“Tate.”
“No.”
“Tate!” I reached over, and he smacked my hand away.
I should have left it at that, but I needed to talk to Drew. Taking a chance, I pushed myself across the center console, realizing a second too late that the car swerved in the same direction I had.
Chapter Eighteen
Drew
Ifelt every word she directed at Tate, even though I couldn’t hear anything as I stayed low in my seat and watched them through the tinted windows of the truck. Her feet were stamping all over the place, her mouth moving fast and those little frown lines of hers appearing on her forehead. Even angry, she still made me smirk. I found her hot as hell when she couldn’t control her emotions.
The disappointment I felt was quickly replaced with a need to grab her by the shoulders and make her listen to my apologies. I might not have been able to give her the white picket fence lifestyle, but that didn’t mean I wouldn’t make sure she had everything she’d ever want that money couldn’t buy.
As she sped off in her car, the back wheels spun uncharacteristically and I knew Tate was getting the ass ripping of his life. If only I could tell her what we’d found on that cut, maybe then she’d realize just how good the kid had done out there.
But all of that could and would be dealt with later. I was more interested in seeing her face when I pulled up beside her, showing her I could be just as defiant as she was capable of being. I rolled out of my spot in the shadows, following herdown the small lanes of traffic until a car pulled away in front of the truck, leaving me directly behind her.
Then everything happened quickly. The brake lights flashed a couple of times as if they’d been caught by accident, the outline of her body reaching over to where Tate sat. Somewhere over the next few seconds, I stopped breathing.
Her car swerved across the road, hitting the grass banking on the right, unstopping as the back end of her Corolla vanished over the edge.
“Fuck, no. Please, no.” My spine stiffened as I yanked the wheel to the right, skidding to a halt at the top and jumping out as fast as I could.
All I could think about was getting to her. All I could do was hold all the breath in my lungs and move on autopilot, barely even registering the sound of the bikes that rode past me as I slammed my hand on the hood of the truck and ran full sprint to where she was.
The grass banking wasn’t steep, by some stroke of fucking luck, but the cold weather and rain of the week had sent the mud to the surface, causing me to slide down like Bambi on fucking ice as soon as my foot made contact. The thick soil clung to my leg, but I didn’t slow, jumping up from the bottom as soon as my feet landed on more even terrain again. The car had stopped completely, the tail lights on full as the car seemed to sit there, waiting until one of us remembered how to breathe again.
The edges of my cut swung under my arms as I ran to her, sliding to a stop at her side before even thinking to check on Tate. I grabbed the handle, yanking the one thing standing between us away as I shouted her name through a heavy, strangled breath.
“Ayda!”
Leaning in, I reached out to her shoulders in a panic as her hands remained clung to the wheel, her head bowed low and her eyes closed, every breath she took in, deep and slow. The groan of pain and disorientation seemed a long time coming. Her hands dropped from the wheel and raised to her head where a trickle of blood slowly started to descend from a fast forming bruise.
“Fuck. Tate?”
Pushing myself farther in, I leaned over to Tate and carefully gripped his shoulder.
“Tate, buddy, talk to us.”
His head rolled lazily from side to side, but the twitching of his arms as he flexed his fingers back and forth told me enough. He was fine, but shaken up to fuck. Groaning as I reached farther over, not wanting to press my body weight on Ayda in case she was hurting anywhere else, I hooked my hand under Tate’s chin and carefully began to raise his head. The small hiss and moan of pain as his hand flew up to the back of his neck had me pausing.
“That hurt?”
“Just a bit,” he winced out, managing to lift his eyes up to mine as he moved at a much slower pace. “Whiplash or something. No big deal. Ayda? You okay?”
“I don’t know. I’ll tell you when everything stops hurting.” She groaned, her hand moving to where the seat belt was cutting into her shoulder. I wasn’t sure what was happening as she slowly started to tremble, and then, without warning, she burst into tears, her head burying in her hands as “sorry” came out in a frequency only dogs could decipher.
Moving without much thought, I unclipped her seatbeltand pushed it away from her, somehow wedging myself in the footwell as I grabbed her face in my hands and held her. I’d never held a crying woman that way before, but I knew that all I wanted to do was kill every one of those tears that dared to fall down her face. I wanted to destroy anything that was causing her pain.
“Tell me what’s hurting,” I whispered, my eyes briefly leaving her covered face to glance down at her body before rising to the bump on her temple. Her shitty old car had no airbags, so I could only imagine the force she hit the steering wheel with when she somehow slammed to a stop. “Is it just your head, darlin’?”
“My head, my heart, my pride… I’m so sorry, Drew. I was a bitch.” She reached out with her right hand, and without much prompting, Tate’s fingers wrapped around hers and squeezed. “I’m sorry, Tate. I didn’t mean—”
The sob that had been building stole her voice.
“Come on, A. I’m fine,” Tate grumbled quietly, looking between his sister and me, asking me for help.
