by C. M. Marin
But despite this certainty, I still feel the urge to try to make her see that she has nothing to be ashamed of. Watching her tears flow down her gorgeous face shatters something deep inside me. This girl has found her way into more than my life. She’s found her way into my mere blood and bones.
I wait until her sobs ebb, and even though I can’t swear she didn’t fall asleep from exhaustion, I vow, hoping she’ll hear me and believe me, “I know you don’t see it that way, but you did good out there.”
Her head violently shakes against my chest, telling me she’s still awake. “I killed them,” she says as though reminding me of the gravity of what she’s done.
Her voice is hoarse from all the crying, and it brims with such disgust that I crave to punch another hole through the wall I already destroyed.
“You’ll find that hard to believe, but I know you, Camryn. The only reason you did what you did is because you knew you didn’t have a choice. You said so yourself, it was them or you. You were right, it was. You made the only decision you could have made, it’s that simple.”
“It doesn’t excuse what I did.”
“It does, Cam,” I counter firmly. “It does. Otherwise self-defense wouldn’t exist. You did the only thing you could have done to protect yourself from them. To stay alive. It’s them who didn’t have any right to tear you out of your home and do what they were about to do. I know it must have been hell for you out there, but you did good, and I’m so fucking happy you found the courage to do it.” I kiss the top of her head.
“I need to go to the police,” she retorts, neither refuting my opinion nor agreeing with it.
“You don’t,” I rush once what she said registers. “You’re not going to the police. Look, I just need to give a quick call to Jayce, then we’ll talk about this, alright?” I ask her, though I’m already calling Jayce back.
He picks up almost instantly. “Yeah?”
“Clean that shit up. I don’t want any trace of Cam there.”
“Shit, did she do that?” he understands.
“Yeah.”
“Fuck,” he expresses the same thought that’s been playing on a loop in my head for a couple of minutes. “Liam, Ben, we need to make that disappear. Okay, Nate, we’ll take care of it and come back.”
“Thanks, bro,” I say and hang up, discarding my phone on the floor as Camryn’s head raises slowly.
She finally looks at me, but I wish it were with much less reluctance. The shame on her face is as obvious as the redness of her beautiful eyes. The savage rage burning inside me all over again isn’t likely to quiet the blood that started to pump wildly through my veins the moment Melvin called me. It feels like it was an eternity ago, when in fact dawn is just now slowly lightening the sky out there.
“What did you mean by cleaning that up?” she asks, but her tone lets me believe she knows exactly what I meant by that.
I answer anyway. “The guys are going to deal with the bodies and take the car back here to tear it to pieces until it’s gone along with every trace of your DNA,” I explain.
“The bodies,” she mumbles. “How? What are they going to do with them?”
“No, babe,” I shake my head. “I’m not giving you details,” I affirm before an exasperated groan comes out of me. “Fuck, I’m so damn sorry. This is my fault.”
A frown grows on her forehead. “It’s not. How could this be your fault?” she parrots Jayce’s words from earlier.
“Because I knew it in my guts that you were in danger, but I didn’t want you to start being afraid of me,” I admit to her for the first time, and compassion flicks in her eyes. “I wanted to let you choose. I didn’t want you to feel forced by me to stay here.”
“I should have,” she blurts out. “I should have stayed. But I wasn’t seeing what they could want from me. That’s why I thought you were worrying for no good reasons. And now… I had to…” Her voice trembles. “And there’s my parents’ house,” she adds. “It’s gone, isn’t it?”
“I’m sorry, baby,” I only say to confirm her assumption.
It’s still standing, but even if she decides she wants to renovate it, the house as she knew it is gone.
“I was in the attic, sorting old things out, and I noticed a burning smell. It was so subtle at first, I thought it was in my head. But it grew stronger very quickly, and when I walked down the stairs and got to the first floor, I saw the fire. I stayed frozen in place and started to panic at the same time. The smoke was already so thick and black, I couldn’t understand what was happening because I hadn’t seen this coming. And then a guy was in front of me. At first, I thought he was helping me. A firefighter, probably. But I couldn’t see much because my eyes had started to burn from the smoke. He grabbed me without saying anything, and I really thought he was helping me. But then he guided me out and threw me into a SUV. I fought him, but he hit me several times and I…” She shakes her head and pinches her eyes, doing her best to stay calm.
The motherfuckers are so fucking lucky they’re already dead, because I would have done so much more to them than put a painless bullet into their useless flesh. But someone else will pay for them.
“The house was all I had left of my parents.” She lets out a sob despite her efforts.
“No,” I counter. “You have twenty-two years of memories. Those won’t ever go away.”
She barely nods before she asks me, “Did I tell you what happened when I arrived here? I can’t remember much. You seemed to know I had been kidnapped. Or did you guess?”
“When Melvin realized what was happening, he tried to get inside your house, but the fire blocked him. We don’t know how they got the fire to grow this quickly, but we think they set it in specific locations. Like the front door and the windows on the first floor, to be sure no one could enter. Anyway, we knew you’d been snatched when the firefighters said no one was in the house. I’m so sorry, baby, but Melvin didn’t see anyone come in. They must have come in through the back door. Or through a window, I don’t know.”
