He pried his tired eyes open and saw Darren sitting in a chair next to his bed, a goofy smile on his face as he pocketed his phone.Slowly, bit by bit, it all came back to him.How he ended up in a hospital bed.Tinker.Him and Sadie being kidnapped by the fucker.Sadie!
“Where’s Sadie?”His voice cracked, barely above a whisper, but somehow his friend heard him.
Darren’s head shot up.“Jed.”Genuine relief sounded in his voice.“Glad to see you awake.How are you feeling?”
Jed cleared his throat.“I,” he started.His damn throat was so dry he could barely swallow.
“Here.Hang on.”Darren got to his feet and held a cup of water close enough for Jed to take a drink from a straw.“Don’t take too much at once.”
He released the straw and lay his head back on his pillow.“Where’s Sadie?Is she all right?”
Darren tipped his head toward the other side of his bed.Sadie was curled up in a ball, sleeping in a chair.He couldn’t see her face because her hair had fallen forward to cover it.
“How long has she been sleeping like that?”he asked.She had to be uncomfortable.Maybe he should give her one of his pillows?
“A couple of hours.She wouldn’t leave your side.She’s been waiting for you to wake up.”
One side of his mouth hitched up in a smile as his heart filled with love for her.If they were both there in the hospital, it meant they made it.But at what cost?
“Tinker?”He turned his attention back to Darren.
“What’s the last thing you remember?”His friend kept his voice quiet so as not to wake Sadie.
It took him a minute, but it finally came back to him.“I remember Tinker stabbed me because I asked who called him their bitch in prison when he started cutting her shirt.He did not react well.”Jed’s hand gingerly tested the area where he’d been stabbed.He felt a thick bandage under his gown and wondered what kind of damage he’d suffered.
Darren snorted.“No.He didn’t.And get your hands off that.You had to have surgery, and they gave you blood.You’re still hopped up on pain meds, so you won’t feel it if you hurt yourself.”His eyes crinkled at the edges as he asked.“After you were stabbed, what happened?”
His focus drifted to the end of his bed as he searched his memories.“I remember he cut her loose.He threatened to kill the baby if she tried anything."Darren's body stiffened, and his face flushed red at that news."Then he made her undress.He threw her on the couch and,” he frantically tried to remember what happened after that, but came up empty.“I passed out.Did she say what happened?Did he rape her?”He swallowed down the bile threatening to come up if Darren said she filled him in on what happened, and no, Tinker didn’t rape her.
“We must have gotten there right after Sadie killed Tinker.”
“What?”Jed nearly strangled.
“Yeah.She’s one fucking strong woman.”He shook his head, grinning.“You should have seen her.When we broke the door down and stormed inside, she was naked and covered in blood from head to toe.”
Jed tensed and looked to Sadie, reminding himself she was fine or she would be in a hospital bed, too.
“She looked like that scene fromCarrie, you know, the one at the prom?”When Jed’s brows hit his hairline, Darren nodded.“Yeah.And she was holding a hunting knife and standing between you and us.She wasn’t letting anyone near you.Race tried talking to her, but she was kind of out of it.She was in shock, so it took a minute, but I finally got through to her and talked her down so that Jackson could swoop in and take the knife away from her.”
Fuck.He missed a lot.He didn’t know whether he regretted that he hadn’t seen her in all her badass glory or not.If he’d seen her covered in that much blood, odds were he would have lost his mind.
Jed rubbed a hand over his head.“I’m almost afraid to ask, but how did she manage to kill him?”
“She said when he went to open his fly, she bit his neck and wouldn’t let go."He repeated everything she'd told him, ending with, "That’s when she straddled him, pulled the knife out of his chest, and slit his throat.That’s how she got covered in so much blood.”
“Son of a bitch.”He scrubbed his face with both hands.The images Darren’s tale created in his mind were bad enough.He was glad he hadn’t witnessed the real thing.
“We had her checked out when we got here.Bacon gave her ice for the swelling on her face, and he glued a small cut under her eye.He said it shouldn’t scar.She has a mild concussion, but other than that, she’s doing fine.”
“I feel like such a fucking failure for not keeping her safe.”Jed smashed his fist down onto the bed.
“You did the best you could under the circumstances.Just be glad she’s as strong as she is and that she was able to kill Tinker before he could do any more damage to her.You know he would have killed her after he was finished with her, right?”He leaned forward in his chair so that his elbows rested on his legs, his hands dangling between his knees.
“Yeah,” he replied, exhaustion seeping into his voice.It still didn’t ease his sense of failure.
He stared at the ceiling when he confessed, “I told her to do whatever she had to do to stay alive until you guys got there.Even if it meant letting Tinker fuck her.”God, he hated himself for saying that to her.What kind of man told his woman to let a psycho rape her if it meant she stayed alive?Apparently, him.
“I would have told Kylie the same thing.I’d rather she be raped and alive than dead.At least if she were alive, I could help her put herself back together again.I bet if you talk to Sadie, you’d see she understood why you were telling her that.”
