He sighs into the phone, and I can hear the worry in it. “I’m headed that way too,” he says softly. “Just in case.”
“Got it,” I mutter, and then disconnect. I put both hands on the wheel and bear down on the gas.
The fifteen-minute drive seems to take thirty, but in reality, I made it in eleven thanks to the power of my Vette and my erratic driving as I passed people on the highway without prejudice.
I barrel down my long driveway and my house comes in to view, my stomach sinking when I see a dark gray Dodge charger parked in front. I don’t know the car and have never seen it before. It could be an undercover cop car for all I know, and that would be a welcome scenario. It could be one of Zeke’s guys who didn’t want the rumble of a Harley to scare Maggie off.
I pull my car up, turn the ignition off, and get out. I consider sneaking around the house and peering in windows so I can verify the house occupants. But that would take time and would also keep Maggie and Belle in danger longer.
Besides, I’ve never been one for subtle.
I gingerly navigate the front porch steps, skipping over the third one that creaks, and walk right into my house like a man on a mission.
I’m not prepared for what I find.
My eyes first land on Belle, who sits in the corner of the living room near the back door. She has tears streaming down her face. My gaze slides to the right, five feet from Belle, and Maggie is sitting in a kitchen chair with Kayla in front of her. Kayla’s back is to me, but the minute the door opens, she swings around. My heart lurches when I see she has a gun in her hand.
I want to look back at Maggie, ensure she’s okay. I want to go pick up Belle and comfort her. But I don’t dare take my eyes off the gun that Kayla is now pointing at me.
“Oh goody,” Kayla sneers. “I can knock two people off my list now that you’re here, Bridger.”
I slowly raise my hands up and to the side in a message that clearly conveys, Just calm the fuck down and don’t do anything hasty.
“Come on, Kayla,” I say in a calm voice that I hope is soothing in nature. “You don’t want to bring this down on yourself, do you? Zeke’s going down, but you don’t have to.”
“Do you think I’m stupid?” she hisses at me, waving the gun erratically around but still pointed in my general direction. “You don’t think I haven’t figured the cops are coming for me, too?”
And they should be here in hopefully about ten minutes, I think to myself. But I tell Kayla, “You don’t want murder on your shoulders, Kayla. You’ll go away forever.”
“Think I give a fuck?” she yells at me. “Zeke’s gone. He ain’t comin’ back. You think I give a rat’s ass what happens to me?”
I take a moment to let myself look at Maggie.
Just a moment so I can assure she’s okay as I try to figure out how to talk this crazy woman off the ledge.
And in that moment, I see everything clearly.
Maggie’s eyes, which reflect to me the very depths of her soul, shoot a quick glance at Belle before looking back to me, and I see exactly what she’s saying.
I am not going to sit back and let this bitch get her hands on Belle.
I give a slight nod, which is intended for Kayla to see that I’ve just had a very important communication with Maggie. As I hoped, Kayla twists her neck to look at Maggie behind her. The minute her attention is off me, Maggie kicks her legs out viciously and catches Kayla behind her knees.
Her legs fold and she starts to go down as the gun aims upward. A piercing shot rings out, and a flutter of dust from my ceiling comes down.
I take the opportunity to charge, just as Kayla starts to stand straight again. I jump right over the couch, the quickest way to my destination, and I lower my shoulder like an enraged bull going after the matador holding the bright red cape.
I see Kayla lower the gun and swing it my way. It goes off moments before I crash into her. A hot, burning flash of pain hits the outside of my right shoulder just as it plows right into Kayla’s stomach. We go flying right past Maggie and into the heavy sliding glass door that leads onto the back deck. I’m immediately thankful it just shudders and doesn’t shatter, as I’m not sure either of us would have survived that.
Kayla lets out a whoosh of breath as the gun goes flying out of her hand. Her head flies backward and slams hard into the glass, and she literally starts to sag downward.
I don’t trust the murderous bitch, so I grab her shoulders, pull her away from the glass door, and slam her back into it. Her head hits against the window with brutal force, and she doesn’t even make a sound of pain as her eyes roll into the back of her head. I let her go, and she slumps to the floor, out cold.
