by Ranae Rose
Henry had shot out two of the tires – the ones on the right side, away from Grey. The truck was crippled.
It had been a ballsy move. Either of the bullets could’ve bounced off metal or pavement and come back to hit Henry or Grey. But they hadn’t.
Grey tasted blood in his mouth but couldn’t remember biting anything. He was numb to pain, though he was vaguely aware that his palms and arm were bleeding where they’d hit the pavement when he’d rolled. It was an infinitesimally small price to pay for being here, for having the chance to stop this, to finally make things right for Kerry.
If it wasn’t too late.
Jesus. He didn’t know what her ex-husband had done to her, how badly she was hurt. That killed him, filled him with rage that had him flying at the driver’s side door, pulling it open.
He didn’t know if Bradley Sawyer had any more bullets left and he didn’t care. He couldn’t let this go on any longer, not for a single second.
Swearing exploded from the cab as the dented door swung on its hinges. Grey caught a glimpse of the man from the photo, a familiar face now marked with scars. There was no wedding tux now, just black clothing that almost – but not quite – masked the blood soaking the fabric.
Grey had a fistful of blood-stained jacket and was pulling Sawyer out of the cab before he even knew what he was doing. He could see Kerry curled at the far end of the seat and a part of him wanted to go to her, but he had to do this first.
Brad fought.
Grey fought harder. He slammed him against the side of the truck and hit him square on the jaw, bruising his knuckles and feeding his rage. He couldn’t let himself look at Kerry because the glimpse he’d caught was enough – she was bound somehow. She was hurt. And this man had done it to her.
A thousand images flickered in dark corners of Grey’s mind: Kerry in her white wedding dress, Kerry in white bandages, Kerry looking shocked and happy and embarrassed all at once any time anyone did anything nice for her, anything at all.
It was too much. Too much to know that all that had happened to her and that after years of torment, her abuser had dared to track her down and attempt to drag her away from her new life. Grey’s horror was as unspeakable as his rage, and one fed the other.
He’d never hit anyone so hard. He kept doing it, feeling nothing when Sawyer managed to retaliate with a few blows of his own.
He thought of his mother, too. The shame he’d felt when he’d been too young to defend her, the dark cloud they’d both lived under for so long. The way some people seemed to exist solely to rain down misery on the ones they were supposed to love and protect. The way they turned the lives of those around them into fearful games, ones where any little misstep would be repaid with permanent scars.
They were the worst kind of people alive – the man Grey was beating against the side of the truck was one of the worst people he’d ever laid hands on. He felt sure of that, and well qualified to judge. His work brought him into constant contact with toxic people, evil souls. But the kind of evil that had driven Sawyer to abduct Kerry was the worst of it all.
Blood stained Grey’s hands and flew from his fists in droplets as he hit the other man, again and again. He would’ve liked to think that he was repaying him for the pain he’d caused Kerry, but he knew that was impossible. She’d endured years of blows, and then there was the pain deep inside, the damage caused by lack of love and safety, nights spent fearing for her life in her own home. This didn’t compare, but it still felt good to dish out.
Until Sawyer responded with something more than his fists. The gun had been left among the shattered glass on the truck seat, Grey realized as Brad hit him hard on the jaw then grabbed and raised the gun, whipped it down hard across Grey’s face.
All Grey’s rage couldn’t keep him conscious. His fury, his single-minded focus, was all snuffed out like a flame: suddenly, leaving him in darkness.
* * * * *
Kerry had never seen anyone so angry, even after all her years with Brad. Grey moved like a machine designed to inflict pain. It was so unlike Brad’s clumsy, drunken brand of violence that she stared, stunned and left in a strange sort of awe.
Every blow looked and sounded hard enough to break bones. He hit Brad in the face, the stomach. He kept him pinned up against the truck and threw punch after punch. Brad hit back, but not as often and not as hard. Until he got in a hard punch, reached back and drew his weapon.
