Jaws locked.
Arms crossed over their chests.
Backs ramrod straight.
But it isn’t because they’re angry with Lucky.
They want to kill the bastard who did this to her—just like I do.
Because they’ve grown to love her, too. The past several weeks, she’s become one of us—a McBride. Not bound by blood, but something strong, something that means more.
Feeling the way her body trembles under my hands and how terrified she is to be revealing all this to a complete stranger is enough to make me want to pull her into my arms and end it immediately.
I ache to whisk her away to the top of the mountain, where we can hole up again in the cabin and shut out the world. But weeks of doing just that haven’t changed anything.
And until this is resolved, Lucky will always have one foot on the road, ready to run.
Attorney Snow can’t help her if he doesn’t know what happened, if he doesn’t have all the facts, no matter how agonizing it might be for her to speak these words again.
Lucky sucks in a sharp breath that makes her whole body shake, and I reach over her and open the bottle of water on my desk, handing it to her. She takes a long sip from it, using the short reprieve to gather her thoughts and courage.
Attorney Snow seems to sense she needs a moment, focusing on whatever he’s writing, giving her a moment to compose herself.
I lean down and brush my lips against her ear, inhaling that eucalyptus scent of her shampoo that I’ve become so addicted to. “Are you okay?”
She nods, setting the water on the desk with a quivering hand. “I have to do this, right?”
Her distress claws at my chest, and my gaze flicks back up to Killian and Connor, who have tried to get me to talk for months while I’ve resisted and resisted—over and over again—because it would be too painful.
It wasn’t fair to them or Willow, who, of all people, could probably understand what I have been going through. But I wasn’t prepared to suffer that agony. Wasn’t ready to confront it.
My meltdown on the mountain the other day put a crack in that dam, but it’s still hard to let it fall fully. Allowing all those emotions I’ve bottled up since learning the truth about my father to filter out slowly rather than in a deluge of anger and fear feels so much safer.
But Lucky doesn’t have that option.
It’s all or nothing.
I’d much rather take her home, lay her out on the bed, and give her a reason not to think about it for hours, but I nod and feather a kiss to her temple. “You do. But I’m right here. I’m not going anywhere. I’ve got you, Bluebell.”
She clears her throat, her hands tightening in the material of her shirt, as if she needs something physical to ground her during this. “I didn’t know what was happening. I was”—she releases a little huffed laugh—“naïve, I guess. The day it happened, I went to go make my deposit right before the bank closed. The street was always fairly deserted at that time, but that day, there were two dark SUVs parked in front of the bank, their windows tinted so you couldn’t see in. Brad walked across the street like normal, with my free hand in his.” Her voice wavers, and she takes another sip of water. “But instead of moving right to the bank door, he banged on the window of one of the vehicles. The doors flew open, and eight men climbed out of them, dressed in black fatigues with masks covering their faces. One of them grabbed my arm and put a gun to my head, shoving me toward the bank?—”
A sob slips from her lips, and she presses her hand over her mouth as I wrap my arm across her chest from behind her, trying to hold her the only way I can through this.
I need the connection as much as she does.
It seems to settle her after a moment, and her unsteady, hitched breathing slows.
“I tried to fight them, to pull away, but they were strong.” She shakes her head, as if trying to clear the memory. “And they had so many guns. They told me they would shoot me if I tried to resist, if I didn’t help them.”
She squeezes her eyes closed, several tears sliding down her cheeks, and I can feel the tension radiating from her body, as if she is struggling to contain a full-on breakdown.
I press my hand directly over her thudding heart, and she reaches up and entwines our fingers.
“They…used me as a hostage. Told the teller to get everything out of the vault, which they had open to move in everything at the end of the day. Which Brad knew because he’d been watching how they did things every day for the past two months. Because he’d come in with me.” Her blue hair fans around her face as she shakes her head again. “Everything happened so fast. We weren’t in there more than two minutes, and then they walked me out and shoved me into the SUV where Brad was waiting.”
She exhales another shuddering breath.
“I-I thought they were going to kill me. I asked what the fuck just happened, what was going on, and he told me to shut the fuck up. I looked at him, and I was looking into the eyes of somebody I didn’t know.”