Maggie scrambles out of the chair and runs to Belle while I grab the gun, removing the clip and chambered round before tossing it across the room. My hands go to my belt where I quickly pull it off before squatting down and rolling Kayla onto her stomach. I don’t feel an ounce of sympathy when I see the back of her head was cracked open and is leaking blood. No clue if I damaged her severely. Don’t care.
I pull her hands behind her back and secure them with my belt. When I stand up and turn to Maggie, she’s as pale as a ghost as she tries to console Belle. My hands are shaking as I reach them up out of habit to run my fingers through my hair, only to have them hit the bristles on my head.
Blowing out a breath of terror-filled air, I come to the realization that I almost just lost Maggie, and it scared the fuck out of me.
Scared the fuck out of me because I’ve never had anything matter to me that much, and I don’t like the heavy burden of responsibility that weighs down upon me in this moment.
Chapter 24
Maggie
Bridger’s hands shake as he drags the pads of his fingers over his buzzed-cut head. His hair is gone. All that beautiful, warm brown hair that was soft, silky, and slightly wavy… just, gone. Here I am, having just narrowly escaped death—because there’s no doubt that Kayla was here to kill me—and all I can think about is that Bridger’s hair is gone.
He’s utterly magnificent, of course. With the hair gone, the golden hue of his eyes pop against his dark lashes. His cheekbones seem sharper, his jaw more squared.
His lips.
Those lips are fuller… more sensuous.
I just narrowly escaped death and all I can do is stare at Bridger with a dark shadow of bristles on his head, and think… he cut that all off because of me.
Belle’s cries soften and she gives a small hiccup as she holds onto me tightly. Thank fuck Kayla didn’t touch her as it was going to be hard enough moving her past this trauma.
“You okay?” Bridger asks gruffly as he raises his shoulder and peers at it. My eyes drift there, and I gasp as I see his olive-green Henley dark with blood.
“Oh, my God, Bridger,” I cry out as I rush over to him, Belle bouncing on my hip. “You’re shot.”
“Grazed,” he says through gritted teeth as he fingers a jagged tear made by a passing bullet and tries to peer inside. With a grunt of frustration, he pulls his shirt off and tosses it to the floor where it lands beside Kayla’s head.
I don’t even spare her a glance. I scoot closer to Bridger and stand on my tiptoes so I can get a look at his wound. It’s about a two-inch groove cutting through his skin that’s about half an inch wide and oozing with blood. It’s not deep. As he wipes a finger over it, I can see pink skin underneath before more blood oozes.
“Goddamn, I’m a lucky son of a bitch,” he mutters as he barely gives me a glance and pushes past me to walk into the kitchen.
I watch as he grabs a kitchen towel and presses it to the wound before walking back into the living room and calling 911. I watch in shock as Bridger calmly tells the dispatcher what happened, and I’m surprised when he mentions that there are other police already on the way. I’m not sure how they knew what was going down, but before Bridger can even finish telling the full story, I see a police car pulling up behind Bridger’s Vette throu
gh the living room window.
A flurry of activity ensues as uniformed officers come in and take stock of the situation before checking on Kayla. Joseph Kizner arrives on their heels and goes immediately to talk to Bridger. Another car arrives, more local police, who, after talking to the first ones to arrive, stand around watching as one of the EMT’s attends to Kayla, who is still unconscious. The other EMT goes to Bridger. After giving him a quick examination, he cleanses and bandages his wound. There’s some words exchanged. Bridger gives a sharp shake of his head, and I hear him say, “I’m not going to the fucking hospital. It’s a scratch.”
Typical man.
