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“What?”
“Just think… if she went alone, or got a ride-share, no one would have been able to fight for her.”
That was… something I hadn’t considered yet.
If she’d been alone on that road, if someone hadn’t brought a gun, and a willingness to fight to the bitter end, would she have endured worse? Would the man or men who’d attacked her have continued to do so? Would she even be alive right now?
There were no answers to these questions, but I did feel a little better about having been there for her.
“You gonna go see her?” he asked.
“Gotta make sure she’s alright,” I said.
“You gonna ask her about the attack?
I hadn’t really considered that. But, yeah, Fallon would want me to pump her for details. Just in case this was in some way personal to the club.
“Delicately,” I said, getting a nod out of him.
“Figured you weren’t up for the run this morning,” Sutton said, coming into the kitchen, shirt wet with sweat after clearly having gone on his usual run by himself.
“You guessed right,” I agreed. “Ribs are smarting today.”
To that, he nodded as he grabbed a bottle of water, and ripped open an electrolyte packet to drop into it. “When I left the hospital last night, the girls were both out cold. I was getting eyes from the staff from hanging around, so I had to head out.”
“Any other updates before you left?”
“No, they were letting her rest. Place was fucking packed. Guess she wasn’t high priority when she was already sleeping. You heading up?” he asked.
“Soon as I finish my coffee,” I agreed.
“Not worried about the state of you?” he asked.
I hadn’t given that a second thought until that moment. But, I mean, we’d been attacked together. It wasn’t like she was my victim or some shit like that.
“Don’t give a fuck what they think,” I said, shrugging.
To that, he nodded as he made his way out.
An hour later, caffeinated and with some ibuprofen taking the edge off all of my aches and pains, I took the SUV to the hospital.
Only to find she wasn’t there.
She’d been discharged first thing in the morning.
To go where?
Home?
Down that same road where she’d been attacked?
Was she in danger there?
Did they possibly know where she lived?
I was back in the SUV in a flash, flying down the highway, then turning down her street, my stomach twisting hard as I drove past the area we’d gotten squeezed in.
But there was no one there.
Further down the road were several small ranch-style homes and a singular colonial duplex.
With no car in the drive.
I parked anyway, going to the side that didn’t have men’s work boots sitting out in front of the door, and knocking, ringing, listening.
Nothing.
“Damnit,” I grunted, sighing hard as I looked up at the house.
Maybe she’d been too freaked out to go home.
She could have gone to her sister’s place.
Unfortunately, though, I had no fucking idea where that was.
I grabbed one of the envelopes in her mailbox, scribbling my name and number on the back, then wedging it in the screen door before making my way back to the SUV.
As I climbed in, there was this weird-ass crushing sensation in my chest.
I didn’t recognize it as disappointment until I was halfway home.
CHAPTER FOUR
Lexy
It was the damn never-ending migraine that woke me up, squinting hard at the bright light streaming into the window of the room, the glare made worse from the sun dancing off the water of the Navesink River several floors below.
“Stupid fucking sun,” I grumbled as I threw my arm over my eyes, the pressure of it making the pain slightly more tolerable.
“Hold on. I’ll close the blinds,” Lottie said, voice hushed, but her chair scraped hard against the floor as she climbed off of it, making me wince.
She struggled with the task for a minute before the room darkened a bit.
“There,” she said. “Your head?” she asked, coming to the side of the bed, and grabbing my ankle through the thin blanket the hospital had given me.
“Yeah,” I said, peeling my arm off of my face, so I could open my eyes and look at her. “Yours too?” I guessed, seeing her red, heavy-lidded eyes. “Holy hangover, Batman,” I said, wondering how much she’d been able to drink between when I’d left and when she’d shown up at the hospital. It must have been a fuckton to have her looking so puffy.
“It’s not the hangover,” she insisted. “Well, not all the hangover,” she said.
I blinked a few times, trying to focus better on her. And, sure enough, there was a rawness to her cheeks that said she’d been crying.
She’d never been able to keep her emotions private because of her skin’s tendency to react to her own tears.
“Oh, Lott, I’m fine,” I said, reaching my hand out toward her, grabbing her wrist, and giving it a squeeze.
