“Who was that?” Stella asked.
“My best friend and his fiancée,” I told her. “She’s an ER nurse. What hurts?”
“My whole body,” she groaned, her breathing picking up.
“What specifically, Stella? Come on, try to focus.”
“My head. My hip?” she added, sounding less sure. “My forearms from putting them out to try and block the van. Oh, god, I got hit by a car. I got hit by acar.” She burst into tears. “Am I okay?”
I couldn’t let her just lie there anymore, and since she didn’t say her neck or back, I pulled her onto my lap. “You’re okay.” No thanks to me. “You’re not even bleeding, and she didn’t hit you that hard, just enough to knock the wind out of you. You hit your head when you fell, but you were only out for a minute or two.”
She sobbed even harder, and I didn’t know if it was because she was in that much pain or just traumatized.
“I hate you,” she said, trying to push away.
I held her easily, refusing to let her go, because for a second there, I’d thought I’d lost her forever. “I know.”
“This is your fault!”
“It is.”
She beat her fists against my chest, still crying, and I was glad, because it meant that she couldn’t have been hurt that badly if she was trying to fight me, right?
“I’m sorry,” I told her, pulling her close enough to drop a kiss on top of her head.
She punched me one more time and went still, her sides heaving, voice broken. “Why should I believe you?”
It wasn’t lost on me that she’d been forced to ask me that question multiple times. “Because I’m done lying to you, Stella. I thought you were dead. I thought I had gotten you killed, and it... shifted my perspective on things.”
She was silent for the longest moment of my life. “Finally realized that it’s actuallyyouwho’s in love withme,huh?”
“I wouldn’t go that far,” I said.
I’d spent my whole life so full of hate that I didn’t know if there was any room in my heart for love. But what I did know was that over the last several weeks, Stella had wormed her way into it against my will. I’d told myself I kidnapped her because I wanted someone else to bear witness to everything I’d been through, everything I had lost, and maybe that was true, but deep down, I hadn’t wanted her to get caught or arrested. I’d wanted a chance to explain myself. Hadhatedthe look of loathing and disgust on her face when she realized what I’d done, like we’d suddenly been reset back to day one.
So I’d done what I did best. Acted in my own self-interest without a thought for what anyone else wanted or needed. I’d forced, coerced, and bullied because I’d spent so long treating people that way that I’d forgotten there was any other way to behave.
In the distance, the first wail of sirens cut through the air.
I stared down at the woman in my arms, with no idea how to move forward from here, only knowing I wanted to move forward with her. And from this point on, I’d do whatever it took to make that happen.
33
Stella
“How much longer until weget to the hotel?” I asked.
“We’re almost there,” Tyler said.
I rested my head against the window as he drove, watching the sun dip toward the horizon. We’d just gotten out of the hospital, having spent most of the day there thanks to a combination of long wait times and the barrage of tests the doctors put me through, just to be sure.
Nothing was broken, and my concussion was minor. Mostly, I was just bruised and scraped to hell, and while the hospital staff had cleaned my lacerations, the rest of me was still filthy from the tunnels, and I badly needed a shower. I was starting to smell. And I was fucking exhausted. Not only had I been up for almost two days, but they’d been two of the most harrowing days of my entire life.
“Is Blake okay?” I asked. The least Tyler owed me was some goddamn answers.
“I don’t know, but he did manage to get past my goons.”
“You’re not going after him, are you?”
