower and bed. Promise.”
Twenty-four minutes later, he’s sliding a keycard into the door of a top floor downtown hotel room. We came straight up from the parking garage, driven here by a hired car, and Cole promised the room was under someone else’s name.
Nobody knows we’re here.
For the first time today, I don’t need to hold myself together.
Even while I slept, I was keeping a lot of shit at bay.
Now it starts to fall away, and before I realize it, Cole’s got me in the bathroom. His hands freeze at the hem of my shirt. “Can I?” he asks, and that just makes me sob harder.
Of course he can.
But of course he has to ask.
I hate that I need him to, that the little kiss we shared and the little sparks I felt have vanished. His hands on my skin are now strictly functional.
I still his movement, sliding my palms over the backs of his hands. Up his arms, over his shoulders until I’m wrapped around him.
“I just need a hug,” I whisper, and he holds me tight.
He starts the shower, and when he turns to leave, I pull him in with me. He washes my hair and I lean against his chest, and when we get out, he dries me off, then holds me as I fall asleep.
— —
The next morning, we’re summoned to the regional offices of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and separated for hours while I’m grilled on what happened.
I tell my story, over and over again until my heart aches and I’m physically shaking. First, I give my statement to a nice guy in a dark grey suit, then again to two agents, a woman and a man. Two more grey suits. Neither quite as nice as the first one.
The questions are harder. More pointed. They won’t stop asking me why Cole brought me to Miami. I hate that they won’t accept the weekend trip answer.
It has to be the truth.
“Can I have something to drink?” I ask at a pause between questions.
The guy looks at his watch. “It’s actually lunch time, can we get you a sandwich?”
My stomach protests at the thought of anything solid. “Water is fine.”
“We might be here a while.”
I give him a tight smile. “Hopefully not.”
A knock on the door comes quickly, delivering the water that I’ve asked for, and my eyes dart to the mirrored glass on the wall.
“You made a tempting target for Lively,” the female agent finally says after I drink half the bottle of water.
“Really?” I ask, my voice clipped and cold now. I’m so done with this. “Obviously I was a poor choice for a sex slave.”
“You think your boyfriend knew that when he flaunted you in front of his nemesis?”
I bang the water bottle on the table, my hands shaking so hard it barely stays upright. “I think you’re focusing on entirely the wrong villain in this narrative. I didn’t know I had it in me to defend myself. I’m quite certain Cole didn’t, either. And I hardly look like that bastard’s preferred type. So whatever you’re alluding to? It’s dead wrong.”
“Dead is the operative word, isn’t it, Ms. Reid.” That was from the male agent. I stare at him, cataloguing him. Greying hair, lined face.
“It was either me or her. You wanted me to make a different choice?”
They glance at each other.
“Can I talk to Cole Parker, please?”
“He’s being interviewed,” the woman says. “Can I get you some lunch?”
Hell no. So I say six words I never imagined crossing my lips. “I think I need an attorney.”
— —
Apparently Jason was waiting in the lobby with lawyers, and I should have said the magic words sooner. We finish up pretty quickly after that, then go to the law offices of the firm Jason and Cole have retained to protect my identity in all of this.
They order food in, and the strategy talk continues. Most of it goes in one ear and out the other because my brain is fried with stress and stimulation overload and the lies and innuendos that had been shoved at me all day.
I’m so done.
We don’t leave until it’s dark, so I fall asleep on the drive back to the hotel, and I’m all groggy when Cole wakes me up before easing me out of the back of the hired car.
“Come on, I’ll get you settled.”
“Wait,” I protest as he guides me into the elevator. “What do you mean?”
He gives me a look I can’t decipher as the car stops on the mezzanine level and a group of business people get in. Always a bodyguard, Cole’s stance shifts slightly—he does this thing where he looks like he’s relaxing, but really he’s a coiled snake, ready to strike at the slightest threat.
I hold my tongue until they get off a few floors below ours.
“I’m not a child. You can’t just tell me it’s bedtime.”
His nostrils flare and his jaw clenches, but he just moves me out of the elevator and down the hall toward our room. “I need to go out for bit,” he finally says as I start undressing. “I won’t be long.”
“And I shouldn’t ask were you’re going?” I yank one of his t-shirts off the chair in front of the window and pull it on before I shove my pants to the floor, my back to him the whole time.
I don’t hear him cross the room, so I shiver as he grips my shoulders. He jerks his hands away, but he doesn’t move.
“You have every right to be afraid of me,” he mutters into my hair.
“I’m not.” It’s the truth. I turn and try to catch his gaze, but he holds himself rigid and straight, staring out the window at the city below.
Pressing up onto my toes, I part my lips and trace a cord of muscle up his neck with the tip of my tongue.
His hands slam onto my hips and he rocks me back against the window. I arch against the cool glass, but I can’t catch his gaze.
“What’s wrong?” I ask as I wrap my arms around my waist, all sex kitten impulses vanishing at his lacklustre response.
“Nothing.” But now I can see he’s shaking, and what I thought was just him being on high-alert in the elevator is really him being on edge around me.
“Fine,” I mutter, shoving past him. “Go out. Do whatever dirty work you need to do to make yourself feel like you’ve got this under control.”
I don’t know if I shoved him to goad him into action—wouldn’t be the first time—or if I actually thought I could stomp to bed and he’d just leave it be.
But of course he doesn’t. Before I get two steps past him, he’s lifting me around the waist and carrying me to the couch as I kick half-assedly and protest more vigorously. “Put me down!”
He does—sideways on his lap. His eyes burning dark, he glares at me as he rubs his hand lazily over my ass, hanging out in the open space between his spread thighs.
I love it when he holds me like this. I can feel his muscles bunching beneath me, and I’m hyperawar
e of each powerful shift as he holds me. We’re both restless. If we weren’t twenty-four hours out of him rescuing me from being used as a sex slave, I’d have thought this was the start of something hot. Cole the Dom.
Where the thought should make me giggle, or pant because bossy Cole is super-hot, it just makes me sad.
The way he’s practically vibrating to get away from me, I think it’s more Cole the Emotionally-Unavailable-Can’t-Handle-Shit Guy.
Doesn’t quite have the same ring to it. Fuck. I want to cry, but that’ll just make Cole feel worse.
And there’s always this chemistry between us. He can’t help but squeeze my flesh, but he doesn’t want to do anything else. That’s crystal clear.
Even knowing that, I still press close, feathering kisses over his jaw as he holds still as granite. He groans as my lips find his, and he holds me tight, but his lips leave mine at the first opportunity.
So I stop trying.
Cole hugging me has never felt so much like a rejection before. In my head, I’m convincing myself to get down off the ledge, using all the talk therapy tricks I’ve picked up over the years.
Surviving a childhood steered by Morgan and Amelia Reid has made me a self-talk ninja. This is hard for you both. He’s been at your side the entire time. He’s given you no reason to doubt him. You fell apart last night, maybe he’s confused about the mixed messages.
“Do you want to talk about the interviews today?” he asks, his voice a sudden grate of sandpaper in the quiet of the room.
“No,” I say, laughing without humor.
“It’s their job to poke in all directions.”
“I know,” I snap, harsher than is needed. “I don’t need to talk.”
Something shifts then, something that gives me reassurance and hope. He relaxes beneath me and I feel his erection, heavy and solid and growing.
Point, Hailey. Or at least my naked ass.
“What do you need?” he asks quietly, his lips brushing against my hair.
Hate F*@k: The Complete Story Page 19
