They were all concrete proof that I had never been truly, all-consumingly angry before.
But standing there, looking down at a woman who meant more to me than I knew it was possible to, especially in such a short period of time, and seeing that someone, some fucking coward piece of shit excuse for a man raised his hands to her perfect face and left damage in the wake, yeah, I knew rage for the first time in my entire goddamn life.
Her eye was swollen, the skin tight and pink down to the top of her cheekbone. There was a bright, deep, vivid blue and purple bruise completely framing the underside of her gorgeous fucking brown eye. And last but certainly not fucking least, the white part of her eye was a hideous, bright, godawful red.
Subconjunctival hemorrhage.
I'd gotten enough of them from the trauma of the ring at Hex to know exactly what it was when I saw it, to know it looked a lot worse than it was, to know that in four or five days it would be all but gone.
But I also knew the only way it happened was trauma.
Trauma.
Whoever the fuck they were, wherever the fuck they were, I was going to find them. I was going to rip their fucking balls off with my bare hands and shove them down their goddamn throats for putting their hands on what was mine.
I swallowed hard at that, determination allowing my hands to unclench, my breath to return, my blood to cool.
They would be dealt with.
Cooly and detachedly.
But mother fucking inevitably.
Just not before I got the story.
Not before I got my woman in my arms and told her no one was ever going to hurt her a-fucking-gain.
"Lazarus?" Her voice was wobbly, uncertain. And, if I wasn't mistaken, scared.
Scared.
Of me?
Of them?
My hand reached for my pocket, finding my cell and pressing a button.
"Yeah?" That was Reeve, sounding annoyed, likely having gotten an earful like we already had at the duplexes.
"Found her."
I hung up on that and slipped my phone back into my pocket.
"Sweetheart, what the fuck?"
TWELVE
Bethany
It was supposed to be Erica.
She lived in the apartment right beside the elevator and when the doors slid open to reveal me to her- face battered, cheeks streaming with tears, silent sobs making my body shake oddly as I tried to hold it as much together as I could until I got behind a closed door- a task made impossible by the fractured feeling in my chest- she was standing there trying to sling her giant hobo bag purse up onto her shoulder.
Erica was tall and wide with kind green eyes and purple scrubs.
Erica was a home healthcare provider for the elderly, a job that was forever in-demand but paid dirt, hence her living in our shitty apartment building.
"Oh, girl," she exhaled on a sigh, shaking her head. Her arms reached out, her strong hands landing on my shoulders and pulling me forward out of the elevator, crushing my body to her much softer one, her arms going around me. And it was so familiar, so maternal, that another stab of pain worked its way through my chest and the sobs came out- wild and uncontrollable.
"I have brothers," she said a long time later after I cried through the thin, soft material of her scrub top. "Give me his name and I will have them make sure he learns his lesson."
That made another rush of tears stream down my face.
First Lazarus. Now Erica.
I didn't deserve all the goddamn goodness.
I wasn't some innocent woman who had a man raise his hands to her.
I had brought it on myself.
I put myself in the situation.
I got myself tangled up with the kind of men who did things like that to women without a second thought.
I wasn't worthy of her concern, of her love for someone who was a practical stranger- just a face to say hi to at the mail table.
"It wasn't that," I said, pulling back, scrubbing the sleeves of Lazarus' shirt down my cheeks, sopping up the tears.
"Ugh," she growled, shaking her head. "This goddamn part of town. No good all around. Alright. You go on in and get yourself an icepack. That red in the eye is harmless, just a busted blood vessel. It will be gone in a couple days. The swelling will be helped with the ice. The bruising, well, makeup," she said with a shrug. "Actually, I have some stuff I got for my last job interview that covers up tattoos," she said, waving her forearm at me where a elegant, whimsical blue and purple mermaid snaked up the skin. "Some of the old folks don't care for ink," she explained. "I have a client in ten. But after I am done today, I will stop over and bring it to you so you don't have to answer a ton of questions tomorrow about it. Just say you dropped something heavy when reaching into a cabinet or something."
"Thanks Erica." My smile I hoped was sincere because even if I didn't deserve it, I appreciated her concern.
"Don't mention it. See you later today."
So, yeah, I was expecting her seeing as I was pretty sure I heard her voice in the hallway a couple minutes before.
Which was why I didn't check the peephole.
Even if I had, what would I have done if I saw Lazarus there? Not answered? That wasn't exactly an option. He wasn't exactly the kind of man to let a flimsy door stand in the way.
He wasn't supposed to even be back yet.
After the run-in with Mitchell, Chris, and Sunny and the conversation with Erica, I had pretty much decided my only real choice, if I didn't want to keep being a punching bag, if I didn't want to be forced back into being a deadbeat junkie, was to run.
I had enough time to pack the stuff I couldn't live without and what little money I had in the world and get out of town before the guys found out and before Lazarus could know I was gone.
I had a suitcase packed and two boxes half-filled with essentials.
But I had obviously fudged my timeline.
Because I opened the door and there he was.
I won't lie.
