Everything starts spinning in circles until there’s a jarring impact and the world turns upside down again and again with my books flying everywhere and hitting me in the face. When it comes to a hard stop, my head slams into the window with a crack and then darkness.
“Ow! D-daddy? Daddy! Where are you?”
White is all I can see from every window like the car was swallowed by a snow bank. I fight my seat belt and when I get it off my body falls to the side against the far door like the car is tilted sideways. I pull myself back up using the front seats and lean between them.
“Daddy, we had a crash. Dad? You need to wake up.”
I reach out and pull him away from the steering wheel that he’s slumped over and that’s when I see the blood and the jagged piece of metal sticking into his side. I scream his name over and over, begging him to wake up, begging him not to leave me but he never opens his blue eyes that look just like mine.
“The doors were pinned from the rollover twisting the metal. We… we went over a guardrail down into a gully. I couldn’t get out and I couldn’t find his phone to call for help.”
Beck’s fingers slide out of my hair to my neck and he rubs the tension out of it.
“How long, darlin’? How long were you trapped with him in that car?”
I squeeze my eyes closed and whisper, “Sixty-four hours. Two and a half days before someone spotted the broken guardrail and thought to look over it.”
His lips hit the top of my head and press down before he asks what everyone asked when they heard about how long I was in that car with a dead man and no heat.
“How did you survive so long in the cold?”
I shake my head against his chest because that’s the one thing I’ve never said out loud. I can never tell anyone that I pressed up against my dying father’s body to stay warm and when he went cold and hard, I struggled to peel his jacket from his lifeless body to use as a blanket. It’s a weight of shame that never goes away. There have been so many days since then that I wished that I had let go and joined him instead.
Beckett just holds me closer and doesn’t force me to answer him and I’m eternally grateful for that. I’m starting to drift to sleep when his voice rumbles out under my ear.
“My mom, she hung herself when I was eight. She always met me at the bus when I got home from school but she wasn’t there that day. I found her in their walk-in closet. I wasn’t big enough then, but I tried. I held onto her legs and tried to hold her up. My dad found us there two hours later when he got home from work.”
My fingers press harder against his chest in support. To let him know I hear him, feel for him, and understand on a level that many couldn’t.
His voice gets even lower as he says, “You know how you survive something that tries to take you out, Peaches?”
I make a tiny shake of my head, my fingers clenching and twisting into fists his t-shirt. He’s quiet for so long that I don’t think he’s going to answer but then he tucks his chin down so his face is pressed to my hair and breathes out the words.
“Any way you can.”
SAVY
When I wake, Beckett is gone and bright sunlight floods the room. The storm is over and that means this strange interlude I just had with these four men is over as well. Female laughter from downstairs proves that to be true in a way that makes my heart hurt a little bit. It’s time for me to leave and go back to my real life. I roll over and bury my face in Beckett’s pillow and breath his scent in, trying to hold on to being a part of this group, of belonging, for just a few minutes more but I know I’m just delaying the inevitable. With one last sniff of his pillow, I force myself to get up. I should go find my clothes in Tate’s room and change. I need to order a car and get back to my place to shower and check to see if classes have resumed yet. I have a shift later today at the library scheduled so even though I don’t want to leave, I know I have to.
I wind my hair back up into a bun, snag my glasses from the nightstand where Beck must have left them for me, and wander out into the hall heading to Tate’s room to change. As I’m passing one of the other bedrooms, a grunt has me glancing through the door and my feet stumble to a stop.
Jude is standing next to his bed completely naked and there’s no way my eyes aren’t mapping every beautiful bulge of muscle across his chest, memorizing each tattoo and spotting the silver bar through one nipple. I track down his torso, taking in his rippling abs straight to the back of the blond head that he’s got his hands on holding firm as he thrusts into her mouth. I suck in a breath and for a split second I hate him just a little bit for doing this and worse, I hate myself a little bit for wishing it was me on my knees in front of him.
“Morning, baby doll! Wanna come in and join? We don’t mind sharing in this house.”
My eyes rise up to meet his golden ones for a beat and then I’m turning and practically running the rest of the way to Tate’s room. I force the image of Jude’s naked body out of my mind and quickly get dressed in my own clothes for the first time in two days but at the last minute, throw one of Tate’s hoodies over my blouse instead of my cardigan. I’m taking it as a reminder of this weirdly wonderful weekend with them. I stuff my sweater in my bag and run down the stairs. The kitchen island is filled with takeout coffee cups and bags of breakfast sandwiches that I’m guessing the three girls crowding the space brought with them.
All three of them are perfectly put together with curled hair, flawless makeup, and cute outfits of skinny jeans and tight sweaters that show off thin, toned bodies. I feel like a lumpy glob of clay next to them and based on the sneering looks as they scan me from head to toe, they agree with that assessment. The one with gleaming, long red hair huffs out a laugh in my direction.
“What the hell are you doing here?”
I look past her and spot Ash leaning against the counter further down while sipping from a takeout coffee. He has a stack of black leather bracelets on his wrist that hide some of his ink and some of his dark hair dangles in front of one eye, making my fingers itch to brush it back until his eyebrows go up in an amused look like he agrees with the question.
“She’s my fucking girlfriend. Savy’s supposed to be here. The better question is, what the fuck are YOU doing here, Paisley?”
Tate’s arms slide around me from behind as she pouts prettily and I let myself lean back into his support for a brief moment before turning around to face him.
“I need to go. I work later today and have some stuff I need to get done.”