It was a gunmetal blur, and her heart leapt into her throat. She couldn’t scream, but she was wailing on the inside, afraid that Grey would be shot, killed or maimed. All because of her, because he’d dared to show her kindness – and passion – like she’d only ever imagined before.
She should’ve noticed the gun, should’ve grabbed it or kicked it out of Brad’s reach. But she’d been too absorbed in the fight to see it. Whatever was about to happen to Grey now was because of her carelessness.
The thought was unbearable, but before she could move, before she could scream, she realized that Brad wasn’t about to risk trying to shoot Grey. Instead, he acted instinctively, gripping the gun by the barrel and raising it like a bludgeon, whipping it through the air before Grey could reach for it.
That didn’t make it any easier to watch Grey crumple to the ground, his powerful body collapsing like someone had hit an off switch.
Brad tried to run but hardly made it a step before Henry put himself in his path, weapon still raised.
“Stop,” he said. “Put your hands above your head.”
Brad didn’t listen. Instead, he pointed the gun at Henry.
He could – and would – shoot now, Kerry realized.
Henry fired first.
At such a close range, it was inconceivable that he could’ve missed, especially after the way he’d shot out the truck’s tires. Still, for a split second Kerry worried that that was exactly what had happened.
Then Brad dropped like a rock.
It wasn’t like in the movies – he didn’t fall backwards. He didn’t even stumble. He just dropped, and that was that. She wasn’t even sure where he’d been shot, or if he was still alive.
A part of her was stunned to have witnessed a shooting, but the rest of her was so grateful Henry was there that her heart practically broke at the sight of him standing with his Glock still held steady.
Finally stopping the man who’d haunted her for a decade.
Finally treating him like what he was: a criminal.
When two police cruisers arrived on the scene, sirens flashing, Jeremy stepped out of one of the cars and Kerry broke down and cried.
* * * * *
Grey’s time in the hospital was a blur. There were a lot of jokes from the nurses about his Superman costume, and a few from Liam too. There were stitches across the left side of his face – twelve of them, to seal the wound dealt by the grip of a .45.
The blow had fractured his cheekbone. At first there had been some talk of surgery, but ultimately the doctor had decided that it wouldn’t be necessary. There was a crack in the bone, but it hadn’t caved in. He was glad because surgery wasn’t something he wanted to deal with. None of it – nothing that had happened to him – seemed important, compared to Kerry.
He’d held her at the scene of the truck wreck, which had turned out to be deliberate, not an accident. He’d refused to leave without getting his arms around her, making sure she was, if not okay, at least not life-threateningly injured.
And she wasn’t. But she was bruised to hell and back and two of her ribs had been cracked. Her back was jacked-up too, the muscles badly knotted over her damaged ribs. It set Grey’s teeth on edge to think of how she’d sustained those injuries, made him ache to get his hands on her ex-husband again.
It was too late for that, though. Bradley Sawyer had died a couple hours ago in surgery at a trauma center in Wilmington, a result of the bullet he’d taken to the chest.
Grey knew he should be relieved, and on a certain level, he was. But he was intensely aware that what had
been done couldn’t be undone. Kerry had been hurt and healing could never be complete; the scars would always linger, literally and figuratively. Every time he held her hand, he’d be reminded of what she’d gone through, what he hadn’t been able to prevent.
It’d be a bitter pill to swallow, every time. Because she didn’t just deserve a better future, she deserved the one thing no one could give her, now: a better past. He wished he’d been able to protect her before now, that she hadn’t suffered for so long.
“How’s your face, Superman?” Henry stood in the room’s open doorway, though Grey hadn’t heard him approach.
Grey rose from the chair pushed against the wall opposite the hospital bed. Kerry lay in it, asleep. Grey had refused to spend the night in a room of his own as a patient but hadn’t been able to bring himself to leave the hospital or her side.
“It’s 3:30 am,” Grey said, keeping his voice low. “Late, but I figured you’d be at the sheriff’s department all night.”