Just the sight of him- his dark hair, his perfect eyes, his strong and lean body, yeah, there was a spark of desire that got completely eclipsed by the soaring sensation inside my chest.
The silence though was deafening as he looked down at me, as his dark eyes drifted over my eye. I had known enough of male anger in my time to see it seeding and taking root and sprouting through his system. It was in the tightness to his jaw, the way his brows drew low, how his hands curled into fists so tight that the skin on them turned white.
It withered, though, almost as quickly as it bloomed, leaving nothing in the wake but sad eyes as his hand went to his pocket, told someone that he found me, and put his cell away.
"Sweetheart, what the fuck?"
His voice was hushed, airless almost. Received? Maybe.
He didn't give me a chance to answer the non-question though, because his arm raised and his fingers settled at the side of my neck, making a tremble work its way through my insides then outward. They moved back around the back of my neck where there was still an achy feel to the hair that was yanked, and applied the smallest amount of pressure, but enough to force me toward his chest.
I'd say I fought it, I stayed determined to my plan to not muddy up his life anymore than I already had.
But that would be a lie.
The second the good side of my face pressed into his soft shirt, warm from his skin, smelling of both his soap and the outdoors, I simply melted into him.
His hands settled oddly at the sides of my hips. As if sensing the unasked question, his voice was low as he said, "I don't know if you're hurt anywhere else.
My eyes slammed shut against another rush of tears.
So so good.
Unable to help it, my arms slid around his back and held him as tightly as I could. Taking his lead from me, his arms wrapped me up too, hard enough to make breathing all but impossible, but I didn't care as I struggled to regain at least a small amount of composure.
His feet
shuffled forward, making me go back across my floor as he closed the door behind me and rested the side of his face to the top of my head, taking a deep breath.
"You have any fucking idea how worried I have been about you since you didn't answer my calls?"
God, that hurt.
It was a knife right through my chest that I recognized immediately as guilt.
"I didn't want..."
I couldn't. I just couldn't go there.
If I went there, I knew what would happen. He would say my problems were his problems too. Or he might just be under the notion that because we were sleeping together that that meant he had to... defend my honor.
Either way... no.
"Listen," he started, voice calm, patient. "There's two ways this is going to go. You're going to open up to me right now, make this easy. Or you are going to make me pry it out of you over the next hour or two. Either way, I am not backing down until you tell me who put their hands on you, why, and where the fuck I can find them." There was a pause as I tried to suck in a deep breath, knowing he was right. He could get it out of me if he tried hard enough. And Lazarus being Lazarus, an all-around amazing guy, would never stop trying. "Just so we're clear here too- the why doesn't fucking matter. There's no excuse good enough for what they did, but I'm assuming the why has a lot more to do with why you ran than anything else."
He wasn't wrong.
"I don't want to do this." The words came out weak, spineless, pathetic.
"Look," he said, pushing me back and reaching up to frame my face in his hands. But right about then, something caught his attention behind me that had him stiffening, that had his hands dropping from my face and onto my shoulders for a second.
His face was suddenly unreadable, shut down.
It was so unnatural on him that my stomach dropped violently as he suddenly moved away from me, stalking across my apartment and moving into my living room.
It wasn't much of an apartment, though bigger than his in all ways. I had a full kitchen cut off from the living space by an old, somewhat ugly, island. I had stools pressed up against it, seeing no need for a dining table seeing as I didn't ever have company. My living space was painted a stark white when I moved in and I was generally too high to even think about changing it, but I had a nice, gently used sectional I saved from the garbage at my parents' house when my father decided that everything that my mother had ever touched needed to be trashed. It was long and deep brown and the softest kind of old leather.
He was standing by the end of that couch, wide back to me, blocking my view of whatever it was that caught his attention.
But not for long.
Because then he turned and I felt my heart constrict in my chest, a strange but strong enough sensation to have me raising my hand to press there like I could relieve the pressure.
In his wide, damaged palm was the orange pill bottle I had found inside my couch cushions when I dropped down onto them.
He shook the bottle and there was nothing.
His eyes went to mine and I didn't find what I expected there- accusation or disappointment. I found, instead, understanding.
But I hadn't taken them.
It had been empty when I found it.
"No." My head was shaking almost violently side to side as he moved back toward me, touching the side of my face and angling it up, looking, I was sure, for signs that I was lying. "I didn't, Lazarus," I said, voice firm.
It mattered, I realized.
It mattered that he knew that while I had been hurt and was obviously going through some shit, that I didn't slip up. I didn't use it for an excuse. His work with me wasn't in vain.
He nodded at that, tossing the pill bottle onto the little table inside my door. "I see that," he agreed. "I'm proud of you, Bethany. If ever there is an excuse for an addict to slip up, it's getting her face knocked up by some assholes."
I swallowed hard, not realizing how much his words could mean to me. "I didn't want to disapp..."
"Stop." His voice cut me off, kind but firm, brooking no argument. "Even if you did use, sweetheart, you wouldn't fucking disappoint me. Do I want you to slip up? No, of course not. Would I understand if you did? Of course. Do you have any other pills around here you want me to get rid of?"