The EMTs examine Kayla, who’s still out cold, but then quickly load her up and cart her off to, I assume, the hospital in Jackson. The second set of cops leave to presumably follow the ambulance and the first set split apart, one going to Bridger and the other asking to talk to me in the kitchen. Even though Belle witnessed firsthand her mother getting attacked by Kayla, held at gunpoint, and then her scream at me in the craziest of fashions, I don’t want her to have to hear any more of this. So I set her on the couch, give her a glass of milk, and I put Paw Patrol on for her to watch. She seems fine right now, but I want to hurry up and get this interview over so I can get her back in my arms so she knows everything is going to be all right.
Maybe after that, I can ensure that Bridger is okay, too, because as of right now, I’m sensing that he’s not.
*
A hand on my face, pulling my hair back and then stroking my cheek.
I come awake slowly, blinking against the glow of the lamp I’d left on beside Bridger’s bed. I knew I was overstepping boundaries when I came in here to lie down and wait for him. I knew he might be pissed to find me here. But damn it… he’d spent most of the day looking at me like I was a fragile glass ornament that could break at any moment and completely avoiding any personal talk.
After the police left, so did Bridger. I know the only reason he felt safe in doing so was because he’d had his chief of security, Cain Bonham, come and stay with Belle and me. All he’d said was, “Gotta go into work,” and then he was gone. And I was left staring at Cain, who I didn’t know other than what little I’d learned from Sloane on poker night. That consisted of the fact that he’d let Sloane have sex with Bridger, Rand, and Logan, as well as himself, which was still beyond my comprehension.
I cooked dinner, and Cain ate quietly with Belle and me. While he prowled around the living room and kitchen, checking doors and locks, I put Belle to bed and snuggled with her for a while before finally deciding to wait in Bridger’s bed.
No clue what Cain did. I felt his presence was unnecessary. Kizner felt pretty confident that Kayla was acting alone in her attack of me, and I felt confident in that as well. I mean, her exact words to me had nothing to do with protecting Zeke from further charges of kidnapping, or even protecting herself from criminal charges.
No, she’d said, and I quote, “Think you could fuck my man all those years, spawn his hell brat, and not think I was going to get some payback?”
Yeah… today was personal, and it was all about Kayla. I didn’t think anyone from Mayhem’s Mission was coming after me, but Bridger couldn’t be talked out of having Cain come stay with me so he could “go to work”.
And now he stares down at me, his hand falling away from my face. I sit up in the bed and give a slight yawn as I look at the bedside clock.
Almost one AM. Work must have been hopping.
“What are you doing in here?” Bridger asks gruffly.
“Waiting on you,” I tell him testily. “Figured you couldn’t avoid me if I was lying in your bed.”
“Not avoiding you,” he says as he pulls his shirt off and tosses it aside, then brings his hands to his belt buckle to work at it. He removes it swiftly.
Of course, I can’t think to argue with him. Not with his glorious chest and abs on full display, not to mention the erection clearly outlined against his jeans.
Turning, he sits on the edge of the bed. Bends over to take his boots and socks off.
Bridger angles toward me, sliding his hand around the back of my neck, and then he’s pulling me into him. His mouth meets mine in a kiss that rivals a firestorm, all hot and consuming. He groans in my mouth, pushes me back onto the bed, and brings his big body over mine.
I think about all the things I want to talk about with him. How I need to know where we stand. How I need to reassure him I’m okay and won’t break. Most importantly, how I really believe we could have something together if he’d just take the chance on me.
But none of that comes out because my mouth is occupied with his, and then his hands are stripping me bare, and then he’s got his jeans open and he’s inside of me.
“Oh, Bridger,” I moan as I tear my mouth away from his and stare with glassy eyes at the far wall. He’s hot and huge and filling me so completely that there is no rational thought to be had. It becomes only about the way he feels inside of me right now and the way he’s going to make me feel even better.
He moves his hips in luxurious strokes, taking his time and content to let us both build slowly. His mouth is everywhere… my lips, my earlobes, my throat, my nipples. One hand snakes between us, and he fingers my clit in agonizingly slow circles. My hands snake around his neck, sliding to the base of his scalp where I feel nothing but the prickles of stubble.
“You cut your hair because of me,” I whisper.
Not a question.
A statement.
His answer?
