The blood…
And there’s a lot of it.
Too much.
Chapter Fourteen
I automatically shift into savior mode. I scoop her up into my arms and run back to the car, which was about a mile away. The entire way there, she cursed and hissed and held onto me tightly. I cooed to her, encouraging her to breathe deeply. She, of course, being the sweetie pie she is, cursed me out, but then after a while she was inhaling and exhaling deeper. I slid her into the backseat and drove almost twenty miles over the speed limit to the hospital.
I know I could have crashed and made things a hell of a lot worse, but I had this uncontrollable urge to get her help. The wound didn’t look severe, but the sight of her moaning in pain and bleeding lit a fire under my ass and made it hard for me to breathe. So if I had to press a little harder on the gas pedal and go all Vin Diesel, I would; I have to help her. It’s my fault anyhow.
I asked her that stupid loaded question while she was on that tricky strip of boulder. She was doing fine walking on it while I held her hand minutes before, but bringing up that question threw her off balance—literally—and she hurt herself because of me. I have never jumped into action so quickly, have never felt the need to take care of someone so deeply in my bones that moving to help her felt like second nature.
How could I be so stupid?
I wonder this repeatedly on my walk back to her room. I just grabbed her the only “good stuff” in this hospital, which to her means a bag of hot Cheetos and a can of Mountain Dew. I for one dislike anything hot. They just make me focus on my burning tongue instead of the taste behind it. So I make sure to steer clear away from foods like these chips, and the fact that she loves them makes me laugh. We are so different it’s kind of insane. But what’s even more insane is how similar we are, in a way.
“The cavalry is here—wielding hot chips and soda,” I announce with a smile, closing the door behind me.
She perks up in the bed, grinning weakly. “Thanks again. I just couldn’t eat their crappy food.” Her eyes glare briefly at the dry turkey sandwich and apple juice box with disgust, then she softens her gaze at the items in my hands. “This is more like it.”
“No problem, and we are definitely getting you some real food when you’re released,” I tell her, handing off her snack and drink. I amusedly watch her pop open the bag and crunch on one red stick, moaning in pleasure—food pleasure.
“Trust me, this is better than ‘real food,’” she claims then pushes about five sticks into her mouth. A laugh drops out of my mouth as her eyes criss-cross. She laughs, but I tell her to stop before she chokes and pop open her canned soda. She downs half of it, and I feel incredibly guilty for her being this hungry and being here in the first place. This is all my fault.
I watch her eat and chew on my lip, deep in thought. I blame myself for putting her in this hospital bed. Her foot has a large wound that’s wrapped up, but that isn’t the worst part. On the way down the rocky terrain, her ankle got tangled up and twisted. She has a fractured ankle. It isn’t too severe, but it doesn’t lessen the guilt running through my veins.
I should have just let it go, until she was safely on the sand, at least. But no, I was so impatient, and now she’s suffered because of me. I wish I could go back, pick her up, and settle her beside me on the ground. She’d be mad, but I’d ask the question again and hold onto her, promising I wouldn’t go anywhere or be upset as long as she told me the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
“This isn’t your fault,” she says and gently grabs my arm that’s beside her leg.
“Yes, it is.” My voice is low, ashamed. I watch her small fingertips brush over my knuckles. Her hand is cold, mine warm, and the instant I close my hand around hers, they are set on fire.
“No, it isn’t,” she insists. The guilt in her voice makes me look up. Her eyes are shimmery with tears, and I use my free hand to wipe them away. I capture the single teardrop using my thumb. The second it’s gone, I reach up and kiss just under her eye, where it made its escape.
But she pushes me back with both hands. I try to resist, to take her coldish hands, but she pushes harder until I am sitting in the hard chair. She brings up her legs and buries her flushed face on top of her knees.
“What’s wrong, Red?” I sit at her feet, my heart crumbling at the sight of her trying to hide away from me. Her long blonde hair acts as a curtain, hiding her from me.
She mumbles something, but I can’t hear her correctly.
