And there…her head resting on his thigh, one arm wrapped around his back, fingers tightly fisted into his tee. The other hand clenches the edge of the sweatshirt he has draped around her. Our girl.
The pronoun slips itself into my mind. However, once it’s there, I realize it fits. I can fight this shit all I want, but the fact is she’s here, and until she’s well again, she has to stay. She has nowhere else to go until we find her family. I may be heartless and cold, saying things I don’t mean, but I’m not cruel enough to toss her out onto the street.
Elias’s eyes harden, and his jaw clenches, and then he resumes singing. The fucker is pissed. He’s not the only one.
The girl in his lap starts to stir, and I take that as my cue to get out of here. Without a word, I push off from the wall and stalk to Elias’s room. Looks like he’s got her covered tonight, so I’m not taking the fucking couch. The sound of her retching follows me down the hall, and I close the bedroom door quietly behind me.
I strip naked and shower, washing the weekend of booze, coke, and chicks down the drain.
Then I go to bed alone.
I wake up the next morning cranky with a lifeless dick and feeling like hell—what a weekend of hard partying and drugs do to a man. I dress groggily. Jeans, black tee, socks, and boots. After that, I wander to the kitchen in search of coffee.
What I find instead is her.
I stop in the mouth of the hallway and take her in. She’s starting to heal nicely. And it’s amazing what a good shower can do for someone, but she’s still too damn skinny. The tee Elias gave her is drowning her. The hem nearly reaches her knees, and the sleeves hang to her elbows. And the black makes her sickly pale skin even more noticeable.
The sight makes my stomach sour and clench. This is fucking stupid, she’s not my damn responsibility, but I can’t help feeling like I got to get some food in her.
I can’t let her get attached. People become something to me, and they wind up dead. I won’t take any more casualties.
I clear my throat and move toward the kitchen, but even that small noise scares the shit out of her. She jumps as if she was electrocuted and drops the mug in her hands to the floor. It shatters into a hundred pieces.
Fuck.
A whimper slips past her lips before she drops to her fucking knees in a pile of glass shards and starts sweeping them up with her hands. What the fuck?
“Stop!” I command, my voice rough from the weekend so it comes out scarier than I intended. She whimpers again but thankfully stops moving.
Frozen solid and won’t look at me. Jesus.
Glass crunches beneath my boots as I cross the room. My legs want to race over to her, but I force myself to slow. She’s afraid enough.
I walk around her, giving her the chance to see my face and that I mean no harm. Blood drips from her hand, and I bet she has glass embedded in her knees too. “What were you thinking?” I question before I can stop myself. I’m angry she’d be so damn careless.
“I-I-I-I’m sorry. I’ll clean it up.”
God, her voice is broken. Everything about her is broken. I need to clean her up, then put her somewhere she’ll be safe and out of my way.
Without thinking, I reach out to lift her away from the glass. I realize my mistake too late.
The girl lets out a small scream and thrusts herself backward to get away from me—right onto more glass. Her palms smack the floor to break her fall, and she lands on her ass. The cry of pain goes straight to my gut, but the look on her face sears itself into my brain. The torment and terror etched there is something I’ll never forget. She’s torn between the risk of asking for help or scurrying across the shards to get away. Holy fuck, the trauma this girl must have endured.
Taking a note from Elias, I crouch down and hold my hands up. In the gentlest tone an angry bastard of my size can muster, I try to calm her. “I won’t hurt you. You’re bleeding, and I need to help you.”
She drops from her palm to her elbow and tries dragging herself backward.
Fuck this. “Stop!” I command again.
She instantly freezes.
“Look at me.”
Her throat works on a swallow. But then, slowly, she lifts her eyes to mine.
I try to ignore the punch to my gut. “I’m gonna lift you, carry you to the bathroom, and clean out the glass from your hands and knees. Got it?”
Then the most fucked-up thing happens. I watch as those two watery eyes of hers go completely dead and shutter against the world. Blank. Lifeless. Empty.
“Whatever you wish,” she says in a monotone, robotic voice.
Oh, fuck.
“Stay with me. Don’t give me that shit. You aren’t back there, you hear me? You are here.” My heart pumps wildly. Picking her up, I rush down the hall to the bathroom and set her gently on her feet. “Stay with me. Say something. Tell me my name.”
While I dig in the cabinet beneath the sink, she responds. “I don’t need your name to give you what you want.”
My head whips around to look at her. “You aren’t back there, girl. Tell me my name.”
“I can suck your dick for fifty, but sex is two hundred.”
Jesus Christ!
I find the kit, slam it on the counter, and surge to my feet. When my hand hooks around her neck, she doesn’t even flinch, and I pull her so we are face to face. “Sin. My name is Sin, and you are safe.”
It doesn’t work.
For the first time in a long time, I feel something akin to fear.
If I can’t snap her out of it, I need to at least get her cleaned up. I drop to my knees without breaking my fall, but the pain doesn’t register. The only thing I feel is a desperate need to get this girl back to reality and cleaned up. Then I can get on my bike and get the fuck out.
Cupping the back of her right knee with one hand, I rinse her wounds with water from a saturated rag. Bloodied rivulets of water course down her shin and calf, dripping steadily to the floor. With the blood washed away, several shards of glass glisten from where they’re embedded into her skin.
After snagging the kit and the tweezers, I peek up at her. The girl stands stoically. Face pale and hair hanging limp, she doesn’t even twitch.
She’s still lost in the world her body no longer resides in, but her mind has never left.
My jaw clenches. This shouldn’t happen. Not to her, not to Molly. Not to any living, breathing human on this god-forsaken planet.
After I find a clean disposable cup in the drawer, I set to work. She’s so far gone I don’t even bother telling her to prepare herself.
The shards plink together as I move from one knee to the next. The girl never changes her position except to allow me to switch legs.
Man or not, I keep my eyes averted from the hem of the shirt, and my mind away from what she might or might not have on underneath it. I’m the worst type of bastard, but even I have my limits.
That’s all shot to hell when I finish on the left leg and pull my hand away from the back of her knee. Blood. More fresh blood.
“Girl, I need you to turn around.” I don’t wait for a response that won’t come. As gently as I can, I grasp her hips and start to turn her around.
Fucking hell.
The woman has glass shards stuck in the soft curve of her ass.
I should call Elias and tell him to deal with this shit. This is a situation I want nothing to do with. She’s halfway catatonic, and I have to figure out how to touch her without making the traumatized girl feel violated. I’d rather go back out there and roll around in the broken glass myself.