His mouth comes back to mine and he’s kissing me again, so he doesn’t have to answer me. So he doesn’t have to admit that something I did was so awful, he had to ensure I never did it again.
An overwhelming wave of sorrow flows through me, and I know this is the beginning of the end. Any self-respecting woman would push a man such as him off her, knowing he’d never be able to fulfill what she truly needed deep down.
But I’ve got no respect for myself. Not where Bridger’s concerned.
So I accept his slow lovemaking. I let him continue to kiss me and flutter his fingers against my clit while his cock thrusts deep and true. I let him build me up to the ultimate pinnacle, amazed when he bursts apart at the same time I do. He comes inside of me with a long groan right into my mouth, grinding his hips hard and setting me on fire again.
And as I fall back down to earth, I can’t say as I’m shocked when he pulls out of me, rolls off the bed, and tucks himself back in his jeans. He bends over, picks his shirt off the floor, and turns to me. “Listen… I’m wiped. I’m going to take a shower and hit the bed. Why don’t you head back into your room with Belle, okay?”
“Sure,” I say, my voice betraying me as it cracks with emotion.
To give him credit, Bridger actually winces before he turns away and walks into the bathroom.
The minute the door closes, the tears start flowing as I hastily gather my pajamas and underwear, putting them on with jerky movements. I have to bite down on the inside of my cheek to keep from letting out a sob. I’m losing him before I even ever really had him.
As I turn toward his bedroom door, the sound of his voice stops me. He’s talking to someone from inside the bathroom.
Without any regard to his privacy, I pad over to the bathroom door and place my ear against it.
“…so if it’s okay and you’re up for a visit, I’d like to come see you,” I hear Bridger say.
A long pause. Then, in a soft, caring voice, he says, “It’s been a long time, I know.”
Another pause, then, “Thanks, Adrienne. See you soon.”
I quickly back away from the door, my heart literally cracking in two. He’s leaving. Not sure when, but he’s leaving. And his voice was soft and gentle. Her name’s Adrienne.
The tears start pouring again, and I have no fight in me. As I said, no self-respect where Bridger’s concerned. He just fucked me and kicked me out of his bed, then quite possibly called a woman so he could
go and see her.
I spin and run out of his bedroom, then crawl into bed with Belle. I wrap my arms around her and silently let my tears fall as I realize I’m nothing to Bridger at all.
*
I wake up early, hear Belle breathing deeply, and look at the alarm clock.
5:45 AM.
Slipping out of bed, I change out pajamas for jeans and a t-shirt before heading into the kitchen to make coffee. I slept fitfully last night, sometimes for maybe a half an hour at a time, before I’d dream about Bridger. Or were they nightmares?
As the coffee brews, I start putting things in order.
First, I need to call Aunt Gayle once the sun fully rises. My only choice is to go stay with her. Perhaps if I had a job, or a place to live, I could make a home here, but I have none of those things. I’m sure she could wire me some cash for bus tickets, or maybe she and Randall could come get us.
Second, I need to sit down with Bridger this morning after he gets up and let him know of my plans. While I’m clearly not within his, he needs to know I’ve decided that he can’t be in mine. I’m cutting out before he has the balls to finally tell me to my face that what we have has run its course.
The coffee finishes brewing so I pour myself a cup before heading back to check on Belle. She’s still sleeping. I head back into the living room and glance out the front window, do a double take, and then look harder.
Bridger’s car is gone.
Setting my coffee cup down on an end table, I pad back to his room. His door is open and the room is dim since the blinds are all shut.
But it’s light enough for me to see the note on his bed.
With my chest feeling like there’s a cinder block on it, I walk to the bed on shaky legs. I pick up the note and see it’s brutally short.
I’m sorry.
Bridger
My fingers curl inward, and the note crumples in my hand. Tears sting my eyes over the unfairness of it all. It’s not fair that he left me like this, without an explanation. It’s not fair that he’s crushed me and that he doesn’t even have the balls to sweep the mess left of me out his door.
The Wicked Horse Boxed Set (The Wicked Horse Series) Page 114