Crush (Tainted Love Duet #2)

by Kim Karr

  His phone was driving me crazy. “Answer it,” I said rather harshly.

  With a heavy sigh, he pulled it from his pocket and glanced at it. His features darkened in the strangest way, but he still didn’t answer it. Instead he switched the ring to vibrate and focused on me again. “Are you in pain?” he asked. This time there was a new tone in his voice. One I’d never heard.

  Hushed.

  I didn’t like it.

  As if my lack of response was a yes, he started for the door. “I’ll get the nurse.”

  “No, not yet.”

  I could see his phone vibrate in his hand. I wanted to ask him if I could use it. I wanted to call Logan, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to explain myself. Still, I stared at it the entire time he poured me a glass of water. “How’s Clementine?” I asked, more concerned about her than ever.

  With the glass in one hand and his phone in the other, he handed me the water. “She’s fine. Here, drink this.”

  Once I’d taken a sip, I looked up at him. “How did you know I was here?”

  His sigh gave away his concern and he sat in the chair next to the bed. “I was at the Sudbury Sheriff’s Department when units were dispatched to the scene.” His last words trailed off.

  I looked at him strangely. Town names didn’t matter to me. I could have been on Mars, that’s how far away I’d felt.

  “I was worried about you. You were missing and I’d filed a missing persons report. I was notified when the Mercedes was found and I wanted to talk to the men who impounded the vehicle, directly.”

  With a shudder, I forced myself to talk even though I didn’t want to. “I wasn’t missing. A man took me, Michael, a man who told me I had to walk down God’s path, a path that leads to you.”

  Silence stretched between us. “Shhh . . . you don’t have to talk right now. I’ve told the police we’d go down to the station tomorrow in order to give you some time to think, to get everything straight in your head,” he finally said.

  Straight? How did he know it wasn’t straight? It wasn’t, but I hadn’t told him that. Did he know who had taken me, who had taken my sister? Any calmness I might have had in me, any patience or tolerance, had been left on that dirt floor wherever I had been. I felt raw inside and I wanted answers. “Michael, the man who took me said he had taken Lizzy, too.”

  His phone was buzzing again and when he glanced down at it, all the color drained from his face. And then just like that, like what I’d said wasn’t news to him, he jumped to his feet. “Listen, I need to go,” he said, and headed for the door.

  “Michael!” I called.

  He turned back. “The doctor said you should be released tomorrow. I have something I need to take care of, but I’ll be back later to check on you.”

  “Michael!” I called again, but the door closed.

  What just happened?

  LOGAN

  I was a force to be reckoned with.

  As I strode down the hospital corridor, nothing or no one was going to stop me from seeing Elle.

  As soon as Miles had gotten the call that Elle had been found, he slapped the siren on his car again and we took off. Unfortunately, no one would violate HIPAA policies, so I had no idea how she was. All I knew were three things. She was alive. She had been admitted and was on the fifteenth floor. And I was going mad.

  My legs couldn’t move any faster. I wanted to run, but didn’t want to draw attention to myself. I hadn’t stopped at the desk, hadn’t checked in. I snuck by with my hat on and sunglasses on my face. Somehow, I managed to slide right past the reception area without so much as a whisper. I wasn’t going to take a chance at being denied access.

  The hospital was huge and it took fucking forever to navigate. When I got in the elevator, there was no button for the fifteenth floor. I turned around to find a nurse with a cup of coffee in her hand. “Excuse me, how do I get to room fifteen ten?”

  She gave me a smile. “Take the red elevator to the third floor, follow the sign for the green elevator, then take that one to the fifteenth floor.”

  Something tight in my chest exploded like a grenade.

  I thought it was my heart, blown into a million pieces.

  This journey was taking way too long.

  What if she needed me right now?

  “Thank you,” I said, and this time I ran.

  At the door to the room, I came to a stop and braced myself for the fact that O’Shea might be there already. When Miles made the call, he had learned that O’Shea was at the Sudbury Sheriff’s Department. He was more than an hour closer than us.

