by Amber Lynn
He’d been doing a lot of that as he weaved through traffic. Sarah had already stupidly suggested he slow down out of concern for her own safety, but if he wanted to be an idiot, she wasn’t going to voice the idea again. There were enough people with cellphones around them witnessing the erratic behavior that someone had to call the police and report the lunatic behind the wheel.
“Just take me back to the airport, Aaron. You know I’ve spent plenty of time with cops doing research for my books. The only way you don’t spend years behind bars is if you take me back and I agree to not press charges. I’m willing to do that, but there is a point you can cross when I won’t be willing to do that.”
Continuing to believe he hadn’t shot anyone, Sarah focused on the kidnapping aspect of things and didn’t mention the gun charges were probably going to need a good lawyer to work it out. If someone was injured, he’d need at least two excellent lawyers. A whole team would be even better.
“You know what I love about you, Sarah?”
Aaron glanced over briefly and Sarah got a look at his face for the first time. She’d been right that his hair had been cut shorter. The strip of longer hair in the middle had been trimmed short enough that he didn’t have to put in the usual amount of product needed to hold it up.
Other people would’ve probably thought that was the biggest change in his appearance, but Sarah thought it was his eyes that made him look like a completely different person. They were the same shade of hot chocolate, but they weren’t the same. There was anger in them that totally transformed the man Sarah had once loved.
“That even though you’re scaring the crap out of me, I’m still trying to help you?”
Sarah didn’t think he was really looking for an answer, and she was sure that wasn’t the right one, but she wanted to remind him that she was trying to help. She didn’t think she could spin things to sound like she was on his side of whatever he had planned, so trying to get him to make the right decision was all she had.
“No, that is not the correct answer, but I’m sure you’re smart enough to know that.” Aaron switched his hands on the steering wheel so he could reach over and rub his fingers along the side of Sarah’s face. “The thing I love is that you still believe in me enough to know I didn’t actually shoot anyone. If you thought I did, you wouldn’t have tried to get me to turn myself in with the idea I’d get a little slap on my wrist.”
It was a good thing Aaron wasn’t as in tuned with Sarah as Reid was. She felt Reid would’ve seen right through the lack of mentioning the gun as her way of trying to confuse things. Sure, she didn’t want to think Aaron would shoot anyone, but she’d thought that before getting a good look in his eyes. Since she had, she feared exactly what he had planned for her.
His hand returned to the wheel as his left picked up the gun in his lap and pointed it at her. His arm wasn’t high enough that anyone in the cars around them would notice, no matter how much she wished someone would.
“You asked how I knew he’d proposed. I assume you’ve figured out that I’ve been listening to your conversations.”
Aaron paused like he was waiting for her to respond. Sarah didn’t hear a question in his words, nor did she think they warranted a response. She wanted to know how he’d bugged her apartment, but with a gun less than a foot from her, she figured she had bigger problems.
“Cat got your tongue, sweetie? I’ve noticed you don’t seem to have any problem stating your mind with the goon, especially during sex. I feel like I need to wash your mouth out from all the times I’ve heard you ask him to lick your pussy. As far as I knew, you weren’t into dirty talk, but boy do you let him hear it when he’s fucking you.”
“Stop it.”
The words were quiet, but Sarah tried to put some power behind them. It was bad enough he was listening to their private conversations. She didn’t want to hear anything Aaron had to say about them in the bedroom. She’d told Reid things were different since he came into her life, and Aaron hadn’t missed it.
“Why? Does the fact that you’ve turned into a dirty little slut hurt? And I don’t mean that as a bad thing. The last couple days we spent together rocked my world and then some.”
Aaron reached over with the gun and used it to push up the bottom edge of her dress. Sarah fought the desire to stop him. Smacking his hand away in his mood seemed more dangerous than letting him see a little more of her thigh.
“Remember that point of no return I mentioned, I think you’re starting to push it.”
Sarah shifted slightly in the chair to move herself away from Aaron. The car wasn’t big enough that she had room to put more than an extra inch between them, but at that point she’d take anything she could get.
“What exactly is pushing you, Sarah. Talking about your wails of passion or getting a peek at your smooth thighs? Just because I want a look, doesn’t mean I’m going to touch. You have a lot to atone for before we climb back between the sheets together.”
The relief that should have come from the words didn’t. Just because he wasn’t planning on immediately raping her didn’t mean his plans would remain that way once they were alone in whatever fancy hotel room he had waiting for them.
“What Reid and I do together is private. Whether you put little microphones around my apartment or not, you aren’t allowed to talk about anything that happened while we were having sex.”
It was no wonder Trevor had said Aaron had fallen off the face of the earth. He was probably holed up in a hotel room listening to everything she was doing. Thankfully, she’d spent little time at home since the breakup.
“And you think you’re in a position to make that decision? What about the night you met and asked him if he was gay or bi? Is that something we can talk about? Because that seems like something that would directly have something to do with me.”
Sarah’s eyes had turned to her window when he started talking crudely. Hearing him mention something there was no way he should know caused her eyes to dart back to him.