My eyes closed as I took another deep breath. Of course he would be the kind of guy to think of that, even though I was standing there busted up and he had to be at least somewhat mad at me for making him worry.
"No," I said, shaking my head. "I didn't exactly have that big of a supply that they could go missing somehow."
"Okay," he said, his hand sliding down the column of my neck, my shoulder, down my arm, and grabbing my hand, pulling me into my own apartment until he lowered down onto the couch. Not really having any other option, I sat down as well. "Talk to me."
"It's not your problem," I insisted. "It's my problem."
"And since I'm the one who is really fucking enjoying being inside you and being at your side and sleeping with you in his bed, your problems are my problems. It's not a hard concept," he added with a small smirk that took some of the edge off his words. "Who were the guys in the BMW?"
I didn't even bother to ask how he knew about the BMW.
Mitchell had a thing for BMWs. Not because he particularly liked any of the styles or because they had great safety features, but because of the BMW symbol that was an homage to aviation, which Mitchell was downright obsessed with.
"That's a long story."
"In case this part hasn't been made clear yet, this you and me thing? This is not some fling, some short-term thing. I'm in this. So since when I say I am in something, it means I see a future in it, I'd say I have all the time in the world to listen. So start at the beginning."
Start at the beginning.
I could do that.
Hell, maybe it would even be cathartic to go back over it all, to see it progress to the point where it left me dying in a back alley on a weeknight.
"After my mom died, after I got all her arrangements made, I needed to, well..."
"Get your life back," he supplied, his hand landing on my thigh just above my knee, giving a little squeeze then just remaining there, giving me an anchor that I didn't realize I needed so badly.
"Exactly. So I went on some interviews and got a job at an office. They were going through some renovations and needed to move all their old file boxes. The only other person working the desk was this really old, frail woman and I was pretty sure if she lifted more than one file at a time, she might break something."
"So you carted them all."
"And pinched a nerve in my back. I didn't think much of it at first, I figured I pulled something so I took it easy then, well, went right back to it because the job needed to be done. But then it got so bad that if I sat down for more than a minute, when I tried to stand again, my leg would give out and the pain was... the pain was honestly impressive and would shoot both up and down at the same time. It was crippling."
"So you went to a doctor."
He was assuming it was that simple.
I went to a doctor who was too heavy-handed with the pills and I got addicted.
Unfortunately, that wasn't the case for me.
"I went to see Dr. Christopher Andrews," I supplied, the words spitting like bile from my lips. It tasted like it on my tongue. "He told me what I had, gave me a pretty mild script and told me to take it easy and take my pills as prescribed and come back in six weeks. The pills were daily. I did what I was told because, well, it hurt too much not too. Then I went back after the six weeks, after some rest, feeling a lot better. Which was when he suggested I go do some rehab just in case."
"You weren't hooked by then?" he asked, brows together, tone confused.
"Not at all," I said, shaking my head. "Then I went to therapy and I met Sunny Andrews."
"Related?"
"Brothers." I nodded. "And we started easy, doing some stretches that genuinely seemed to help. Then as the day
s progressed, they got harder and harder until in my second week, he was helping me into a stretch and I... I can't even describe that pain. I actually blacked out for long enough to slam down to the floor and not even realize it. He helped me back up and by that point, I was sobbing. It was excruciating. I could barely move at all. I couldn't lay down. I couldn't sleep. Sunny gave me a card for another doctor."
My smile went a little bitter, hindsight being twenty-twenty and all that. At the time though, all I knew was it hurt bad enough to want me to throw myself off a cliff to end it. Enough that I understood that guy who jumped off a bridge and left a note that said 'no reason, I just had a toothache'.
"He sent me to Dr. Mitchell Andrews."
"His father." He was tense beside me, maybe already knowing where this was going.
"Exactly. And his father had a specialty in pain management."
"Fuck," Lazarus said, shaking his head. "He sent you to a pill mill."
That was exactly what it was too. It was a phrase I had never even heard before, not being in the kind of lifestyle where things like that even factored into daily life. Pain management doctors weren't in the business of helping you and your body recover from pain. They were in the business of handing out scripts.
I hadn't even seen it as seedy or wrong or corrupt that when I showed up for my appointment at a typical doctor office- all beige walls, uncomfortable seating, and generic artwork- and went to hand my card to the girl at the desk with bugging eyes, the pupils only pins, her hair greasy, her body frail and underweight, only to have her tell me that we don't take insurance, just cash.
All I saw was an end to the pain.
So then I became a client of a pill mill.
I was back every month like clockwork for my refill, which I paid Dr. Mitchell Andrews five-hundred dollars to prescribe me. Five hundred dollars for a prescription.
But it made the stabbing sensation ease up. For a couple hours at a time before I needed another dose. And then another. Like clockwork. It became such a habit that I didn't really even stop to consider when I reached for the pill bottle if I truly needed it anymore or not. It wasn't long before the urge for the pills wasn't because of pain anyway- just a cliched, good old fashioned addiction.
Lazarus (The Henchmen MC Book 7) Page 16