  Resolve, resignation, hatred, and rage were just a few of the emotions that passed through me. Tempering all of them, I took a deep breath. I wasn’t going to stay in the shadows anymore. I couldn’t. Elle was mine, and I was going to claim her for all the world to see.

  Elle and I would deal with the fallout of O’Shea finding out about us, together.

  A small huff of laughter escaped my lips. I talked the talk, but in the end I knew I’d do what I had to in order to make sure Clementine remained in Elle’s life—even if that meant stepping away.

  Pushing all the shit aside for now, slowly, I pulled the door open.

  My heart was a drum banging in my chest as I eased it open. The room was dark, and emotion flooded me when I saw her lying so still in the bed. So much so, I almost dropped to my knees and prayed. Something I hadn’t done since my grandmother was alive.

  It really was Elle.

  She was alive.

  Somewhere deep in the fiery pit of my soul, I doubted it was really her. I feared that because I was a sinner, my punishment was going to be losing her.

  Absolution.

  Redemption.

  I vowed to seek both.

  Her profile was beautiful and I stopped where I was to just stare at her. The woman in front of me was more than an alignment of features. She had become the one thing that kept my heart beating and my mind sane.

  I needed her.

  Before I moved any farther into the room, I looked around over the rim of my sunglasses.

  No O’Shea.

  When I was certain I was the only person in the room, I took my sunglasses off.

  As if she could sense me, her head snapped in my direction. “Logan!” she cried.

  I rushed toward her and my stomach fell when I saw the bruises on her face. Not because of how she looked, but rather because of the pain she must have endured. My fists balled at my sides and anger welled beneath the surface of my very being. “Elle,” I said, my own voice broken, gruff. When I reached the bed, I fell beside her and took her hand. “Elle, I can’t believe it’s really you.”

  She struggled to sit up.

  “No, don’t move,” I insisted.

  She ignored me and reached her arms out, her hands reeling me in. “Logan,” she cried again.

  There was no hesitation as I moved to embrace her. Gently, so gently, I lifted her chin before I pressed her body to mine. “Are you okay? Tell me you’re okay.” That voice wasn’t even mine.

  She nodded through the sobs and slammed her head to my chest. “I am, now that you’re here.”

  Suddenly, I was a live wire. My world, the one that had seemed tilted, cracked in her absence, was righted with her in my arms, and despite knowing this was nowhere near over, I couldn’t help but feel happy.

  I wasn’t a poet, nor was I a romantic, but at that moment everything seemed just a little brighter.

  I climbed onto the bed. I had to be beside her. Her tears were bordering on hysteria and I needed to help calm her down. I lifted her head, careful not to look too closely at her wounds right now or the thought of them having been inflicted on her might just cripple me. And I couldn’t afford that handicap, not here, not now.

  “Oh, Logan.” She said my name again as if I were her savior.

  I wished I had been.

  I wished I’d found her yesterday.

  No, I wished I’d gotten to her before anyone
took her.

  I wanted so badly to rewind time and be the one to take her place.

  “It’s me. I’m here. I’m here.”

  “How . . . how . . . did you find me?” she cried.

  I reached to stroke her hair. It was matted, and a mess, caked with dirt.

  Oh, fuck. What had happened to her?

  Again, I forced myself to focus. She needed me and she needed the calm me, the one that had never existed until she entered my life. “Later. I’ll tell you everything later.”

  Her body was trembling despite the warmth in the room. “He had eyes like Michael’s, the man who took me, he had eyes like Michael’s. He told me he had taken my sister to set her on the right path, to repent for her sins, and that he had taken me so I could avoid the path she had taken.”

  My mind flipped back to being at her sister’s apartment yesterday, which, according to the leasing office, she’d had for almost three years. There were some men’s things in it—enough to indicate Tommy had been living there. Yes, she must have committed adultery. But who would hold her captive because of that?

