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“Should we worry about Eli?” Mark asked, looking in the rearview at Ryan.
Ryan didn’t answer for a long minute, staring at the window. Then he looked forward out the dash and gave an answer that was so full of meaning that I felt myself shiver. “Yes.”
Mark nodded, accepting that as an answer. And I let the silence hang for a minute to see if they would elaborate. When they didn’t, I spoke up. “Why should we be worried about Eli?”
“See, sweetheart,” Mark started, eyes on the road, but I watched his face in the mirror. “We are all violent. To some of us, it came naturally. With me and Shane especially. Ryan can tap into it too, in a detached kind of way. But this life was never meant for Hunt and Eli. Hunter got out and stayed out. Eli could never find the balls to do it. The thing is, he was softer than the rest of us. He was always curled up with books and crayons and paint as a kid. He never wanted to do the crazy shit we all got into. He was happy by himself, creating shit while we fell out of trees and came home fresh from fights almost daily. But being too soft, it wasn’t going to get him by in this family. So we all, I guess, ganged up on him, hardened him. Doing that, forcing him to be something he wasn’t, it made him into something the rest of us aren’t.”
“What’s that?”
“Uncontrollable,” Ryan answered.
I glanced over at the sleeping Eli with his shaggy hair, his less pronounced jawline, his deep soul.
“Can’t picture it, can you?” Mark asked, knowing what I was thinking.
“No.”
“It’s freaky as fuck to watch. It’s like he has this well of rage inside that, when he taps into, it fucking explodes outward and overtakes him. He is who Pops sends when he really wants to send a message. He’s the one who flies off the fucking handle when he sees a guy being shitty toward a chick in a bar. He’s the one who gave a concussion to some guy who kicked his dog in public. When he flips, he flips the fuck out. The Eli you think you know, he’s just not there when he’s raging out. It’s a whole different animal. And this,” he said gesturing at the GPS, “this shit will be personal to him. He’s keeping it together now because he doesn’t have a choice. But get him eye-to-eye with your ex, honey, and he will fucking blow.”
“Well, he’s not going to get face-to-face with Ross,” I said with certainty. “That’s why we are going, to stop Shane before he can do anything stupid. We wouldn’t stop Shane and let Eli start trouble.”
“Right,” Mark agreed.
I didn’t know at the time that he was placating me.
I also didn’t know that, in the middle of the second day, when I eventually passed out, my fried nerves making me do so like the dead, that the men in the car all woke up and agreed on something.
That something was that they were going to detour.
And let Shane get there ahead of us.
I was also quite blithely unaware that they had even called Shane and hammered out the details, agreeing to show up and let him try to handle it before they went in. And that I would never be allowed anywhere near the entire situation.
Which was why when I woke up, I woke up in a God damn hotel room twenty fucking miles from where the entire Mallick family was with no car, no cell, and no shoes.
I was so disoriented for a long time that I scrambled up, heart thumping so hard that it made me feel nauseated, reaching for the remote on the nightstand and clicking on the TV so I could see the date and time. I put a hand to my chest, taking deep breaths and trying to calm down. I couldn’t focus if I was freaking out.
Of course they left me. I really should have even seen that coming.
Maybe they respected women and their ability to be badasses in their own right, but they were strong, alpha males. No way were they going to let a woman follow them into danger if they could prevent it.
The thing that freaked me out the most was that one of them had managed to drag me out of a car, carry me into a hotel room, and tuck me into bed without me so much as gaining consciousness for a second. I knew without being able to know, that it had been Ryan to do it.
And leave it to the freaking Mallick family to get me a God damn gorgeous hotel room too, not some sleep-and-fuck motel off the highway.
The sun was streaming through the sheers on the windows and I hopped up and made my way over to peel back the blinds and look out. Nothing was immediately familiar, California being huge and the fact that I had been asleep making it hard to tell which part of Cali I was in. I walked over toward the small desk and grabbed the brochure laying there, checking out the address with a small surge of relief.