“Melvin?” she repeats. “Melvin was there?”
I snort. “Letting you go back home alone didn’t mean I wouldn’t keep an eye on you. I was there the night before, all night, and Melvin was there last evening just so I could go home for a shower,” I explain, watching as her eyes widen. “He called me, and when they said you weren’t inside the house, we rode straight to the Spiders’ clubhouse where the guys met us. But we couldn’t approach it without getting shot at―”
“Oh my God, Nate. Is everyone okay? Jesus…”
“Everyone’s good, baby,” I assure her, stunned that after what happened to her, she still finds the heart to worry about guys she barely knows.
It allows me to hope that eventually, she will be able to understand that even though this life bring us to play with the wrong side of the law, we’re not like the Spiders.
She sighs before resting her head in the crook of my neck.
“I have nowhere to go now apart from LA,” she says, sending an icy cold wave of anguish through my veins. “I can’t believe this is happening. I came here for the damn holidays, and I feel like I’ve been thrown into a movie.”
“You’re staying here, Cam.”
Seven days. That’s how long I’ve known her. Seven days during which I felt that pull toward her every time I was near her. And every time I wasn’t with her, I wanted to be. She’s been in my life for only seven short days, but thinking of her three states away has my body tensing and my breath stopping. I can’t explain this. Can’t figure out why I need her presence more than I ever needed anyone else’s my whole life. What is it that makes her different from any other girl? Hell if I know. But when I kissed her, I just knew I had to have her. I also knew I couldn’t play with a girl who had lost her fiancé not so long ago, but more than that, I didn’t want to hurt her. This girl is one I want to protect. And despite what I first thought, I’m now sure that even if she lets me fuck her the way I die to, one time won’t
be enough. But regardless of what this all means, last night sealed her fate anyway. I’m not letting her out of my fucking sight ever again.
When she doesn’t acknowledge my demand, let alone agree with it, I make sure she understands how reckless it’d be for her to stay alone, wherever that is.
“You’re not going anywhere until I know what this is about, Camryn. If I have to lock you up in my room, I will, believe me.” My sentence still echoes between us when I wince at the threatening edge I couldn’t keep out of my tone.
Great job on keeping her from thinking I’m not some sort of abusive psycho.
I’m surprised she doesn’t recoil. But fucking hell, she was ripped out of her own house and shoved into a car where she was very close to be raped by two men she had to kill so they wouldn’t touch her. And she’s contemplating driving back alone to LA like nothing happened?
Over my dead body.
After blowing out a calming breath, I say, “I shouldn’t have said it that way, I’m sorry. But you can’t go back just yet, Camryn.”
“It’s okay, I know it’d be stupid to travel back there alone. I just don’t want to bother you,” she sighs, and before I can tell her I didn’t ask her to stay out of obligation, she goes on. “Thank you.”
“What for?” I frown, relaxing a little now that she implicitly agreed to stay here.
“For looking out for me. For being here. You’re a good man.”
A snort is my comment to that one.
“Yes, you are,” she insists, her admonishing tone placing a smile on my lips despite the fucked-up situation. “You’re nothing like those sick men. There was this twisted glee in their eyes,” she says then falls silent for a while before asking in a whisper, “You know who they were?”
“Don’t do this,” I plead. “The only thing there is to know about them is that they didn’t feel one ounce of guilt or shame for what they were about to make you go through. They even would have taken sick pleasure in it. Men like them don’t understand compassion. Don’t think you would have been the first, and you wouldn’t have been the last either. That’s all there is to remember about those fuckers.”
Needing to erase that image of them with their hands on her from my brain, I carefully stand up, bringing her with me.
Now that the choking fear faded into concern, I notice the way she looks wearing only my shirt. Her smooth, faintly tanned legs seem endless with the hem barely reaching the middle of her thighs, granting me the pleasure to make out the swell of her ass under the fabric. My brain mechanically wonders if her breasts are as perfectly outlined, but I’m not enough of a dick to check her out intently when what happened to her is still so fresh. I force my gaze to stick to her eyes after I gently turned her to face me.
“We should get downstairs to find you something to eat. Doc said you need to drink enough water, too.”
He called earlier, saying her blood test came out clean. She wasn’t drugged, thank God. But there’s no point in rehashing all this.
“Doc?”
“He’s an emergency doctor we got on our payroll. I had to be sure you didn’t need to go to the hospital.”
Her mind seems to wander somewhere for a short moment. “I think I remember,” she says at last. “But I was really tired, I couldn’t stay awake even though I tried.”
“He said your bruises were superficial. I would have brought you to the hospital otherwise.” I bend to kiss her forehead. “Let’s go feed you.”
“Can I take a shower first? I feel dirty.”
“Sure. I’ll ask Liam for some leggings. Alex has things in his room for when she visits him. And I had your top cleaned up.”
“Can I keep your shirt? I don’t want to put my top back. You can throw it away. I’ll just put back my underwear because I don’t really have a choice.”
“Of course.”
“And I’ll need to call my insurance later,” she adds, sighing.
Here we already are… The conversation I had hoped could wait.