“I just got out and came straight here.”
“What for? You look like hell.” There were dark circles beneath Henry’s eyes, and his expression seemed more sober than ever.
“If that’s not the pot calling the kettle black, I don’t know what is. I stopped by because I heard from Liam that you were stumbling around here in tights with your face gaping open.” He looked at Grey’s face and then down at what remained of his spandex costume. “I see they stitched you up. Give me a key to your house and I’ll rescue your dignity by getting you some pants and a shirt.”
Grey shook his head, which hurt, though he tried not to let it show. “I left my keys in Kerry’s purse.” He pointed down at his costume. “No pockets.”
Henry nodded toward a small handbag stacked on top of a duffel in the far corner of the room. “That it?”
“Yeah.” He hadn’t noticed, he’d been so fixated on Kerry. Sasha and Alicia had brought the bags by an hour ago, had said that the duffel was full of clean clothes and toiletries, stuff Kerry would need in the morning. Apparently they’d left her purse too.
Henry opened it up and pulled out a set of keys. “These yours?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Give me half an hour and I’ll be back with some clothes.”
Grey didn’t argue – he was sick of wearing the costume. “Thanks, man. And thanks for having my back tonight, too.”
It hadn’t escaped him that he and Kerry would probably be dead, if Henry hadn’t been there.
“Don’t worry about it.”
“You kidding? You saved our lives.” He knew Henry had done what he’d had to, that he’d shot Bradley Sawyer not just for Grey and Kerry’s sake, but because he’d had to do it to save his own life, as well. But the bottom line was that Henry had killed for him and he didn’t know where to even begin expressing his gratitude.
“We’re even,” Henry said. “I owed you – everything, you know that.”
Grey finally stopped rehashing the night’s events inside his head, paused long enough to remember the time that summer when he’d found Henry on the verge of eating his Glock.
“You scared the shit out of me,” he said, pushing the recollection away, trying to reconcile it with the image of Henry standing in the doorway now.
“I thought I’d lost everything. Lost Sasha. I couldn’t stand – shit, it doesn’t matter. I almost threw everything away on one stupid decision, one low moment. You stopped me. And I wouldn’t let that happen to you – wouldn’t let you lose her.” He tipped his head toward the bed where Kerry lay resting.
Grey nodded. He knew Henry regretted what he’d almost done, knew he wouldn’t do now what he’d tried to do then. But everyone had a breaking point. Everyone.
Henry’s had been seeing Sasha laid out on the ground, dead – or so he’d thought, at the time.
Grey didn’t know what his was, didn’t want to know. But the thought of Bradley Sawyer brutalizing Kerry, snuffing out her life – the life he’d made so miserable for so many years – was more than he could bear. He didn’t know what he would’ve done if he and Henry had been too late to save her, didn’t want to think about it.
Because he loved her, and love hurt a hell of a lot, when it came to situations like this.
CHAPTER 27
Waking up in the hospital felt surreal. Everything seemed to feel like that, lately: either too bad or too good to be true.
“Don’t get too excited,” Grey said, rising from the chair against the wall, “but it’s 7:30, which means you’re up in time for breakfast. I bet they’ll let you order some of their signature hospital Jell-O.”
Kerry sat straight up, pushed the sheets out of her way and swung her legs over the side of the bed.
Or at least, she tried. It was hard to make her legs do anything when her back didn’t want to cooperate. Just sitting up had stolen her breath.
“What are you doing here?” she demanded. He was wearing jeans and a t-shirt and the left half of his face was plastered with bandages. “Shouldn’t you be in bed in your own room?”
“Staying in the hospital overnight, just because of a few stitches? No thanks.” He grabbed one of her hands and squeezed. “I have a reputation as a badass to maintain, remember?”
“Just stitches? You said last night that your face was broken! And I saw you get knocked out cold.”
“It’s a tiny fracture. I’m all right, and I wanted to spend the night here with you. What about you – how do you feel?”