  The lease was in her maiden name, and was signed when she first moved to Boston. Employment records from Lucy’s corresponded to that date. Facts indicated that she blew into town, got a job at Lucy’s, and formed some kind of bond with Tommy. Where O’Shea fit in, who the hell knew?

  It seemed that even after she married him, she spent a great deal of time at her apartment. The rent had been paid in cash every month through January. February, March, and April hadn’t been paid, and an eviction notice was getting ready to be processed.

  I slipped the agent five hundred to lose the eviction paperwork for a few days. I didn’t want the place cleaned out just yet. In there we’d found the missing garage door opener to Michael’s place and signs of a struggle. The place smelled like bleach and antiseptic, as if someone had cleaned it thoroughly, and not that long ago. But what struck us as odd was the Bible on her counter. It seemed out of place based on what I’d seen and what I’d known about Elizabeth O’Shea. As soon as we’d left, I’d called Blanchet to let her know about the apartment.

  “The Priest,” I said without even realizing I’d said it.

  Her eyes widened as she looked up at me. “He’s the one who took me.”

  She already knew this.

  I nodded. I knew it too. “Who he is, is the missing piece to all of this.”

  “But why take Lizzy and me . . . I don’t understand why.”

  I squeezed her tightly. “Neither do I . . . but I will.”

  “Logan, I was terrified. After all my self-defense classes I still couldn’t protect myself. I never even had a real chance. They kept injecting me with insulin to keep me quiet.”

  “They?”

  Still trembling, she nodded. “There were two of them. One was the boy who delivered the flowers to me. The other one wore a mask.”

  Blood pulsed in my ears and my calm façade began to crack.

  As if she had to get it out, she went on. “I knew what too much insulin would lead to. I’d lectured my mother about it all the time when she became reckless with her injections. And that sound, the sound of nail against plastic, I knew what it meant each and every time. I begged them to stop. I promised to be a good girl. I promised, but they still kept doing it.”

  I had to man up. I was having a hard time breathing, but what kind of sick fuck does that to someone? “Elle, baby, I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.”

  Tears streamed down her face. “They used to do that to psychotic patients in the twenties to experiment on them.”

  I swallowed—hard. The lump in my throat was making it difficult to breathe.

  Before I could say anything, the door started to swing open. The nurse’s back was to me and I bolted off the bed, my hand behind my back ready to take action if I had to—hospital or not. I relaxed when I saw a tray of food in her hand.

  “Miss Sterling, you’re awake.” The nurse smiled crossing the room to open the blinds. Once they were open, she turned around and then glared at me. “I don’t believe visitors have been authorized.”

  “What happened to her? What state did she arrive in? What did the doctors say?” All my questions, the ones I didn’t want to ask Elle, came streaming out.

  Her glare reached around me to Elle. “Is this man bothering you?”

  Elle’s laugh was a surprise, but the sobs that followed were not. “No, he’s the only thing in my life that seems sane right now.”

  At that she relaxed. “I’m glad to see you’re feeling better,”

  “We’ve talked?”

  “Yes, I brought you up here. You were quite out of it, though, so it’s not a surprise that you don’t remember. You kept asking me to call Logan, but I couldn’t make out his last name or the number you were giving me.”

  “This is Logan, Logan McPherson.” She pointed to me with a smile on her face that eased all the pain I was feeling in my heart.

  The nurse’s smile only grew, and she set the tray on the table beside the bed and then went over and took Elle’s pulse. “You need to eat. Perhaps this handsome man could make sure you do. I’ll go notify the doctor that you’ve woken so he can come by and check on you.”

  Elle pushed the tray away. “I can’t eat. My stomach is really upset.”

  The nurse pointed to a needle on the tray beside the food. “The doctor ordered Zofran. It will help, I promise.”

  Elle went to stand. “I need to use the bathroom first.”

  The nurse nodded and assisted her.

