“Yes, of course. Right away.” The nurse practically ran out of there to do his bidding. What the hell was going on? Then I started looking around at my surroundings and my heart skipped a few beats.
“What did you do?” I asked in a low whisper. “Why did that nurse come so quickly? Why do I have my own room?”
“I was not having you stay on a goddamn trolley in the emergency department when you’d been knocked unconscious,” Rafe said, his voice ringing with that authoritative tone again, which was starting to piss me off.
“I can’t afford a private room,” I said through my teeth.
His brows lowered. “You’re not paying for the room. I am. Obviously.”
“You’ve got to stop,” I said, my voice rising. I felt for the side table and blew out a relieved breath when my fingers closed over my glasses. My hands were shaking as I put them on. I blinked through the large crack in the centre of one of the lenses, but at least I could see clearly now.
“This has got to stop.” My eyes started to sting, and Rafe’s expression went from annoyed frustration to concern in an instant. I closed my eyes to shut him out and summoned up the way he’d looked at me in that courthouse corridor. He hadn’t been concerned then. I would never forget the disgust on his face as he looked down on me and then looked away. Never forget the pain of that rejection. I couldn’t go through that again.
“Clara, darling,” he started to say as he took a couple of steps back towards the bed, but I held up my hand to wardhim off and he came to an abrupt halt. He uncrossed his arms and reached back with one hand to grip the back of his neck, the muscles of his chest and arms flexing under his suit. Suddenly, I was wishing that I didn’t have my full vision back again. Rafe in all his gloriousness was enough to short-circuit any woman’s brain into making poor choices. I’d made enough poor choices already. Number one of those was the Big Terrible Thing.
“Let me take care of you.” His voice now had an almost pleading quality to it which was so un-Rafe-like it took me a few seconds to answer.
“I’m going back to ED,” I told him, trying to keep my voice steady. “Then I’m going back to my flat.” I looked around at all of them standing around the bed with various expressions of concern on their faces. “You should all distance yourselves from me.”
“Clara,” Lily snapped. “What the hell are you––?”
“I’ve put you in enough danger as it is. I won’t continue to risk other people’s safety.” I swallowed, and when I spoke again, my voice had dropped like it always did when I discussed the Big Terrible Thing. “I shouldn't have done it. They can’t protect me. It wasn’t worth it. But I’ve learnt my lesson. I’m going to take Zach and we’ll go somewhere. Maybe even out of the country. It’s not safe here. I can’t––”
“You will do no such bloody thing,” Rafe said. The concern from before had been replaced with near fury now. “You’re not going anywhere.”
“It’s not safe for me here,” I said, my voice cracking over the words. How could he not understand this? “They won’t stop now that they know. I’m a sitting duck and I?—”
“Of course you’ll be safe.” His voice now was full of complete masculine affront. “I’llbe keeping you safe.”
“No, you will not. I’m leaving and youcan’t––”
“That’s enough!” His voice cracked through the room like a whip. If it had just been the shout, then maybe I could have managed not to react, but he accompanied it with his hand slashing through the air to make his point. The combination brought out my deep-seated survival instincts. My hands went up to cover my face, I cringed back into the bed and I let out a frightened whimper which seemed to suck all the energy from the room. “Shit,” Rafe muttered in horror. “Shit, Clara, baby, I––”
“Stay back, Rafe,” Lily said, her voice shaking as she moved to me and took me in her arms. “It’s okay, love. You’re safe here.”
I burrowed into her, and that’s when the floodgates opened. “I thought I was d-d-doing the right thing,” I said through my sobs as I soaked Lily’s jumper with my tears. “I c-c-couldn’t see another way. I thought they’d keep us safe, b-b-but I just made things worse. We’ll never be safe. I d-d-don’t even know where Zach is.”
“Zach’s fine, hun,” Lily said, her voice shaking with tears as well now. “He’s fine. And what you did was incredibly brave.”
“I’m not b-b-brave,” I said in a broken whisper. “I’m scared all the time. I’m so tired, Lily. I’m so tired of this fear.”
Chapter 34
Oh, you want the police here now?
Rafe
“Listen, Sterling,”Grant said as we all disembarked from the cars. “This isn’t exactly your scene. Why don’t you let us handle things and you get back to your cosy courtroom?”
I glared at Grant. “Ah yes, because you’ve beenhandling thingsso well up until now? The ten stitches in the side of my girlfriend’s head tell me everything I need to know about how you were handling things.”
“Fuck you,” Grant spat. “I didn’t see you protecting your fucking girlfriend either, mate. Not by the way you shook her off at the courthouse like she was shit on the sole of your aristocratic shoe. So don’t go blaming me for not protecting her.”
“I didn’t have all the information,” I said through gritted teeth. “Had I known that Clara was an informant, then I––”
“You didn’t bloody well listen to her!” Grant snapped. “I know I fucked up. We should have moved against the Masons earlier, but we wanted to be sure. We wanted tobuild the best case possible, and that meant giving them the opportunity to incriminate themselves even more whilst we were listening. But Ineverwanted Clara to get hurt. And if she’d have come tome,Iwouldn’t have ignored her and walked away. So fuck you and your judgement.”
I tamped down my anger. Grant was right, but the fact remained that he’d had all the facts and he still hadn’t protected Clara when he should have. “Fine, but this is getting sorted today. That’s why I’m here. And remember what you promised?”
