Chapter 28

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Blythe

M y head felt like it had been cracked clean in half as my eyelids fluttered, trying to peel open. My stomach rolled violently, and I had to breathe slowly through my nose for several seconds to keep from throwing up.

It took several more seconds for me to understand why whatever I was lying on vibrated beneath me. When my vision finally cleared, I realized I was lying across the back seat of a car that had seen much better days. It smelled like old take-out, sweat, and body odor, and the floor of the back seat was littered with what looked like three weeks’ worth of drive-thru trash.

I pushed the remaining nausea, the stabbing pain that started in my temple and radiated through my skull, and the panic clutching at my chest to the back of my mind so I could take stock of everything around me.

“Fuckin’ bitch,” I heard muttered from the front seat. “Stupid fuckin’ cunt. Thinks she’s better than me. I’ll show her. Won’t look better once I’m done with you, bitch.”

I held my breath and lifted my head enough to see between the front seats to the man behind the wheel. The voice was familiar, but I still felt a little fuzzy from the blow, so it took a moment to realize it was Lonny Oswald driving the piece-of-shit car I was in.

I bit down on my lips hard enough to taste blood to keep from crying out when he hit a pothole, causing me to bang into the door panel. I lifted my hands, trying to brace myself, only to discover the son of a bitch had bound them in front of me with zip ties.

Calm down, Blythe, I told myself when my eyes began to burn with tears and my panic started to grow. Calm down. You can get out of this. Take a moment and think.

Closing my eyes, I pulled in a centering breath and pictured my kids’ faces in the back of my mind. I thought about how good it felt to wake up every morning wrapped in Rhodes’s arms. How much I loved waffle breakfasts with my family. I thought about every single thing that had filled me with happiness recently, and I held those memories close, letting them fill me with strength. I’d been through hell and back, and I’d finally made it to the other side. I wasn’t going to let that motherfucker steal my happiness. People like him only wanted to destroy. Their lives were so small and miserable they couldn’t stand seeing other people happy. He didn’t deserve to win, and I wasn’t going to let him.

Panic loosened its hold on me, giving way to a fueling rage. I was getting out of this, one way or another. And when I did, I was going to beat the ever-loving shit out of Lonny fucking Oswald.

I just had to figure out how to do that.

Scanning the floor once again, I spotted my purse tossed among the garbage. I couldn’t help but smile as I carefully reached for it, digging inside as quietly as possible for my phone.

If there was one thing you could count on with Lonny, it was that he was as stupid as he looked, which was really saying something, because that prick looked like he’d fallen from the top of the stupid tree and hit every freaking branch on the way down.

I flipped the button to silent as soon as I found it and swiped the screen, bringing it to life, then navigated my way through my texts until I found Rhodes’s name. I quickly tapped through the options until I found what I was looking for, and quickly shared my location with him. I waited and prayed he would know what to do.

Ten seconds later my phone lit up with a message.

I see you, Angel. I’m on my way. Stay safe a little longer.

A single tear broke free as I re-read the message. Because I believed him. He was coming for me, and I had faith he’d make it in time.

For the next ten minutes, I lay there, trying to be as still as possible while I was forced to listen to Lonny curse me under his breath between Kiss and Motley Crüe songs, making every threat known to man and detailing all the ways he wanted to make me pay for humiliating him.

I wasn’t sure which was worse, having to listen to Lonny plot his revenge, or the eighties hair bands he had playing on repeat.

I didn’t know where the hell he was taking me, or where we even were, but I hoped I’d gained consciousness soon enough that we weren’t too far away, because if I had to listen to Gene Simmons sing about how he was made for loving me, or Vince Neal wail “Girls, Girls, Girls,” I was going to have to use one of the fast food straws to puncture my eardrums.

I knew the instant Rhodes arrived on the scene, because the car began to decelerate as Lonny took his foot off the gas to stare out the driver’s side window in shock. “What? No! How did that fucker?—?”

He twisted and looked back over his shoulder too fast for me to close my eyes in time. “You stupid bitch!” he shrieked.

I kicked out between the seats, my foot bashing against his face. He jerked the wheel as his head slammed into the window from the force, and I nearly rolled off the seat as he over-corrected, sending us swerving all over the road. I managed to keep my balance somehow, and shot up to sitting as he reached for something in the passenger seat. “I’m gonna kill you!” he shouted. Sunlight bounced off the metal of the gun in his hand as he lifted it up and twisted, trying to point it back at me. I lunged forward, grabbing hold of his arm and slamming it against the side of his seat, the force making it bend in a way an arm wasn’t supposed to bend.

He let out a high-pitched scream of agony and dropped the gun, but I held onto his arm with a death grip, refusing to let go while I was tossed all around the back seat like a ragdoll as Lonny lost control of the car.

I briefly thought we were going to crash, but I didn’t care. Crashing this shitty car was far more preferable to being shot or any of the other things he’d muttered about doing to me.

A flash of silver caught my eye, and I turned in time to see Rhodes’s truck pull up alongside us before Lonny wrenched the wheel to the left and Rhodes had to slam on the brakes to avoid being hit or hitting me.

“Let go!” Lonny shrieked. “Let go, let go! You fuckin’ bitch!”