  Closing the door, the nurse stepped back into the room. “Now, I’m going to bend patient confidentiality and answer your questions. Just know I don’t do this on a regular basis, but Miss Sterling was asking for you. First, I want to ease your mind. She was not sexually assaulted.”

  Relief flooded me. I’d been a coward and unable to ask Elle myself.

  “Upon arrival, she was very close to slipping into an insulin coma, but thankfully she was brought into the ER just in time. There doesn’t appear to be any sustaining injuries. The cut on her cheek looks like a knife wound but should heal with very little scarring.”

  I flinched as visions of Tommy in my grandfather’s kitchen came to mind.

  “The doctor will suggest having a plastic surgeon take a look at it. I’m not so sure that’s needed, but it’s up to her.”

  The door opened and my Elle stood there, looking so frail and thin. Her cheeks looked hollow, her skin pale, and her eyes dulled.

  “She was slightly dehydrated, but the IV has helped with that. She still needs to take in a good amount of fluids in the next few days. I hope I can count on you to make sure she gets what she needs.”

  I nodded.

  The nurse insisted on helping Elle to the bed, but I stayed close to her side. As soon as Elle was back on the bed, the nurse inserted the needle into the IV. “Now, this will make you drowsy, so I’ll make sure the doctor waits a good two hours before coming by to check on you.”

  “Thank you,” I said. “For everything.”

  She gave Elle’s arm a pat and mine a squeeze. “Listen, I don’t get involved in my patients’ business, but whatever happened, I hope you tell the police. It’s noted in your chart that your statement was vague upon arrival and that you postponed questioning until tomorrow. Please go down there and do it. I’d hate for this to happen to anyone else.”

  I looked at the nurse. “You don’t have to worry about that. I’ll be escorting her personally.”

  She glanced back down. “Oh, okay. It states here a Mr. O’Shea would be doing so.”

  “His mistake,” I noted, and I couldn’t help but wonder what his involvement was.

  The nurse left and when I swung my eyes back to Elle, that’s when I noticed the bruises on her legs and couldn’t hold back my loud gasp.

  “Logan,” Elle whispered.

  I looked at her face.

  “I’m okay, really I am.”

  “I love
you,” I said, and had to fend off the tears that I felt welling in my eyes. I’d never cried in my life, but looking at her bruised and battered was going to break me.

  She reached for me. “I love you, too,” she whispered, and then pressed her lips to mine.

  It was something I had wanted to do but wasn’t sure I should. Her lips looked so battered and bruised. The thought of why they might be turned my stomach and I couldn’t ask, not yet.

  She flinched at the contact and I kissed my own fingers and gently placed them on her lips. “This is me, kissing you.”

  Tears welled in her eyes again, and she kissed her own fingers and placed them on my lips. After a few moments, she took my face in her hands. “You don’t look so great.”

  I had to laugh at that. “Yeah, I’ve had a rough night.”

  Moving faster than she should, she wrapped her arms around me, and I let her hold me for a long, long time. I held her too and in her arms I gained strength. She brought it to me. I knew then we had a lot to discuss. When I finally let go of her, I cleared my throat and pulled a chair up so I could swing the food tray around to feed her.

  She put her hand out. “I can do it.”

  I smiled at her. “I want to. And while I feed you, I want you to talk to me. Tell me everything and anything you can remember. Then I’m going to help you take a shower. And after that I want you to get some rest. Once you’re discharged we are going to go down and talk to Blanchet. This is much bigger than me and Miles, and I think it’s time we let the authorities handle it.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I am.”

  The sun slammed through the window and she squinted.

  “Here, I’ll shut the blinds.”

  She shook her head and reached for the sunglasses that were hanging from my long-sleeved T-shirt. “I want to feel the sun on me. It feels so good. I was cold for so long.”

  That fucking lump was back in my throat and my hands were shaking as I tried to feed her the chicken broth.

  She opened her mouth and accepted the spoonful. She swallowed slowly.

  As I went to give her another, I said, “Listen, before you start, I need to tell you something.”