Chapter 6

six

Nevaeh

The x-ray shows my ribs are not broken, although they are bruised. The ultrasound shows no internal bleeding. My throat will be raw for the next week or so, my voice scratchy. I’ll have to have my stitches removed in a few days, but the other cuts and bruises on my face and body will heal in time. I’ve been prescribed an anti-inflammatory for the swelling and a painkiller for—well, the pain.

After the assault I suffered, it’s amazing there isn’t more damage. It’s almost as though my attacker knew just how to strike me to make it excruciatingly painful, without really hurting me.

I’ve been given the clear to go home, even though home is the last place I want to be. If I’m being honest with myself, I’m terrified to go home. Sick at the thought of it. But I’m also too afraid to go to Mom and Dad—too afraid to bring this trouble into their lives. I could go to Uncle Miguel. He’d take me in without hesitation and do his best to protect me, but he’s not the most law abiding of citizens and although Antonio clearly is no saint, he has the reputation of one. He also has the financial means to destroy Uncle Miguel if the mood strikes. If Antonio’s hiring the goon who pummelled me last night has taught me anything, it’s that the mood most definitely will strike. Antonio only requires a slight nudge to his obviously delicate ego to pitch a rich-boy fit.

I pull the cardigan from over the chair where I hung it when I’d undressed to don the hospital gown. At home, I’d been too sore to throw a pullover sweater over my head. I’m even more sore now that the bruises and swelling have had a chance to settle in. That’s even with the painkillers.

When the struggle to shove my arms into the cardigan becomes too much, I give up with a huff I’m sure the entire ER department hears. A tiny sob catches in the back of my throat, burning there as I fight to swallow it back, shove it down. No one needs to hear me break. I’ll do that when I’m alone.

Because I know where I need to go.

I know what I need to do.

I need to put that shackle of gold back on my finger and I need to—oh, Lord, I hope my attacker wasn’t serious when he told me to crawl to Antonio. To beg him to take me back.

How has my life turned into this? How is this the way my cookie crumbles? I’ve always considered myself a strong woman. A kind woman. I aim to be genuine and morally correct in all the things I do.

How could I have chosen so poorly for myself in a life partner that I’m now unable to escape him?

That sob I’ve been fighting has talons and they’re digging in as it rises, determined to break free. I fight harder to keep it down.

Footsteps sound on the other side of the curtain a moment before I hear, “Coming in, Sunshine.”

The curtain rustles. The snared sob thrashes free to belch into the space. It’s so violent, I fought it so hard, my entire body jolts with the unwilling release.

Big hands land gently on my shoulders, and he turns me carefully to face him. His voice is deep and rough and fringed in violence not intended for me as he commands, “Come here.”

I don’t fight him as he pulls me into his chest. His embrace is gentle as it wraps around me. A feeling of safety I shouldn’t entertain surrounds me, enveloping me in that ever-false hope. When will I learn the trickery of this fickle hope? The way she draws me close only to feed me to despair?

I cry harder, as though the safety of his arms draws out the sorrow of my reality as painful and unwilling as one might pull the marrow from my bones.

I can’t say how long he holds me, how long I cry. I’m weak when the tears run dry, so weak I stumble when I try to pull away.

His arms tighten, a pulse of strength that holds me up and has my head tipping back to peek up at him. I’m alarmed to find him already looking down at me with a kind of snowy soft in those ice blue eyes. But that’s the only part of him that’s even remotely soft. His jaw is hard. The set to his face, the way he holds back his rage, is hard. His body is, well, hard.

I sense deep inside the man isn’t one to be taken lightly. That there’s something dark and dangerous lurking beneath his inked flesh. But whatever monster he houses deep inside can’t be as powerful as the monster within my ex-fiancé. That monster has political power at his back, and we all know how corrupt that can be.

How could I have thought he was one of the good ones?

How could I have been so foolish? So hopeful?

“Sorry.” Heat stings the bruises on my face.

“For what?”

“Breaking.”

“You’re allowed to break.”

God, now I want to cry again. I turn away from him, knowing that if I don’t, I will. “I’m allowed to go home.”

“I know.”

My eyes lift to his. I don’t think he’s ever looked away from me. “You do?”

He dips his chin once. “Candace told me.”

“Nurse Candy?”

“That’s the one.” His lips quirk just enough to make my heart flop. I don’t like that. I don’t like how he looks when he talks about her. I have no reason to be jealous—and yet…

“Are you and her…?”

Not a thing about the hard in his face changes. “No.”

“Ah.” I nod, hugging my cardigan to my chest because getting it on isn’t an option. Not with the way my ribs feel. “I should probably get out of here. They’ll need the room.”

He makes no move to let me out even though he nods. “Where are you going?”

I draw a shallow breath. “Home, I guess.”

“The home where you were assaulted?”

“I only have the one.”

He doesn’t crack a grin at my joke. Oh well, it was a crappy joke, anyway.

When he folds his arms over his muscular chest, I can’t help but note how they bulge, the ink stretching. The man really is huge. So big, my heart gives a quick pitter-patter when he steps closer to me. “And your ex?”