He was squeezing her hand so hard her fingers ached, but she didn’t say anything about it.
“My back and my ribs are killing me, but it doesn’t matter. It could’ve been so much worse.” Finally, she had the chance to say what she hadn’t the night before. “Thank you.”
“Couldn’t have done it without Henry. He saved our asses. And who the hell else carries a flashlight and a gun in their pocket?” He paused for a moment, and a devious smile curled one side of his mouth. “I bet he has handcuffs in there too. It’s probably some kinky habit Sasha talked him into.”
She twisted her hand around inside of his and squeezed right back. “Stop joking around for once, Grey. I’m trying to thank you for saving my life.”
She finally locked him in eye contact, and something deep inside him snapped, freeing a pent-up reserve of relief and crushing happiness. Happiness because she was alive and here and the only person in the world who’d ever wanted to hurt her was gone. That fact wasn’t just a weight off Kerry’s shoulders – it was a weight off Grey’s, too.
“I wasn’t joking,” he said, “not even about the handcuffs. I played my part and I’d do it a thousand times over. But so did Henry, and so did you. If you hadn’t wrecked that truck, God only knows where you’d be now.”
The look in her eyes said that she did know, and that she wouldn’t be here – not with him, and not at all.
“Sasha helped too,” Grey said. “She called the police as soon as we realized you were missing. She got in touch with Jeremy and he came as fast as he could. There were a lot of people involved in what happened last night – a lot of people who care about you. You’re not alone, Kerry.”
He thought her eyes looked wet, but she looked away, toward the window, before he could be sure. “I know that, and it means a lot.” Her voice was soft. “What you did for me, and what they did. I’ll thank them later – especially Henry – but for now, I’m thanking you.”
She laid a hand on his shoulder and exerted a surprising amount of force for a 112 pound woman with several broken ribs, pulling him down to her level.
She kissed him much harder than he’d been expecting, pressing her lips full-on against his, even teasing him with a hint of tongue. The kiss lasted for a solid 10 seconds and gave him what was perhaps the most inappropriate boner of his life. When it ended, he hurried to adjust his jeans in case a nurse or doctor walked in.
“Did you sleep at all?” she asked.
“I drifted off for an hour or two.”
“They couldn’t argue with me – I was Superman. I didn’t change into these clothes until a few hours ago.”
She gave him a reproving look, like she thought he might actually go lie down for a nap if she kept it up long enough.
“Do you remember what Jeremy told us last night about Brad?” he asked, aching to reassure her that she wouldn’t ever wind up in the hospital like this again because of her ex-husband.
She nodded, but a dent appeared in her lower lip. “Yes. I know he’s gone.”
“You don’t have to worry about him anymore. You’re free.”
“I know. And I’m glad, believe me – I’m just waiting for it to really sink in. I think it’s going to take a little while for me to wrap my mind around everything that’s happened.”
Her words hit him where it hurt. He couldn’t blame her for her residual fear, and he didn’t know how to wash it away for her.
“They were the most terrifying moments of my life,” she said. “When he fired through the windshield at you and Henry. When he tried to run you over, and then when he hit you with the gun and tried again to shoot Henry… I was so afraid that you were going to die because of me.”
“Not because of you, for you – there’s a difference. But it doesn’t matter anyway, because I’m fine.”
“That’s almost as scary – thinking that someone would die for me. I mean, I know you would, but I wouldn’t want you to.”
“It’d be better than letting anything happen to you. A hell of a lot better.”
“I know you feel that way, and that’s the thing: sometimes, I just can’t believe I have people who care about me so much. It’s … amazing. Humbling. Not something I thought I’d ever have.”
“I don’t just care about you. I love you, Kerry.”
He had to tell her, had to be clear. Every fiber of his being wanted her to know. At the same time, he was afraid of what her reaction might be. Afraid that her ex-husband might’ve soured her on the idea of love. Her abuser had been the one person who’d sworn to love her more than anything and Grey knew that. But he needed her to know.