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But, of course, it wasn’t him. Why the hell would he be at her door?
“Sorry, no. Just me,” Brooke said with a sympathetic sad smile.
“Where’s Scott?” Olivia asked as she stretched to see beyond Brooke into the hallway. “Is he okay?”
Brooke cringed. “Um… turns out that cop is a relative of a guy from Curly’s old club. So, uh, Scott was arrested and taken in about fifteen minutes ago.”
“What!” Olivia shouted. It felt like the entire world was crumbling around her, and she had no idea what to do. “That’s bullshit. That asshole had his hands all over me even though I was screaming and fighting. Scott saved me from being assaulted! They arrested him? I’m going to the police station.”
She scanned the ground. Dammit, where were her sneakers?
Brook grasped her shoulders, stilling her movements. “Liv, Curly and the guys are in church right now, talking to their attorney. She’s good, and she’ll get him out. What are you looking for?”
“My shoes! I need to do something. He can’t spend the night in jail.” He’d freak out. He hated small, enclosed spaces. No, he’d never told her, but she noticed things. He had a hard time riding in cars. The other day he mentioned something to Pulse about how he hated elevators. And that incident with the pantry? Total claustrophobic meltdown. “I’m going to get him the fuck outta there.”
“Olivia, you’re drunk. You can’t drive there.”
Shit. Brooke had a point. She didn’t feel drunk, but she had inhaled half a bottle of wine in the past half hour. “Drive me. Please.” She grasped her friend’s arms. “Please, Brooke. He can’t stay there. You know he’s struggling with some things. Trust me when I tell you, a jail cell is the worst place for him right now.”
Indecision crossed Brooke’s face. She stared at Olivia for a long moment. Each of those passing seconds felt like hours as Olivia tried her hardest to keep from shaking her friend. “Fine,” Brooke finally said, staring up at the ceiling. “Curly is gonna kill me. Gimme your car keys.”
Relief hit fast and hard. “Thank you,” Olivia said as she hugged Brooke. “Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I promise I’ll take all the blame. I’ll talk to Curly.” She spotted her sneakers near the kitchen. Releasing Brooke, she ran toward them, stuffed her bare feet inside, then grabbed her keys from the counter. “Here,” she said as she tossed them to Brooke.
Two minutes later, they were speeding toward the local police station. Olivia breathed, counted to fifty, and called upon her inner bitch. The one she’d tried to bury over the past few weeks. There was no way in hell she was leaving that police station unless Scott was in the car next to her.
CHAPTER TWELVE
SWEAT. HEAT. STALE air surrounded him.
Scott tried to breathe, but he couldn’t. The air was too thick, too heavy, too familiar. He was back. In the desert. In the box. Waiting for pain. Waiting for torture.
Waiting to see Deke.
No.
He shook his head and clenched his fists against his damp thighs.
Deke was dead. He’d died almost two years ago.
And Scott had been rescued from the desert. He couldn’t be back there. So why was he suffocating inside a sweltering box as walls closed in on him?
A harsh laugh ripped him from the past and deposited him on a hard bench in a tiny Florida jail cell. It had three solid concrete walls to his sides and back and one wall of bars in front of him.
Right. He’d been arrested for kicking the shit out of Dante. How the hell had he gotten on the compound? The fucker had dared to put his hands on Olivia. Christ, the panic in her voice as she pleaded with Dante to stop had instantly sent Scott into the uncontrollable rage he’d been experiencing more and more lately. The kind of anger that demanded action and results. A fury he had no choice but to charge into and use his fists to destroy.
His only regret was that Dante still breathed. Or at least he’d been alive when that hick cop slapped the cuffs around Scott’s wrists. Hopefully, Curly could get the club’s attorney there quickly because he wasn’t sure how much longer he could tolerate the cell. It didn’t matter that he could see the entire tiny building between the bars. The cell was still a box he couldn’t escape.
Last thing he needed was to lose his shit and give the cops a free show of his greatest weakness. No one knew about his issue with enclosed spaces. He didn’t want their pity, didn’t want their questions, and had no intention of telling anyone why he’d taken the door off his closet.
Fucking trauma. Sometimes he even struggled to close the door when he had to piss.
Another laugh made him glance up. Sweat dripped from his chin to the concrete floor.