I flinch. Sharp eyes note it. “What about him?”

“What happens with him?”

“I—I—” Shame expands in my belly so massively; I feel it leaking from my pores to coat my flesh. Still, I lift my chin and tell him as bravely as I can muster, “I’m going to marry him.”

An explosion of emotion detonates in his eyes. It’s so massive, so clear, I flinch at the impossible possibility of being struck by shards of ice. Glacial daggers intended to maim—to carve the words from the space they fell between us. But that’s his only tell. Otherwise, he’s stone.

“You’re going to marry the man who had a hand in doing,” he shoves a hand toward me. “That to you?”

I want to cry again. I don’t get it. I’m not a crier and yet—around him I’m a mess.

I pull my lip between my teeth and bite down hard to stop the tremble. Only after I’ve somewhat wrangled my unstable emotions do I dare to speak. “I don’t have a choice.”

The words fall so quiet from my lips, he leans forward. His body coming closer. I’m hit with that scent of cigar smoke and whiskey and—despite the heat of L.A.—the scent of winter and forest. It’s as though the raw violence of a natural terrain has imbedded itself in the core of him, the winter rivers running through his veins. This man is untamed as the land of an untouched wilderness.

I want to explore every inch of him.

Oh, hell, no. Nooooo. I did not just have that thought about this man.

My internal fuss is interrupted by a glacial tone. “Tell me how you figure that, Sunshine.”

I’m exhausted. My body has been beaten, prodded, examined. I’ve been interrogated by doctors and police—and now him. I want nothing more than to collapse into a silent, safe dark, and sleep for the next, say, millennia.

“Look, we don’t have to do this.”

“Do what?” I should fear the danger that curls around those words, but I can’t muster the will to be afraid of him. I don’t know why, can’t begin to explain it, but I’m safe with him. I know it.

“This. With you.” I shake my head. “I’m sorry I brought you into this at the club. You were the first guy I saw alone I thought might help, that’s it. I don’t want or need anything else from you. You can go on with your life, conscience clear.”

Yeah, I don’t know why I feel like this man won’t hurt me. He looks enraged right now.

Really, that asshole had to have knocked a few screws loose, because my marbles are definitely not on track. Not anymore.

“You think that’s why I’m here?” He drops his arms from his chest, moving in to crowd me against the bed. My heart flips, but it’s not with fear. It’s with excitement.

What. The. Actual. Hell? See, loose marbles.

“Why are you here?”

“I’m here because I couldn’t stop thinking of you ever since I let you drive away from me. I’ve had your license plate number burned in my mind, and I’ve had to talk myself out of using it to have you found every minute of every day since. Then I saw you here—” His teeth grind behind a hard jaw as his rough voice gets low. “I saw you looking like this, and fuck, I regret ever attempting to be a man of boundaries. That’s not me, anyway. And this time, I’m not fucking letting you go. Not now that I know you’re unsafe. Especially not now that you’ve told me you’re going back to him. Marrying him.” His teeth are going to grind to dust if he doesn’t take it easy. “So, tell me again, what the fuck we don’t have to do, Sunshine.”

I’m shocked. He’s thought of me every minute of every day? Had to fight against the urge to use my license plate number to find me? He’s not letting me go?

Why do I like that? The possession—the dominance and lack of choice for me in his words should have me hightailing it far, far away from him. And yet…

My shoulders fall. “I can’t let you get involved, Kane.”

When I speak his name, those frosty eyes fall to my mouth. Heat sears away the ice.

Even in the broken state it’s in, my body responds. I’m a fool.

“Can’t let me get involved in what?”

“My life!” I cry. “It’s not safe. Not for anyone. Not even a big guy like you.”

He crowds closer, pitch dropping, danger dripping from every word. “You think he can hurt me?”

“I know he can.”

His lips curl at that, but it’s the sound of his laughter, the confidence in it that chills me. “I’ve told you once and I’ll tell you again, I’m the bigger monster.”

As I search his eyes, I think I see a flicker of the beast behind the blue. It roams in a cage of ice, just waiting for the moment to break free. To strike. To maim and destroy and devour.

“Kane.”

“I can and will protect you.”

I close my eyes, deflating. Because every time hope flares, something crushes her under a thorny thumb. “Antonio has money. A lot of money. A trust fund. He has powerful people at his back. Powerful, dangerous people.”

Thumb and finger connect with my chin, forcing my gaze to his. At the contact, my nerves lurch as though I’m driving top speed on a winding road—trajectory set for—well, complete destruction.

“I have more money. I have more power. I am the bigger monster, and if he comes for you again, I’ll tear him to shreds in a way that no one will ever find him because there will be nothing left to find.”

I shake my head, because I don’t think this man knows just how powerful Antonio is. But I say, “You’re not giving up on this, are you?”

“No.”

I give him a small smile that hurts. “What now, then?”

“Now you come home with me. You stay hidden until you heal. Until you are strong.”

“He’ll find me.”

“He doesn’t know who I am.” He points out the truth. I don’t even know who he is. “My home is private. You’ll have space to heal.”

I can’t believe I agree when I hear my voice saying, “Okay.”