Bitter Sweet Heart (Lies, Hearts & Truths #2)(114)

I take her face between my palms. “Sweetheart, can you tell me what happened?”

“He must have followed me here. He said he was going to torch the place. He came at me, and I dropped a bottle of champagne and fell in the glass. It’s all surface wounds. We need to call the police.”

“I already called 911. They’re on the way.” BJ holds up his phone. “Ambulance included.”

“You should sit down,” I tell her.

She nods, and I guide her to one of the chairs. When she’s sitting, I use the hem of my shirt to wipe the blood from her chin and inspect the wound. It doesn’t look serious enough to need stitches.

At the sound of a grunt, I turn to find Gabriel gripping the doorjamb, trying to stay upright.

I move around BJ and Kody, who have formed a barricade between us and him. I grab him by his shirt and slam him against the wood siding. And in that moment, I understand exactly what murderous rage feels like—how a person can be so blind with hatred that they could take a life. “I’ll fucking end you, you son of a bitch.” I slam my fist into his face, once, twice, a third time. Blood gushes from his nose, and his lip splits.

The memories I’ve been fighting come to the surface.

Lavender’s torn dress.

Her bleeding palms.

Her haunted eyes.

My father’s rage.

The way the SUV smelled like gas after that night, and my dad traded it in a week later and got a new one for my mom.

“Mav, that’s enough. You’re gonna do damage you can’t come back from,” BJ says calmly. “The cops are coming; they’ll handle it. You gotta let him go.”

Kody’s arm comes around me, and BJ pries my hands free from Gabriel’s shirt.

As soon as I let Gabriel go, he sinks to the deck, head lolling back, knocked out cold. I glance down at my hands, knuckles split and bloody, not just with mine but his too.

Kody grips my shoulder. “Look at me, Mav. Look at me.”

I meet his gaze and see a haunted expression I’m familiar with echoed back at me. “She’s safe now, and she needs you. Take a breath. Be what she needs.”

I nod once and wipe my hands on the back of my jeans to hide the worst of the damage. Clover reaches out a hand and I take it, dropping to my knees in front of her.

“I’m sorry I wasn’t here. I should have met you here.”

She takes my face in her hands. “It’s okay. I’m okay because of you. It’s a few surface wounds. Nothing a few Band-Aids and a little TLC can’t fix.”

“Let me see.” I kiss her fingertips before I gently turn them over, inspecting her arms. The right sleeve is patchy with seeping blood along her forearm. “Is this the only place you landed in the glass?”

She nods. “I tried to roll the other way, but I couldn’t avoid all of it.”

“Does it hurt?” I rub my thumb over the center of her palm, memories bubbling up of when Lavender used to come to my room and ask me to help with her hands.

“Not much. I think the adrenaline is still at work, though.”

The sound of sirens in the distance brings another barrage of memories, but I shove them down and lock them in the box, needing to stay present with Clover.

“Do you want me to have a look at them? Do you have a first aid kit here?”

She strokes my cheek. “The ambulance will be here soon. We can wait for them.”

Kody appears in my peripheral vision, holding two bottles of water. He sets them on the arm of the chair and holds out a blanket. “I grabbed this. The temperature is dropping, and the shock might be starting to wear off.” He puts his hand on my shoulder. “You should sit.”

I shift out of the crouch and let my knees settle on the deck, still keeping a barrier between Gabriel and Clover. He groans from the other side of the porch, starting to come around. Blood seeps out of his nose and runs down his chin. If Kody and BJ hadn’t been here, I don’t know if I would have stopped.

Emergency services shows up, bringing with them the police, an ambulance, and fire truck. The fire truck doesn’t stay, but the ambulance and police do. Pearl Bay is a tiny community, with only a few police officers assigned to the area, but Pearl Lake is slightly larger, and Lake Geneva has a much more substantial force. Our families are well known around here, and the officer assigned to the call has a son who plays hockey. My dad coaches him. It’s times like this when the blessing of having a famous parent weighs out over the negatives.

Gabriel violated the terms of his order of protection and physically attacked Clover, so he’s taken away in cuffs and will likely spend the night in the local jail after he’s been checked over for injuries. He seems to be struggling to put weight on his left leg. He’s not entirely coherent as they put him in the back of the cruiser, still ranting about how he should have burned the place to the ground months ago.

Clover gives her statement, and I give mine, and then she’s loaded into the back of the ambulance and taken to the Pearl Bay Emergency Clinic so a doctor can look at her injuries. I go along with them, leaving Kody and BJ to give their statements with promises to check in later.

While Clover is getting X-rays on her cheek, I call my dad and fill him in. He tells me he’ll be at the clinic as quickly as he can.

I’m allowed back in the treatment room with Clover after the X-rays. There are no fractures or broken bones. But I hold her hand as they remove several pieces of glass from her forearm and use Steri-Strips on the shallower wounds, stitching up the worst of them. In the end, she has more than twenty stitches in her forearm, but otherwise she’s okay—physically, at least. The doctor gives her a prescription for painkillers, and she has a follow-up appointment in a few days.