“I didn’t bug your apartment, Sarah,” Aaron said as one side of his lips curled up into an evil smile. “I installed a spying app on your phone months ago. Anytime I’ve wanted to, I’ve been able to listen to you when your phone is around you. I know who you’re with, where you are and most of the time what you’re doing.”
There were no words to follow that statement. Sarah just sat and stared dumbfounded at Aaron’s profile as he continued his irregular driving. She’d thought the craziness was a new thing for him, but clearly it had been going on longer than she knew.
“You’ve been spying on me for months?”
Sarah was incredulous. She felt like reaching over, wrapping her hands around his neck and squeezing.
“You’d gotten a little distant and I wanted to make sure you weren’t seeing someone on the side. I told you, I want to marry you, and I was worried you were slipping between my fingers.”
It was nice that her disinterest wasn’t missed, but that didn’t excuse the spying. Nothing excused her privacy being taken away from her.
“How many times did you and Trevor have sex while we were together? I know there was at least the one time. How many before that?”
Trevor had indicated there weren’t any after that, at least not in the days following the breakup, but Sarah wanted Aaron to admit that there were other times. The hypocritical bastard needed to realize he had plenty to atone for himself.
“I told you the relationship was over once I realized we have a future together. The first month or two, we hadn’t established an exclusive label. As soon as we did, I only saw him as a friend.”
“A friend who happens to drop by our apartment and has sex with you. That’s an interesting definition of both friend and exclusive you have there.”
Sarah had been worried about doing or saying something to make Aaron even more irrational, but the whole spying thing triggered the need to fight back in some way. With him driving, she didn’t want to risk him plowin
g into other people, so a verbal confrontation was about all she had.
“You’re going to have to let that go, Sarah. At this point, it’s just wasting my breath to tell you he meant nothing to me. He’s already got a new boyfriend, so it’s not like he’s going to pop back in for visits. From here on out, it’s just you and me. No exes to worry about.”
“You’re delusional if you think there’s any chance I’m staying with you. The only reason I came along was because you threatened my fiancé and all the people back at the airport. The only reason I’m still in the car with you is because you’re going so fast that I’m worried you’ll run into an innocent bystander. Once you get me to whatever love nest you think you’ve set up for us, I’m out. Whether that means you’re shooting me or I’m running for it while your back is turned is still something I’m trying to figure out.”
She preferred not to get shot, but it was an option she could live with. Living in Aaron’s fantasies was not. Sarah didn’t need to know how he saw their happy lives going after their little reunion.
“He is not now, nor will he ever be your fiancé,” Aaron said with a bite to his words.
Sarah was a little surprised that was the sticking point in what she’d said. Well, really she couldn’t be surprised, but the idiot didn’t seem to mind she wasn’t going to play his game. The gun still pointed in her direction probably elevated any worry he had about her words. Eventually, the gun would be neutralized and she could get the upper hand. That’s how things worked out in her books. Sarah hoped real-life could at least partially mimic the world she’d built.
She was about to tell him that even though she hadn’t said the words, she agreed to marry Reid the day after he asked. The next morning when she’d been about to take her birth control, Reid had been standing in the bathroom door and cleared his throat. She’d thought he was joking about them moving towards starting a family, but the look he’d given her as he stared at the pills in her hand told the story of them having at least fifty kids and how important it was that they started early.
It was that look in his eyes that did her in. There was no way she could deny him of anything he asked, no matter how pathetic that sounded. No words were spoken, but they’d hadn’t stopped their rabbit-like mating, and pills and condoms had been forgotten for days. It would’ve served Aaron right to hear cells could already be dividing inside of her to create Reid’s child, but sirens interrupted her figuring out how to word it.
“Shit,” Aaron said as his head moved up to look in the rearview and then turned to look behind them.
“I told you that speeding around was a stupid idea.”
Sarah reached over to grab her seat belt and buckled in. She’d left it off in case a time came when she thought she’d be able to jump out of the car. Since he’d already been speeding through the streets, Sarah didn’t envision Aaron pulling over and asking what the officer wanted.
“I don’t need the commentary right now, Sarah. Damnit. We’re almost there, I’m going to try to lose him. Since there’s only one car, I’m guessing they think it’s nothing more than a traffic stop, so hopefully they’ll give up the chase if it gets too dangerous.”
He looked up in the mirror again, and then made Sarah thankful she buckled up as he sideswiped the car next to them. The jolt from the collision made her rock into Aaron, which was quickly corrected when he swerved in the opposite direction. She felt like she was going to have at least mild whiplash whenever his brilliant idea to get away was over.
“Seriously?” Aaron asked.
Sarah didn’t think it was meant for her, so she decided to focus on a window to end the chase her own way. If Aaron was fine running into things, he surely wouldn’t mind her helping the cause. She didn’t want to hit another car, and a crash on the street would likely result in a pileup of some sort.
The only hope was to find a solid looking tree or building that would stop the car and keep it from going again. Crashing a car into anything wasn’t something Sarah took lightly, but it was either that or try to wrestle the gun away from Aaron, which would lead to a crash anyway. Before she went to the extreme measures playing through her head, Sarah tried one more time to talk sense into the man she’d once thought was someone she could love.
