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After a few moments, we heard Doc's familiar voice, and sent him upstairs to check on Harleigh.
ChapterTwelve
HARLEIGH
It feltgood to be home.
To my surprise, they simply stepped aside and allowed me to pass without a word.
As soon as I stepped away and headed towards the stairs, the hum of their conversations picked up again. With each step I climbed, the vibration of their voices lessened until I finally reached my floor. The thought of coming up here alone was not something I wanted to do, but I couldn't bring myself to tell anyone about my plans to date multiple men. Adding another task to the list was the last thing I wanted to do after all I had been through.
We hadn't even had a conversation about what was happening between us and what it meant.
Sure there had been some sexy times.
Although none of us had defined what we had between us.
As I reached the top of the stairs, I considered the thought that Dimitri could have followed me. But at the same time, I wasn’t entirely disappointed he didn’t. Even after a week of separation, I truly wanted to be alone. The length of the solitude didn’t matter. I needed to come to terms with what had happened before I could figure out what needed to be done. Clearer heads would prevail, and that was exactly what I planned to wait for.
I needed to cleanse myself of everything I had been through.
And the first step of the process was for me to get into the shower and scrub every last piece of that dreadful basement off of my skin. With how disgusting I felt right now, it was hard not to be thankful. For as much shit as I had been through in the last week, nothing could have compared to what might have happened. My experience over the years told me I had only been dealt a fraction of what people who found themselves in a similar situation as mine, had to deal with.
I shook off the morose thoughts as I reached the door to my room. Without thinking, I immediately reached for the knob. Finding it unlocked, I eased the door open and let myself inside. The room was exactly how I had left it the night I went to find Dirk.
I thought back to that night and how it could have possibly gone so wrong. If only I had taken the precaution of not going alone, then maybe I wouldn’t have been kidnapped and taken to another province. Thankfully, they hadn’t spirited me off to another country. My family’s reach was far, but who knew where I would have ended up.
That night when I approached the trailer, I had been too cocky for my own good. Yes, women could be cocky. You didn’t have to have a dick to act like one. Thinking back, I had been lucky before then. However, even though from here on out I would need to consider my actions, it didn’t mean I would stop rushing into what others would consider dangerous situations. I would just be more careful.
The pros outweighed the cons in this situation though. ‘Cause even though I have no idea who knocked me out as I peered in Loraine’s window, I still saw enough. Loraine and Dirk shouldn’t have known each other, yet there they both sat at her kitchen. With all the connections we had, one of them should have turned up that little detail.
Then to see Jenny, the Old Lady of the Crow’s Road Captain, there with them, I felt completely blindsided. And then, before I could hit send on the photos I took, I was truly blindsided with a blow to the head. There was no time for me to get more evidence, or even report back to the guys before it was too late. With me being gone for a week, they had enough time to scramble and get more of their plan solidified into place.
Which meant, from this moment on, we needed to make careful, calculated moves.
Like moving pieces on a chessboard.
And if we were lucky, I would prove to be as powerful as the queen.
With that thought in mind, I walked across the room and stepped into my ensuite bathroom. There I stripped off all my clothes and tossed them in the laundry. What I really felt like doing was throwing them in the garbage, but that was wasteful. And with the risk of sounding like a prissy bitch, I really liked those shorts.
I stepped into the shower and twisted the showerhead to the side to allow the spray of the hot water to cascade down the tiles. Then I leaned against the side of the cool wall while allowing the water to trail over my aching body. There was something about having my face against the coolness of the tile while the shower pelted the rest of my body with water that was almost too hot to handle.
It was then that I allowed myself to feel the gravity of the situation I had only just this morning left. It could have been so much more than it was. Instead, I was only given a taste of what might have happened to me if Eric wouldn’t have found me as quickly as he had. It was proof that the allies we had amassed over the years would come in handy in the most trying of times.
As I lathered my hair with shampoo, I tried to push the thoughts out of my mind.
I winced as the soap soaked into the cuts on my feet.
By the time I was done with the shower I had decided I wouldn’t need the doctor to examine me. There was nothing we could do if they had done anything to me while I was unconscious. To most it might seem like a foolish idea, but we had to walk our own paths. No matter how much a person tried to imagine what it would be like in someone else’s shoes, one would never truly know what they had been through.
Sometimes not knowing was the only way to survive.
* * *
Just as I finished dressing,there was a knock at my door.
I padded over to the other side of the room, unlocked the door and even though I was sure of who it was, I still checked through the crack before completely opening it.
