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“Nolan,” Sawyer says cautiously, “Liv’s here.”
“Li—” he stops as I turn to face him. He inhales sharply as he looks at me. “Livvy?” He moves toward me so fast I don’t have time to move away before his arms are wrapped around me.
I wince as his arm moves over my tender ribs. The beating Tripp gave me the night before I escaped was especially violent. The past few months he’s moved on from mostly mental and emotional abuse to physical violence.
“Sorry.” He loosens his grip on me but doesn’t release me as his hands travel down my spine. “What happened to you?”
I step back and his arms fall to his sides. “I need your help,” I say weakly. I’ve barely spoken the past few days and my voice is scratchy. “Any help you are willing to give me. I ran from Tripp, left everything behind aside from the cash our butler gave me as he helped me escape.” I turn my body so I’m facing both of them.
“Escape?” Sawyer asks, his brow creased with concern.
I nod. I’m not ready to launch into the full story yet, not when I don’t know if I’m safe here. “I wasn’t safe. I’m probably still not.”
“You’re safe with us,” Nolan says with narrowed hazel eyes, managing to sound comforting and commanding.
“Can you explain anything?” Sawyer leans back against his desk and crosses his arms. “Or would you rather wait until Lake and Grant are with us?”
“I don’t want to explain everything more than once.” I don’t even know if I can talk about it at all. “But if you don’t feel safe helping me, I understand. I can go. I have enough cash to find a hotel room somewhere.”
“You’re not going anywhere without one of us with you,” Sawyer says.
“And you’re sure as fuck not staying in a hotel room somewhere,” Nolan adds. “We’re not fucking afraid of Tripp.”
Sawyer looks up from his phone at me. “Lake is on his way to our apartments. Do you want to just go there instead of waiting here? It might be easier to relax.”
I agree, so he grabs what he needs and turns off the light in his office. They fall in step with me, Sawyer leading and Nolan at my back. My heart rate starts speeding up as Sawyer hits the button for the elevator. They both get in and give me puzzled looks when I take a few seconds to follow. I bite my lip and start counting as the doors close. Both of them look at me with worried expressions. Nolan relaxes his lanky body against the wall and links his pinky finger with mine.
“You know what’s crazy?” he asks without looking over at me.
I don’t reply, but I squeeze his finger with mine.
“I heard a song that always reminds me of you the other day. ‘Brown Eyed Girl,’” he smirks down at me, “a Van Morrison classic and our sixteen-year-old theme song.” He launches into the opening lines of the song and part of my heart lifts. He’s still Nolan, the guy who introduced me to all things rock. The guy who would lie on a blanket next to me for hours, watching clouds and listening to music and letting me run my fingers through his wavy auburn hair. He keeps singing to me, even as people get on the elevator and give him annoyed looks.
2
OLIVIA
The elevator takesus straight down to the parking garage below the office building and I follow them to a sleek black sedan. Sawyer drops into the driver’s seat, and Nolan holds the back door open for me. I settle in and buckle my seat belt.
Even if I didn’t already know this was Sawyer’s car by the fact that he’s driving, I wouldn’t have any trouble guessing. Everything is neat, clean, and orderly. There’s not even a fingerprint. The Nolan I remember wouldn’t drive a car this fancy, and there’d be receipts and fast-food wrappers all over.
“Okay, Livvy.” Nolan looks at me over his shoulder as he opens a tablet on his lap. “How much trouble are you in, and do I need to scrub CCTV footage of you?”
“A lot.” I blow out a breath and allow myself to relax for the first time in years. “I don’t know what CCTV is.”
“Closed circuit television. Security footage essentially. All I need to know is how you got here, plane, train, that type of thing.”
“I took a bus from Chicago.”
“A bus?” Both of their heads turn as they question me in unison.
“Yeah, I didn’t have much money so I went the cheapest way I could to get here.”
“Okay,” Nolan starts tapping away on the tablet. “I’ll scrub all the footage from the bus station and surrounding street cameras. I’ll also erase the footage from our building. Keep your hood up, and put these on.” He hands me a pair of sunglasses over his shoulder.
“Is that legal?” I ask as I slide the glasses on and tuck my hair in the hoodie.
“Of course not,” he answers with an arrogant smirk.
