“Sweetheart, put your hands up, but stay where you are, okay?” I said. “It’ll be okay, I promise.”
She was so pale that I was a little worried she might pass out, but she did what I said and lifted her hands.
I glanced at Sage and sent him a silent message. I saw his mouth move, but the cops chose that moment to bust into the room, yelling at us not to move, so I couldn’t be sure the words Sage had seemed to say weren’t just a figment of my imagination.
But I held onto them just the same.
Because I’d been waiting what felt like a lifetime to hear them.
I love you, Cash.
Chapter 5
Daisy
I couldn’t stop shaking.It’d been hours, and Istillcouldn’t stop shaking. Cash and Sage had assured me it was normal.
The cops too.
But it didn’t make it any easier.
I jumped when I heard a car door slam.
“Shhh,” Sage said as his arm tightened around me. “It’s just a car door closing,” he said gently.
I managed a nod, but found myself burrowing deeper into his side.
We were lying on one of the two queen-sized beds in the hotel outside Columbus. We’d been there for almost an hour since the cops had released us, and the sun was just starting to come over the horizon. Sage had tried to urge me to sleep, but I was afraid to close my eyes.
I was also afraid to let him go.
I hadn’t been this off-balance since my mother had been killed. There’d been no one to cling to back then.
I jumped when there was a quick knock on the hotel door.
“It’s Cash,” Sage murmured as he placed a kiss on the top of my head.
“Right,” I said as I forced myself to sit up. The door opened and a rush of relief went through me when I saw that Cash was okay. He’d only gone to pick up Ronan and Memphis from the small airfield where Ronan’s jet had landed, but I couldn’t get past the fear that somehow the guys who’d taken Dylan would find Cash and hurt him.
After the cops had arrived at my apartment, Cash and Sage had been put in handcuffs. I hadn’t been, but an officer had pulled me aside to question me. I’d frantically explained to him that Cash and Sage were my friends and that they’d saved me, but it had taken a good half hour and telling my story to three different officers before Cash and Sage had been released from the cuffs. We’d all had to go to the police station and I’d been on my own for a couple of hours while we were individually questioned. I wasn’t proud of it, but I’d started to cry again when Cash had been brought to the room I’d been interviewed in. He’d held me for the longest time, whispering words of praise in my ear and reminding me I was safe and no one would ever hurt me again.
I’d never wanted him to let go.
All the humiliation I’d been feeling about what had happened that night in the motel in Seattle had fallen by the wayside. My fear for Dylan, the memory of Lee groping me, the fear of never again seeing the men I worked with… it had been a brutal wake-up call for me. I’d been so numb for so long after I’d lost my mother that I hadn’t even realized how being on the fringe of Ronan’s group of men had changed me.
Somewhere along the way, I’d stopped being on the fringe and they’d become something more.
They’d become my family.
My days had stopped being about hiding from the world and had become all about helping people like me find justice. I didn’t wield a gun, but I protected people all the same. I made it so maybe there was a girl out there who wouldn’t lose her mother too soon and in the most violent of ways.
Sage helped me to stand and I was immediately enfolded in Ronan’s arms. My eyes watered as he held me tight.
He was the reason I was still here.
After my mother’s death, I’d been driven by the need for revenge and it had nearly cost me my own life.
Something I hadn’t really even cared about.
