Briggs points at Ryan like he just won a championship. “That’s a supportive witness.”
“You don’t get one,” Easton says.
“I get several. I’m fragile.”
“You are the least fragile person I know.”
“I contain layers.”
“You contain noise,” Rider says.
I am about to say something that will probably ruin my reputation forever when someone shouts my name from the far side of the parking lot.
“Mercer!”
My body reacts before my brain catches up.
So do the guys.
The whole mood changes in one breath. Easton shifts to my left. Ryan’s shoulders square. Rider’s joking expression disappears. Briggs turns, and even he looks sharp now, all the lazy chaos gone from his face.
After the conversation we had this morning, none of us hears a man yelling my name in a dark parking lot and assumes it’s nothing.
Two guys are running toward us beneath the harsh glow of the lights, shoes splashing through shallow puddles, breath coming hard. For half a second, I don’t recognize them through the rain and distance.
Then one of them gets close enough for the light to hit his face.
Emmitt Bennett.
Kellen is beside him, and Lyon is behind them, not running as fast but moving with the same panic carved into every line of his body.
My blood goes cold, not because they look angry but because they look terrified.
Emmitt reaches us first, almost slipping on the pavement when he stops. His face is pale, eyes wild, chest heaving like he sprinted the whole way from hell, and every stupid joke still living in the air between us dies before he even opens his mouth.
“It’s Bliss,” he says.
The world goes silent, and my body locks so hard I barely feel my hands.
“What?” My voice doesn’t sound like mine.
“She’s at the hospital,” Kellen says, and his voice breaks on hospital in a way that turns my spine to ice. “Luke fucking—”
He can’t finish.
Lyon catches up behind them, one hand braced on his knee, breathing hard. “He beat her. Some guys found her on the road. They saw his truck leave, called it in, and stayed with her until the ambulance got there.”
For one second, I don’t move.
I don’t blink.
I don’t breathe.
Then everything inside me drops out.
Briggs whispers, “What?”
Kellen’s face twists, rage and fear tearing through him at the same time. “Broken ribs. Bruised sternum. Concussion. Her face is—” He drags both hands over his head, shaking. “Her fucking face, man. Her larynx is bruised. He had his hands on her throat.”
