“You okay, doll?” Jax asked in concern as he opened the back door for her.
She merely nodded as she slid inside the warm interior. Then she looked down in dismay.
“I’m getting the seats soaked,” she said, just as she broke down into tears again.
The door opened on the other side and Thane slid in next to her, holding a towel he’d seemingly summoned out of thin air. Were these men always prepared for anything?
He gently mopped at her dripping hair and wiped the water from her face and eyes, his lips drawn tight, anger glinting in his eyes.
“Where’s that blanket, Jax? Did you get it out of the back yet?”
In answer, a soft blanket was carefully wrapped around her shoulders. Thane pulled the ends together at her front and then leaned back in the seat, curling his arm around her so her head rested against his chest.
“Let’s get the fuck home,” Thane growled. “She needs to get into dry clothing. That little bastard can get his ass beat another time.”
As if Maddox had heard Thane’s demand, he slid into the backseat so that Hayley was now wedged between the two larger men while Jax got into the driver’s seat. A second later, they barreled into traffic and Hayley closed her eyes in exhaustion.
“Thank you, Maddox,” she whispered. “I doubt he’ll ever bother me again. He was getting to be a regular pain in my ass.”
“What thefuck?” Maddox demanded.
Hayley’s eyes flew open in alarm, her gaze instantly going to Maddox.
“This isn’t the first time you’ve had trouble from him?”
She shook her head.
“And you didn’t tell us this why?” Jax demanded from the front seat.
She looked at them in bewilderment.
“Darlin’, you have trouble from some pencil dick like that, you tell us. You do not show up to the same school he attends and continue to take his shit,” Thane snarled.
“I am so paying him a visit later,” Maddox muttered.
“No!” Hayley cried. “I don’t want any of you to get into trouble because of me. Maddox, you scared the wits out of him. He won’t ever get in my space again.”
“Yeah, well, sometimes the message needs to be reinforced,” Jax said in a grim tone.
“We won’t get into any trouble, darlin’,” Thane soothed. “But I can guarantee you that he won’t be trouble for you ever again.”
“Let’s just get you home,” Maddox said in a calm voice. “Silas is back. Let us worry about the dickhead trying to throw his weight around with a woman.”
Her face crumbled. The very last thing she needed to hear was that Silas was back. From the guys. Not one phone call or message from him ever since he’d left, and he couldn’t tell her himself when he planned toreturn? If she hadn’t already convinced herself he had no interest in her whatsoever, this would certainly have been the last straw.
She stared moodily out the window, refusing to meet any of their gazes as they zoomed through early-afternoon traffic. A few minutes later, they pulled up to Silas’s apartment building and Jax parked in one of the reserved spaces out in front. They helped Hayley from the car and hurried her toward the entrance. While the rain wasn’t as heavy as it had been fifteen minutes earlier, it was still coming down at a steady rate.
They rode up the elevator in the same silence that had cloaked the interior of the car, and when the doors opened, Silas was standing in the doorway to his apartment, a black scowl on his face.
“Nice to see you too,” she muttered to herself.
“Any of you ever heard of a fucking umbrella?” Silas snapped.
Hayley stared woodenly at Silas. “It’s raining, in case that escaped your notice. Surely you don’t expect them to control Mother Nature. I’m going to get changed.”
She turned to the men who had been such great company over the past few days, sad that she wouldn’t see them any longer.
“Thank you,” she said quietly. “For everything. I’m going to go dry off now. I’ll miss you all.”