“What? Red, I can’t hear you,” I tell her, my voice small.
No response.
My heart is weakening every second with her disappearing act. I lean forward and duck my head, pushing my fingers through her curtain-like hair. “Please don’t do this. Don’t—don’t hide away from me.” My voice breaks, and her hair shakes. Is she crying? Oh God. “Red,” I plead, “come out for me.”
I don’t hear anything. Her hair stops shaking, and my heart rate slows, waiting for her appearance. If she’ll ever come out, that is. Unable to cope with that, I scoot closer to her and pick up a hefty lock of her silky gold hair. I push it back onto her back, and I finally see the right side of her face. Her brows drag down, and she turns her cheek. Why is she hiding from me?
“Come on, let me see that pretty face of yours.” I smile softly, but it falls when she makes a horrible sound, like a deer that got hit by a truck. Wounded, small, frightened. My heart shatters, and I sit beside her. I push all of her hair to her left side and place my head beside hers. I nudge my nose against her soft, alarmingly hot skin.
“I don’t want to,” she says slowly, just loud enough for me to hear. I frown.
“Why not? You’re gorgeous,” I remind her.
She shakes her hair, which tickles. “Not that…”
“You’re not making sense,” I tell her. “Red, please look at me.”
I didn’t think she would, but she turns her face. Striking blue eyes swelled up, flushed red cheeks, puffy lips. Even crying she is the pinnacle of beauty.
“There we go,” I coo softly, brushing my thumb over her cheek.
Her eyes just watch me, and she draws in a staggering breath. “You shouldn’t be here.”
“You want me to leave?” But I want to stay. A voice is telling me I shouldn’t be touching her or memorizing the curve of her tiny dimple beside her full lips, but I tune it out and continue on, memorizing, touching.
“No,” she says with difficulty, then chews on her lip.
“Then what do you mean?” My voice is soft as I run my thumb against her lip ring. I tug lightly and toy with it. Her lips pull upward in the lightest smile but then drop. I look at her eyes and see the quick flash of a voice whispering something in her head, telling her to shut off. She even begins to pull away. But I hook my hand under her chin and tug her back into place, stapling her there with my palm on her warm cheek.
“Tell me what you mean. I swear to you, I am not leaving your side.” Never…
She sniffles and her brows curve, eyes looking down. But I tilt her head up and lean closer; a wave of coconut and strawberry and warm, slow breaths hit me, and I bask in it, tread in the wave, let it wash over me and swallow me whole.
“Please,” I plead softly, voice nearly cracking.
I feel her take deep breaths, watch her stare at my lips, but not with the intent of kissing them or conjuring up dirty thoughts, but to ground herself. I am her anchor, and she is my beautiful yacht. I will gladly hold her tremendous baggage if it means she doesn’t drift off to sea.
“It wasn’t my idea,” she says, pausing. “None of it.”
“What do you mean?” I ask, but I know exactly what she means. I soothe her when she begins to breathe quicker, tears falling freely. I swipe every single one away. I hate seeing her this fragile, flooding with misery.
She closes her eyes tightly. “I was a part of a…a group. Had been for a year or so. We did—did horrible, horrible things. And the main guy, Link, t
hought—thought it’d be a great idea to—to r-rob you. He was such a bad guy, Noah.” She sounds like she’d know personally, like she’d suffered the brunt of what makes him such a bad guy.
I make a fist and control my ragged breathing enough to ask, “Did he ever hurt you?”
She doesn’t respond, and I think I’ve punctured my palms.
“Oh fuck, I am so sorry, Red. I didn’t know.” I wrap my arms around her and press my cheek against hers. I feel so shitty. I didn’t know she was in a damn gang or being abused by the leader. She never had a visible bruise or seemed hurt, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t being hurt behind closed doors. And there is such a thing as makeup.
I can’t breathe. I want to kill that motherfucker. I want to beat him up like the way he abused my Red. My Red. Oh fuck, oh fuck. If only I’d known, if only I paid more attention. I never want to let her leave my side again. I need to make sure she is safe and not being mistreated. I want to know why she was in the gang in the first place, but I doubt she wants to splurge. And I’m getting her to open up now; I can’t risk her closing up now.
