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“Shit.”
The door swings open, making me jump, and Slade strolls in and frowns at me. I hate feeling fragile around him. Something in my expression must tell him that I’m barely hanging on by a thread because he doesn’t snap at me like he normally would. Instead, he walks over to me and lifts my hand, carefully removing the bandage to inspect it.
“The bleeding has stopped, and it’s started to scab. So, I don’t think it will need the bandage anymore. You’ll have to be careful, though,” he tells me before gently checking the cut on my forehead. Satisfied that it’s healing just as well, he throws both bandages in the trash and turns to look at me once more.
Without another word, he wraps his hand around my wrist and leads me back into the bedroom, walking me over to the bed. I sit on the edge of it and accept the glass of water he hands me.
“Here. Take these.”
I look at the pills in his hand and look up at his face.
He sighs and takes my empty hand and forces my fingers to open. “They are just regular over-the-counter painkillers. If I wanted to hurt you, I would have done so already.”
I don’t point out that half of these injuries are because of him. I take the pills and shove them in my mouth—before I can question my idiocy—and swallow them down with the water.
Once I’m finished, I hand it back to him and fiddle nervously with the hem of my T-shirt as he places the glass on the nightstand next to what I’m guessing is the ice pack.
He sees me looking at it and lifts it, placing it gently against my cheek. “It’s frozen peas, but it’s better than nothing. Now climb in. Some of us have to be up in a few hours.”
“I can sleep in the chair,” I offer quickly, my words bleeding into each other. He shakes his head and stalks over to the chair. I breathe a sigh of relief before realizing he’s only turning off the lamp.
When he stalks back to the bed, I’m left with no choice but to move over.
I stay on top of the covers, or that’s the plan. Jagger, who I thought had drifted off to sleep, yanks the covers back and tugs me until I’m lying down with the blankets covering my bottom half.
“Just sleep. Nothing is going to happen to you tonight.”
“So, I’m safe tonight, but tomorrow I’m fair game?”
I don’t even have a chance to get my thoughts together before Slade climbs in on the other side of me. He throws his arm across my waist as Jagger reaches out to make sure the ice pack is in place.
I blink and stare sightlessly up at the dark ceiling and wonder for the millionth time, why the fuck me?
CHAPTER EIGHT
Jagger
I watch her as she tries to relax and almost feel sorry for her. She has no idea what’s ahead of her. When I came home after giving the others a rundown of what happened, I never expected to find both Slade and Astrid asleep in my bed. I stood in the doorway like a creeper, watching them for a second, and felt something profound snap into place.
Oh, Slade might talk a good game when he’s awake. But when he’s asleep, his walls are down. He had no idea he was curled protectively around the woman he professes to dislike so much. Truth be told, I think she scares him far more than he scares her. Hell, she scares me too, and I don’t have half the trust issues that Slade does.
I contemplated sitting in the chair and watching over them, but I didn’t want Slade to think I don’t trust him with her. He’ll push her, of that I have no doubt, but he won’t cross the line. How I treat him is as much a test of our trust as all the rest of it. Being thrown in prison, especially the way he was, fundamentally changed something inside him. I don’t know the ins and outs of what went on behind bars, but I know it wasn’t good. So, yeah, some of Slade’s reactions are excessive, but they are done out of reflex. We don’t push him on it because he shuts down and disappears for days on end. I’d rather him be here where I can at least keep an eye on him than fuck knows where, doing fuck knows what, while he tries to forget the shitty hand he was dealt.
I’d closed the door and headed to Slade’s room before stripping down to my boxers, forgoing a shower before I climbed into bed.The next thing I knew, Slade was calling me.
Now they have both fallen back to sleep, and I find myself feeling restless. Lying on my back, I stare into the dark room and think about my talk with the others earlier.
“Why did she try to escape if she has nothing to hide?” Oz had asked, leaning back in his seat at the table.
“Why the fuck wouldn’t she try to escape? Lord knows I would have taken my shot the second I saw an opening,” Greg replied. He’s the most vocally opposed to this, but he won’t stand against us.
“Is she okay?” Zig asked, looking at me as I ran my hand through my hair.
“She’s pretty banged up. Slade sacked her like the former all-star football player he is.”
Crew winced. “Ouch. You gonna get Salem to heal her?”
Crew and Wilder came back late, so hadn’t met Astrid yet. All they knew was what they’d been told.