“Just pull over, Aaron. You’re looking at some traffic fines now and whatever comes of the gun going off. I won’t press charges and you can get a lawyer to talk the charges down.”
“Yeah, Sarah? You going to visit me in jail? Because I don’t think for a second you’ll really follow through with not pressing charges. Me being in jail is probably the only way you’re going to get rid of me for a while, and I’m sure the goon will talk you into playing the beautiful damsel in distress perfectly.”
He swerved again and Sarah braced herself as they moved into oncoming traffic. All she could think about was Reid as her life started flashing before her eyes. Traffic wasn’t particularly heavy in the middle of the day, but there were enough cars on that side of the street that Aaron had to keep steering the wheel harshly to either side to avoid a collision.
After a few seconds of the game of chicken, he moved over to the side of the road that was basically a grass buffer between the road and the homes and businesses lining the street. It was exactly the move Sarah needed to find something they could crash into without hurting anyone. The way Aaron was heading meant the possibility of injuries was even higher than when he was waving the gun around.
Saying a silent prayer that everything would work out how it played in her mind, Sarah reached over and wrapped her fingers around the wheel and twisted her arm up to send car towards the side of a retaining wall. Aaron tried to correct the angle, but Sarah had waited until the last possible second to make sure they hit the wall head-on instead of just sideswiping it.
When the only option was to hit it or slam on the brakes, which would have still caused them to hit the wall, she straightened back into her seat and closed her eyes. The noise of the front end of the car hitting the bricks was something Sarah could feel in the depths of her body.
Even when her body lurched forward and her head hit the dash in front of her while the seat belt felt like it was cutting her shoulder off, it was the sound of the metal being crunched into her that hurt the most. Thankfully, between the initial head collision and the way her neck snapped back, the world around Sarah drifted away.
Chapter Twenty-two
“You really should go to the hotel and get cleaned up, Reid. The chances of her waking up in the thirty minutes you’d be gone are pretty slim, and the nurses are talking about forcing you into a shower. I understand your need to be here, but it’s been six days and nothing has changed. Go get cleaned up and maybe eat some real food. You can’t last on fast food and stuff out of the vending machine.”
Reid knew Sarah’s mom was trying to be helpful, but he’d fought to be able to even sit next to Sarah so he could hold her hand while she lay comatose in the cold hospital room. The doctors had said her brain seemed to be out of the woods, so they’d reduced the drugs keeping her asleep already and it was up to Sarah to wake up. Reid couldn’t blame her for wanting to stay asleep a little while longer. Her body needed the time to rest and start repairing.
It had felt like the doctors had spent a full day in surgery trying to fix everything after the accident. Her legs were like puzzle pieces that had to be put back together all the way up to her pelvis. There were broken ribs. Her right shoulder hadn’t been the jigsaw her legs were, but there was a lot to sew back together as far as tendons and muscles in there.
Then there was the damage to her head; the reason she was in the induced coma to begin with. Other than all the bruising, which was something Reid could diagnose on his own, the impact of the accident had caused swelling in a few different places. The doctors had opted not to do surgery, making Sarah’s brain about the only thing that hadn’t been operated on. They’d been concerned, but didn’t think it warranted removing pieces of her skull to reliev
e the pressure building up.
Reid couldn’t help but be thankful for that small miracle. Sarah’s poor body had been through so much already that Reid was worried how much more it could take. He wanted nothing more than to be able to pick her up and squeeze her close to him, but the casts holding her together along with the various electrodes and IV lines going into her made that impossible.
Looking over to Lynne, who was sitting with Jack on a small couch in the room, Reid shook his head. The couple came and went with one of them almost always in the room. Reid had only left Sarah’s side to use the bathroom in the room when he couldn’t hold it. Other than that, he was right there holding Sarah’s left hand.
He hadn’t told anyone that he swore one of the times he asked Sarah to give him a sign she was still in here that he’d felt a small squeeze. It could’ve been his imagination, and he didn’t want to get anyone else’s hopes up. It’d had been an hour or so since he felt the squeeze, so there was absolutely no way he was going to leave anytime soon, no matter how nice a steak dinner and a hot shower sounded.
As far as Reid was concerned, plenty had changed in the six days since the accident. The asshole that caused the horrific damage to Sarah had died after being on life support for two days. Reid would’ve loved to be able to say he’d had a hand in moving that death along, but after the impact and being ejected from the car, Aaron hadn’t had much hope of surviving.
The police had told them that Sarah had technically caused the crash, but it was only after Aaron had purposefully run into multiple cars. Reid had no doubt in his mind that Sarah thought she could save someone else if she put an end to the chase. That was the kind of woman she was, willing to sacrifice her own life to make sure others didn’t end up battered and beaten like she was.
Even with the swelling and all the other injuries, Sarah’s lungs hadn’t stopped working and her heart was still sending blood through her body, which meant she hadn’t needed help from machines to stay alive. Reid hoped the machines that were in the room were sending some killer drugs into her system to help with all the pain she had to be in, but other than that and monitoring her, Sarah was fighting to stay alive on her own.