But something doesn’t make sense.
“How’d he know about the safe?” I ask her. The only other who would have found it was Ty, and I know he wouldn’t tip the guy off. He’s my friend, through and through.
She shrugs. “He said he was at your frat house one day, snooping, and found it. Said it was one of those high-tech ones that would alert the police if the pin was incorrect even once.”
“What?” I’m confused. No one’s been in our room, unless Ty invited some shady fuckers in…oh. My head aches to think back to so long ago, but when I do, I remember a strange guy in our room. I’d just come home and saw him just standing around. I didn’t know who he was, but I’d felt a malignant presence around him. And then there was that time she was talking to a guy dressed similarly at the fair…and it all makes sense.
And my heart drops when the words fumble from my lips, “Did you ever love me?”
Chapter Fifteen
Her eyes widen, and the color drains from her face. “What?”
I close my mouth. It took too much of my already crumbling heart to ask the first time; I can’t do it again. Can’t imagine her saying no. She’d slip from my arms because I’d be on the floor, a crumpled piece, just simply destroyed.
“Of course I loved you…and I still do,” she says, and I release my heavy breath.
I hug her to my chest; her cheek feels amazing against me. I rub her back and duck my head, whispering, “You have no idea how amazing it is to hear that.”
But I couldn’t have imagined that every kiss, every laugh, every glance, everything was a lie. I couldn’t possibly fake being in love with this girl. Every part of me is true to her. Every inch of my heart, love, and desire shines in her eyes when she looks at me. I see myself in her.
“But I still took from you,” she groans and pulls away. I grab her hands, forcing her to look into my eyes. Finding my determination for eye contact, she shuts her eyes, and I sigh heavily.
“I don’t care,” I say, half-honestly. It still burns me that she took the money and ran away. I still feel used, but I foolishly am wholeheartedly, completely, truly in love with her.
She opens her eyes and huffs incredulously. “But you should. You should, Noah.” She rips her hands from me and gestures to me, as if she’s giving my heart back. But I wrap my fingers in hers and push our hands to her chest. I don’t want it. It’s hers.
“I. Don’t. Care.”
Bewildered, her eyes shift to mine. Searching, probing, guilty. “Don’t you even care what I did with the money? What I did when I was gone? Where I went?”
“Yes, but—”
“Then I’ll tell you,” she cuts me off. I don’t like the firmness of her eyes or her chewing anxiously on her lip. She almost looks like she did That Night before she dropped me off at the frat house…
I tighten my grip on her. “You aren’t leaving me. Not again, Red. I refuse to let you leave.” She’s left me more times than my heart can handle. I can’t do it again. I barely made it alive those four months.
“I won’t,” she promises softly. “But you have to promise me we will not get back together.”
My heart drops. “What? No. I can’t do that.” She could have bought a truckload of hellhounds to set loose on a small town and I wouldn’t not want to be with her. I am only holding her hands and my body is begging for more, for her lips, for her smile, for her scent.
Her brows curve, and she whines, “Please, Noah, this is important to me.”
“And you are important to me.”
“Noah,” she groans like she’s in physical pain or spiritual pain. Either way, I can’t stand the sight of it. So I close my mouth and give her a simple nod. She releases a breath she’d been holding and closes her eyes. This is going to take a lot out of her, and I want to coax her eyes open so that she can see I’m not going anywhere.
“I didn’t want to take the money. Admittedly, I jumped on the chance when I heard his idea, to get close to you so I could get in and get out without a second thought.” She pauses, and I feel the same sting in my chest. It hurts to breathe, but I manage to so I don’t pass out. “But when I realize I’d grown feelings for you, it was too late. I wanted to back out, many times. He shut me up…many times.” Her words crackle, and she sniffles.