I let go, but only because that arm was utterly useless, and I needed my hands free so I could loop them over the headrest and pin him to his seat. “Hit the brakes, you asshole!”

He did as I ordered, slamming on them a little too hard and sending us careening into the ditch on the side of the road. I closed my eyes, shot up a silent prayer to whatever higher power might have been listening to get me out of this alive, and braced myself.

The car bounced violently over the uneven ground before finally lurching to a stop with its nose pointed toward the ground at an angle cars weren’t meant to point.

The sound of Lonny sputtering and gagging from my zip ties digging into his neck brought me back to the present and alerted me to the fact that we were both still alive, and at least marginally safe.

Then I remembered what he did and how pissed I was.

“Who’s gonna kill who now, motherfucker?” I shouted as my vision washed over with red. I braced my foot in the back of his seat and used it as leverage, pushing off so my bound hands choked him even harder. He thrashed in his seat, unable to get free or reach me with his busted arm.

I was so lost in the wave of violence that had washed over me I hadn’t realized my door had been thrown open until I felt a set of hands on me. “No!” I shouted at the person tugging at me. “Let me go! I’m not moving until this piece of shit stops breathing!”

“Angel, it’s me.” I barely registered Rhodes’s voice through my haze of vengeance. “It’s me, baby. I’m here. I’m right here.”

He finally broke through, and I twisted my head to see the most beautiful sight right there beside me. I let out a sigh of relief, but I didn’t loosen my hold on the son of a bitch in the front seat. “You made it,” I breathed.

“Told you I would, Angel. And I’ll always keep a promise to you.”

I smiled. I hadn’t thought it possible to love this man any more than I already did, but when he said something like that, I fell all over again. “I knew you would.”

“Come on, Blythe. Let’s get you out of here, yeah?”

Lonny sputtered and gagged, his one good arm slapping all around, trying to get free. “Not yet,” I growled through clenched teeth. “He’s still breathing.”

“Baby,” Rhodes said soothingly. “I understand exactly how you feel. But trust me, it’ll feel so much better to know this fucker is rotting in a prison cell every day for the rest of his miserable life than for him to be rotting in the ground where he’ll never feel it again.”

That did it. I loosened my hold on Lonny’s neck and lifted my arms over the back of the seat as he coughed and sputtered. His door flew open and my brother reached in, yanking him out and throwing him on the ground. As Tristan wrenched Lonny’s arms behind his back, setting off another series of screams as he cuffed him, I let Rhodes help me out of that God-forsaken car and extended my arms toward him.

“Get these off me,” I whispered. “Please, just get them off.”

“I got you, baby,” he assured me, pulling a pocket knife from his back pocket and slicing through the thick plastic. As soon as he cut me loose, I collapsed into him, wrapping my arms around his neck, and finally allowed myself to break down as he held me up, offering all the support I needed. Just like I knew he always would.

I sat on the porch swing, rocking back and forth lazily, watching my kids squeal and laugh as they ran through the sprinklers Rhodes set up out back. Koda barked and danced after them, barely dodging the stream in time.

It had been a week since Lonny tried taking his revenge—and in true Lonny fashion, failed epically—and I was finally back to a hundred percent. I’d come out of that ordeal with a couple scrapes and bruises and a pretty nasty concussion, but Lonny had faired much worse. I managed to break his arm in two places and fucked his larynx up enough it required medical attention. He spent two days cuffed to a hospital bed before he was carted off to jail to await arraignment for what he did to me. He was going to prison for a very long time, and I hoped each day was worse than the one before.

Rhodes told me it had been Merritt who alerted them that something was wrong. I’d wanted to see her right away, but I didn’t want to risk going to her house and setting off her husband. When I said as much to Rhodes, he informed me things had been set in motion that day. He wouldn’t tell me any more since it was officially a case for Alpha Omega, but he assured me she was getting help and asked me to be patient.

That wasn’t something I was particularly known for, but I would give it to him. Besides, my time off was finally coming to an end on Monday, so I’d be able to catch up with her and thank her for saving me as soon as I returned to work.

“Hey, Angel,” Rhodes said, his voice pulling me from my thoughts and back to the here and now. “You good?”

I smiled, scooting over on the swing so he could sit beside me. As soon as his arm looped around my shoulders, I nuzzled into his side, contentment washing over me. “Baby, I’m fantastic. And each day gets better.”

There were no half-lives here. Not for me or my kids or Rhodes.

“Can’t tell you how glad I am to hear that. To know I’m the one who gets to give that to you.”

I tipped my head up and pressed a kiss beneath his jaw. “And I hope I give it right back to you.”

He tilted his head down, his lips meeting mine. “Every minute of every day, baby. And that’s why I got you this.”

He leaned to the side and reached into his pocket to pull something out. When he held his hand in front of me and opened it, revealing the most stunning ring I’d ever seen in all my life, all the air whooshed from my lungs.

“It’s always been you, Blythe. It was you when I was seventeen. It was you for all those years we were apart, and it’ll be you for the rest of my life. So what do you say? You want to do forever with me?”

My eyes welled up with happy tears as he slid the ring onto my left hand. Cupping his cheeks, I pulled his face to mine and kissed him with every ounce of love I felt for him. “There’s no one else I’d want forever with.”