Rough Ride (Chaos #5)(2)

Dread intermingled with all the rest as I tried to focus on moving my thumb to open the phone, but I saw the black creeping in at the sides of my eyes.

I couldn’t pass out.

I had to call for help.

I had to get out of there.

My body had different ideas, sending the message to my brain that this was too much, it couldn’t take more.

So I passed out.



*



I came to woozy and disoriented.

The pain, the stench of the room, the feel of the cement beneath me brought it all slamming back, along with the panic.

Having no idea how long I was out, feeling the phone resting in my hand, I actually grunted with the effort of sliding it up, wrapping my fingers around it, using my thumb to flip it open.

An old-style flip phone.

A burner.

We’d joked about it, Snap and me. He’d called me Scully. He had a burner too, so there’d be no caller ID when he phoned me. So I’d called him Mulder.

I was going to call him.

Not because I was working for Chaos anymore. I wasn’t. That officially ended on that cement. Definitely not because I was protecting Bounty. I’d tell the police. Absolutely, I’d tell the police my boyfriend’s motorcycle club beat the snot out of me. It didn’t matter that I broke the code, and knew it. It didn’t matter that I’d betrayed my man, and done it deliberately.

I was trying to save him. Save his brothers. Save his club. Save everyone.

I closed my eyes tight, my thumb moving over the phone from memory, knowing the way on its own, I called him so often. That was why I was calling him now rather than 911. I knew how to get to him. To Snapper. And the effort would be less. I could dial the digits to get him up on speed dial in my sleep, so I could do it lying on a cement floor, beat to hell and practically unable to move.

I couldn’t lift the phone to my ear so I just shoved it across the floor closer to my face, listening to it ring.

“Rosie?” Snap answered.

I closed my eyes tighter as understanding hit me with a blow almost as brutal as every strike I’d just taken.

God.

I hadn’t done it to save Beck. To save his brothers, his club…everybody.

At first, I’d done it to make Beck into Shy.

And then I’d done it to make him be Snapper.

And last, I’d done it to make his club Chaos.

“Rosie?” Snap’s Eddie Vedder baritone got sharper.

Oh no.

No.

The black was creeping in again.

“Sss…” was all I could get out.

“Rosalie,” he bit out, curt, alert, alarmed.

“Hurt,” I whispered.

And then, again, I blacked out.



*



I’d come to and gone out, managed to drag myself a few feet toward the door, hearing the burner ring, then stop, ring again, stop, drifting in and out before I heard him.

“Jesus, fuck, Jesus, fuck.”

Snapper.

“Ambulance or call a brother?”

Roscoe.

“Rosie, honey, you with us?”

Snap, close to me, pulling my hair out of my face gently.

“Fuck,” growled from Roscoe. “Those motherfuckers spit on her.”

“Rosie, babe, darlin’, you with us?”

Snap, tighter, letting the anger rise through the concern.

My eyelids fluttered.

“Good, honey, good, stay with us,” Snapper ordered.

“Am-am…bu—” I tried.

“Okay, baby, okay, good,” Snap cut me off, not making me expend more effort. Then to Roscoe, “Call an ambulance, man.”

I felt hands on me, careful but not hesitant, swift and searching. Moans coasted out, little twitches when he’d hit a bad spot that sent new aches, stings, or fire through me.

“Gotta check, honey,” Snap murmured apologetically while Roscoe talked on the phone somewhere else. “Stay awake, Rosie. Stay with me, yeah?”

I said nothing until I moaned again when I felt him gently lift my head then rest it on something that was a lot softer than cement.

It smelled of leather.

His Club cut.

I was lying on Chaos.

I swallowed.

It hurt.

Thankfully, Snapper quit his body injury survey and started stroking my hair.

That hurt too.

Roscoe came back. “Called emergency. Called Tack. Where we at with Rosalie?”

“Ribs, definitely. Right wrist is bad,” Snapper told him, still stroking my hair.

“Face is a definite too,” Roscoe said in an infuriated mutter.

Face too.

Oh yes.

They definitely took care of my face.

“Someone choked the fuck outta her,” Roscoe kept up the tally, the fury in his voice escalating.

That wasn’t a “they.” That was only Beck.

“Was it Bounty?” Roscoe asked.

“Of course it was Bounty,” Snapper stated tersely.

“We gotta know, brother,” Roscoe returned quietly.

I felt his hand leave my hair, which was a relief, but then his fingers curled around mine, which made me wince.

Eightball had bent them so far back, it was a wonder they didn’t snap off as he was holding me when he was hitting me.