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She licked her bloodied lip, thinking fast. Reagan would freak out if she saw her looking like this. “Can you go to Reagan? Try to calm her down?”
He frowned. “She’s going to want you.”
“I’m bleeding, and I can feel my face already starting to swell. I don’t want her to see me like this. She feels comfortable with you. Just go up and tell her that Liam was drunk and not acting right and that everything’s going to be fine. We’re all safe now.”
Pike peered up at Reagan, worry on his face. “I don’t want to leave you down here with him. He could wake up.”
“I’ll go in the kitchen and call the cops. And I’ll get my brother to come over and pick up Rae so we can file a report.” She reached out and squeezed his arm. “But I need you to go to her. Can you do that for me?”
“Mom, what’s wrong with that man?” Reagan called down, her voice small.
Pike held Oakley’s gaze for a long second then nodded and turned toward the stairs. “He’s going to be fine, sweetheart. Your mom’s about to call someone to help him. Is it okay if I come up there with you?”
Oakley peered out the corner of her eye toward Reagan. Rae shifted on her feet then nodded. “Okay.”
She released his arm. “If she doesn’t calm down and needs me, just come get me.”
“I’ll take care of her,” he said, his voice now resolute. He cupped her cheek then left her to go to Rae. She watched his trek up the stairs, not entirely convinced Reagan wasn’t going to freak out anyway. But when he reached the top, he knelt down in front of Reagan and said something. Oakley stood frozen, waiting for Rae to ask for her, but instead she threw her arms around him and buried her face in his shoulder. She could tell by the way Pike’s arms didn’t move that he was taken aback by her reaction. But after a beat, he wrapped his arms around Rae and lifted her off her feet.
Oakley’s lips parted as her daughter, who didn’t hug anyone but her and her uncles, locked herself around Pike like a monkey and let him pick her up. When he turned around and met Oakley’s eyes, she could see the surprise in his.
But she couldn’t stand there staring for long. The man at her feet would rouse soon, and she wanted the cops here when he did. She glared at the slack body on the floor and gave it a little kick, getting entirely too much joy from the petty move. “Might be kind of hard to get custody with an assault on your record.”
She went to the coffee table, grabbed her phone, and dialed.
Fuck Liam Garrett.
He may have seemed powerful back when she was a kid, but now she could see him for what he was—nothing.
THIRTY
Pike collapsed next to Oakley in bed after an exhausting day of talking to the cops and handling the fallout from punching out the tour manager he was supposed to be working with.
Oakley, who was sitting cross-legged on the bed, turned to him, her face less swollen, but the bruises starting to darken around her left eye. Every time he saw her injuries, he wanted to go find that bastard Garrett and beat on him some more.
“So did you lose the tour?” she asked, a wince already on her face.
He adjusted himself on the pillows and crossed his ankles. “I called Lex Logan, the lead singer of Wanderlust, and told him what I knew about Liam. Then I told him that he backhanded my girl.”
Her gaze snapped up at that, and he could tell him calling her his girl had caught her off guard. She cleared her throat. “And what’d he say?”
Pike’s lips quirked up. “He said, ‘Fuck that guy. He’s done.’”
“He believed you? Just like that?”
“Lex said he never really liked the guy anyway. The record company had hired him based on a recommendation. But yeah, regardless of the other stuff Liam’s guilty of, Lex isn’t the type of dude who’d put up with anybody hitting a woman. He said he would’ve beat the asshole down, too.”
“He sounds like a good guy.”
“He is. You’d like him. He’s almost as handsome and talented as I am.”
She sniffed.
But the smile she gave him held no humor. He could almost feel the weight of her thoughts pressing on her. “How’s Rae doing?”
Oakley sighed and hugged her knees, sitting her chin on top of them like a little girl. “She’s okay. She saw him hit me, though.”
Pike pushed a stray hair away from her face, careful not to touch her bruises. “I know. She told me. Poor baby cried against my shoulder. She was so worried about you.”