I swear to everything that is good, I am going to murder him. But I don’t say that to her, just kiss her nose, then her cheek, wipe away the warm tears, and gently rub her lower back. I breathe heavily, my chin resting on the side of her hair. She sighs into my touch; she loves it when I do this.
“Anyway,” she continues, and I sit back to watch her mouth shake as she does, “I went through with it. But I did push you away a few times. Those weeks I ran away, I prayed you would forget about me or just hate me and have the plan become void, but you welcomed me back each time. I kept wishing, hoping you’d stop loving me, but you never did. And so when you told me that story about your grandfather giving you that easel on his birthday…I just knew it was the code. And I gave it to him and left you. But I stayed away longer so you would finally hate me—”
“I don’t hate you,” I say, sighing.
“But you should!” she shouts and looks me in the eyes. Hers are glossy, and her lips are pursed. I want to wipe away her tears. I want to erase the past. I want to kiss her forehead, and so I do, because I can’t pull my hands away or watch her break down in front of me. It pains me too much to witness. “You should,” she whispers insistently.
“But I can’t. Red, I physically, emotionally cannot hate you.” I finally pull away after kissing her tenderly and stare into her eyes head-on. “Trust me, I’ve tried for those long, torturous months…but I just ended up hating myself for trying to tarnish our memories, our kisses, our laughs, our everything. I couldn’t do it then, and I can’t do it now. Don’t ask me to.”
She just shakes her head like this is too much for her. I thumb my way over her scarred knuckles then bring them up to my lips. I kiss them tenderly, longingly, and she lets out a soothing yet tortured breath.
“I didn’t spend it on drugs or anything like that,” she says.
“I didn’t expect you to,” I murmur against her fingers. I kiss them gently before pulling them down and looking into her eyes. Her face is marred with confusion, and I frown.
“What?”
“You’re not even curious what I used it for?”
“As long as it wasn’t anything harmful.”
“What if it was, like, I don’t know, a case of machine guns?”
“Were you fighting terrorists with them?” I joke, and thankfully, she smiles with a shake of her head. “Then you might’ve wasted it. Unless you splurged on those cheesy commercials that advertise glow-in-the-dark stickers or toy guns that stop after using it once.”
“How specific of you,” she accuses with a squint of her eyes.
I chuckle and
shrug. “Sue me, I’m a nerd and have an ad-bought lightsaber. What’s the big whoop?”
She bursts into laughter, and I smile and watch it unfurl. Her eyes squint close, and her cheeks get really puffy, as they do when she laughs hard enough. I loved it then, and I adore it even more now. I prefer to see her this way—happy—even if it’s just for a split second. It warms my heart and fills me with personal joy.
When she stops, she exhales deeply and stares at our intertwined hands. “No, I—I paid off my grandfather’s mortgage. He was going to lose the home I grew up in if I hadn’t. It was the reason I agreed to the plan anyway. And the rest went toward paying my sister’s boarding school tuition. You would’ve thought it was for college and not a high school, but my mother always wanted her to have a private education.” She pauses and shifts uncomfortably.
“We grew up in a really shitty place with even shittier schools. I went through them, and they changed me for the worse. I knew she wouldn’t want the same for Harley, so my grandparents sent her to private school. She hates it, thinks she doesn’t belong, but I know it’s for the best. And whatever was left, I have saved in an account for her, to pay for college.” She quickly glances at me, then away.
“She insists she isn’t going, but she is. I’m barely scraping by. My grandma used her pension to pay for my tuition, and my grandpa’s using some of the money he saved over the years, but I don’t think it’s enough. But I couldn’t just pay my tuition. I needed to take care of them first. They matter more…”
I fist my hands in hers, and she looks up, almost distantly. I lean forward and bring her into my chest. She’s straddling me, and my head is resting on her shoulder, hers on mine, a curtain of protection surrounding us.
“I love you,” I say softly. I love everything about her. I love how selfless she is. How she is so family-oriented and thinks of her family first. I don’t believe that she doesn’t matter, because she matters to me. But I love how compassionate she is nonetheless.
Red: Fiery Finale (Spectrum Series Book 8) Page 10