“Yeah, about that…” I start tentatively. “The cops will want to talk to you about last night. Where you were, first of all,” I say all the while wondering how to bring things up.
There’s a hell of a lot she doesn’t know about how we deal with shit.
“I can’t tell them about what happened, can I?” Her question surprises me. “I mean, if these guys…disappear…” she trails off. “If the cops won’t find them, there’s no point in telling them what they did.”
“That, yes, but the cops also won’t link them to us, to the club, if they investigate their disappearance,” I explain, and she nods. “But they will likely know it was a criminal fire, and even if the firefighters can’t prove that, they’ll want to talk to you, especially after he saw me and Melvin outside your house.”
“Okay,” she nods. “Then tell me what I have to tell them.”
“The best way to go is to tell them you weren’t home, and I didn’t know it. Simple as that. You’ll tell them you left with a friend, which is why your car was there. If they ask who that friends is, you’ll say Jayce. I’ll brief him.”
“You think they’ll believe that?”
“They don’t have any reason not to. I’m sure they’ll investigate the fire if they can prove it was criminal, but they won’t find anything on the Spiders. They know how to cover their tracks. The cops will probably also find it suspicious that you’re somehow involved with us, but as there’s nothing for them to find, the whole thing will be forgotten quickly. Especially if you don’t insist on finding the responsible parties.”
“Okay, that sounds easy enough,” she laughs nervously.
“It’ll be over soon.”
“Are you sure about that? I mean, what if they try something again? I just wish I knew what they want from me. I’m so scared.” She looks down, barely able to get her admission out.
Immediately, I reduce the already small distance between us until our bodies brush. “They won’t have another shot at getting close to you, trust me. I won’t let them.”
Even though it’s a tired one, I’m relieved to see a smile back on her face.
“Now, you take that shower. Then we’ll eat something.”
“Okay.”
I yield one more time to the urge to put my lips on her, and they’re still lingering on her forehead when the rumble of cars echoes outside.
“Go ahead. I’ll be back with some pants for you,” I tell her and walk out of the bathroom, closing the door behind me.
Jogging downstairs, I walk behind the bar and push through the door leading to the basement. That’s where we build the bikes that get out of here through another exit at the back of the building. It’s some sort of an underground warehouse.
My brothers are getting off three cars when I made it to the garage. Our SUVs and personal bikes are parked here in a more or less organized manner.
“Everything good?” I ask no one in particular.
“Blane and Brent are still dealing with the bodies. We’re going to grab a coffee and then handle the car,” Jayce answers as he comes to lean against the wall beside me.
Ben follows closely, jogging and slapping my shoulder as he passes by us. “All perfect. Need to empty the fucking bladder, though. Gonna piss myself.”
“Too much information,” I deadpan as the rest of the guys nod at me and enter behind him at a lazily pace.
“How is she?” Jayce asks me once we’re alone.
“She got sick when she woke up and remembered,” I say.
“Understandable. But if she even found the courage to pull that trigger, means she’s tough. She’ll get through it.”
I hope so. The possibility of her easy smile gone is damn hard to swallow. She doesn’t deserve to be scarred just like I am.
“She’s taking a shower now. I need to ask Liam if Alex left some leggings or whatever.”
The change in Jayce’s expression is immediate. A hollowness flickers in his eyes, just as always whe
n someone brings up Alex for any reason. That’s why we usually try not to. I blame my screwed-up mind for the lack of tact.
“Which ones of those fuckers was it?” I go on.
“Prospects, probably. Neither was familiar to any of us.”
“Must be the ones watching her at Dona’s. Seems like Rod won’t quit recruiting serious aspiring psychos anytime soon.”
“We need to keep a close eye on them. Besides, I’m pretty sure his prospects already are all psychos they can be.”
I snicker even though Rod’s deviances are nothing to laugh about.
“How does she feel?” Strolling toward us, Liam looks as worn out as I feel.
He was apparently the one putting the Spiders’ SUV in the storage room. That’s the room where we got the most space, and the room that we always lock religiously.
“Shaken up. I suppose it’s a good thing she’s not a hysterical mess right now.”
“I’m sorry she had to do this, but now it’s clear that we can’t keep letting them run their rings around here. The more clients they get, the more likely it is that the Cartels are gonna start sniffing around. It’s only a matter of time. If one isn’t already involved with the Spiders. Though it’s unlikely. I don’t imagine Rod wanting to share a piece of the pie with anyone.”
“Wait, wait, wait… What?” I stop him. “You think that’s what this is about? You think that’s why they want her?”
Nausea clings to my stomach all over again.
“But she doesn’t fit the profile,” I point out. “She’s not a runaway. She’s a damn teacher.”
Runaways and prostitutes are the usual targets.
“But think about it,” Jayce retorts. “You believe her when she says she’s got no clue what they want from her?”
“She’s not lying,” I growl defensively, and the dick smirks.
“Calm down, I believe her, too,” he chuckles. “We all do. Now, think about the fact she’s lost her parents, then her fiancé, and came back to her hometown where she hadn’t set foot in years, therefore where no one knows her well enough to even notice she’s disappeared.”
Fucking hell.