Long Way Home (Thunder Road #3)(14)

She sags, resting her forehead against my temple. Can’t understand the chaos inside me. Can’t give names to the swirling emotions, but the one thing I do comprehend is the instinct to survive, the instinct to protect her. The need to gather Violet in my arms and carry her out. Yeah, I gave in earlier, but they’ll have to take me down before they reach her again.

I bunch her hair in my hand, kiss her forehead, then pull away.

There’s a buzzing under my skin as my fingertips slowly inch their way across the wall. A sense that I’m being watched. That the hourglass has been tipped and I’m running out of time. My fingers slide up and down the concrete, searching for a window, a tool, anything I can use to defend us or for a way out. With each centimeter searched, any hope I had of busting out evolves into desperation.

My heart stalls when my fingertips collide with cloth. I press and beneath it find something solid. It’s barely above my height and I run my hands along the length, then width. Excitement grows within me. It’s a window. It’s a way out.

I yank at the fabric and it tears as if nailed in, and the more I pull, the more of it gathers into my hands and falls to the floor. A tiny ray of light leaks from a crevice. Between me and freedom are wooden shutters.

A simple latch lock. I flip it, draw the shutters open, dim light floods the room and I curse as I lower my head. Bars. There’re fucking bars on the window. I grab hold of them and shake, but there’s no give. We’re stuck. Fucking stuck, and when I rise up on my toes, all I see are bushes.

I round and survey my surroundings. Hoping for another window. Hoping for another way, but all I see are two concrete walls, two walls made of drywall, the door and Violet still huddled in the corner.

She’s watching me, expectation and hope fighting on her face over the reality of our situation. Violet’s praying I have a solution, and when I meet her eyes, I mash my lips together and shake my head. My heart shreds as she lowers her head into her hands.

My fists tighten at my sides and the urge is to pound the wall, but that won’t help Violet. Won’t help me. I gotta stay smart, gotta fight the emotion. Logic is what’s going to keep us alive.

With a roll of my neck, I cross the room, slide my leather coat off my arms and offer it to her.

Violet glances up at me and my entire body seizes. Her lip is fat and blood is smeared across her cheek. Some of it from her mouth, some of it from her nose. If there was more light, I bet her cheek would be bruising. She told me she was backhanded and I was somehow able to compartmentalize that, but now...

“It’s cold in here,” Violet says, “and the jacket is yours.”

It is cold. The bitterness already biting at my arms, but I’ll be damned if I’m warm and she’s not. To avoid the argument, I drop beside her and toss the jacket like a blanket over her shoulders.

“Chevy,” she starts, but I cut her off.

“Just take it.”

Silence on her end and I feel like a dick for snapping at her. I raise my knees to rest my arms on them and stretch my fingers like doing so could release the anger, then tension. “I couldn’t stop them from taking you. I couldn’t stop them from hurting you, but I can keep you warm. Let me do this. It’s not much, but it’s all I got.”

Violet slowly turns her head in my direction, and it’s damn hard not to stare at her damaged lip. The light falling into the room is weak, but bright enough to highlight a strand or two of her red hair. I try to focus on that and how I used to lie with her and run my hand through her hair for hours. Better times. Happier times. What I sure as hell hope we can find again after we escape.

“I was going to say we could try to share your jacket.” She hesitates. “That I don’t mind being close to you.”

My brain freezes, and I hear more than what she’s saying. Hear her fear, hear there’s more to what happened in the backseat of that car, hear that she needs me.

I straighten my legs and Violet eases into me. Her shoulder, leg and arm pressed to me as she attempts to cover both of us with my jacket. I wrap my arm around her and briefly close my eyes at how soft she feels. It’s been a long time since I held her, and each night without her has been torture.

Violet rests her head on my shoulder, and she reaches up to try to make my jacket stay on my other shoulder, but it falls. “You’re not covered all the way.”

She’s covered and that’s all I care about. “I’m okay.”

“No, you aren’t,” she whispers. “You should be home. I should be home. We should be nowhere near here.”

She’s right, but instead of replying, I lean forward, slip my arm under Violet’s knees and gather her onto my lap. Violet stares at me, eyes blinking, a bit bewildered, and I shake my head slightly to let her know I’m not fighting with her. I’m not claiming some stake in our future. I just need her, maybe more than she needs me.

She exhales. It’s a long one and then she lifts her hand. I stop breathing when she brushes her fingers along my cheek. “They hit you. You’re bruising. Everywhere.”

And I’d go through each and every hit again to protect her. My only regret is that we ended up here.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “I didn’t know how else to protect Brandon.”

“We did what we had to.”

Violet rests her head into the crook of my neck, and when she raises my jacket to my shoulder again, it stays. I weave my arms around her and rub my hands up and down her cold arms, almost like I’m trying to convince a dying fire to stay burning.