Crash (Brazen Bulls MC #1)(71)

Needing to pee immediately, she conceded the point and leaned on him.

As they walked to the door, she caught her reflection in the mirror over her dresser, and she froze, forgetting her bladder. Her mouth, chin, and cheeks were deep red and purple, and livid scratches ran from her mouth to her right cheekbone.

“Jesus! Rad—what happened to me?” The fractured picture she’d saved from her dream came forward and brought an awful reality. “Jesse?”

The implications of Jesse getting to her slammed down on her sore head, and panic rose up around it. “Oh God! Fuck, Rad—did he? Oh please, no. Fuck no!”

Rad turned her in his arms so that they faced each other. He held her body, frantic now with alarm, firmly to his chest. “You are okay. Listen to me, Willa—you’re okay. He didn’t hurt you like he wanted. It’s time to talk. First, I want you to use the bathroom. You haven’t gone in at least a whole f*ckin’ day. You’re gonna spring a kidney or somethin’.”

“He didn’t…?” She couldn’t make herself say the word.

Rad understood her anyway. “He didn’t. I promise.”

At that, the most important thing Willa had to do right then was cry.



oOo



After the bathroom, Rad led her into the living room. He wrapped her up in a throw that she kept draped over the back of a chair, settled her on the sofa, and sat at her side.

Ollie followed them into the room and lay against the front of the sofa with a grunt.

“What’s the last thing you remember?”

“No. You tell me what you know.” She had to know what Jesse had done.

But Rad was resolute. He got a look about him, like his features had been set in concrete, when he was feeling stubborn. With one arm stretched behind her across the back of the sofa and his other hand grasping one of hers, he leaned in. “Listen to me, baby. It’s better if we work forward from what you remember and get to the end in the right order.”

“But I don’t remember what I remember last!”

That sentence made no sense at all, but it was true. Frustrated, Willa closed her eyes. She focused on her breath and waited for that to calm her down.

Fearing that she’d lose the view that was emerging in her mind if she added any visual stimuli, she kept her eyes closed. “You left…this morning.” No. This morning, she’d woken up in this fog. “No, yesterday morning.”

“Day before that.”

Her eyes flew open. “Two and a half days ago? I lost almost three days?”

“Easy. Just keep going. Think.”

Closing her eyes again, she concentrated, like she was taking an exam and trying to find all the bits of information on the topic she’d ever encountered. “I went to work. Otto went for Chinese for everybody at lunch, and there were cartons all over the desk all afternoon. Marcella was irritated. Twin delivery—fraternal. Boy and a girl. Normal day otherwise.”

As she remembered those details, more fell into place beyond them. “Clocked out on time. Was thinking I’d have a hot bath when I got ho—”

The man on the parking lot, watching her. The brown van. Not knowing if he was watching her or if she was paranoid. Following him because she needed to put the question to rest.

Jesse. It had been Jesse. At a motel by the highway.

“Oh God.”

“Willa, I need you to say these thoughts out loud. I need to know.”

She shook her head—he’d be furious at what she’d done, and she was too shaky and confused to fight with him. But he grabbed her hand and gave her a light yank.

“Yes, baby. You tell me everything you remember, or I won’t tell you what you don’t.”

Again, shock opened her eyes. He stared at her with that stony expression, and she wanted to hit him. That was the meanest thing he’d ever done to her—there wasn’t even a close second. To withhold her own experience from her unless he got what he wanted? It was f*cking blackmail.

“That’s f*cking blackmail.”

“It’s the way it is.”

“Asshole.”

The stone shifted, but he didn’t answer her. Just stared and waited.

Fuck. Fine. “He was in the parking lot at the hospital, standing on the edge staring at me. I wasn’t sure—he looked a lot different, and he was walking away before I saw him, but something in me was sure, and I had to know. So I followed the van he got into.”

“Jesus f*ckin’ Christ. Are you shittin’ me?”

She ignored him and went on. “He saw me at the parking lot—he had to have—but I don’t think he saw me follow him. He went to a motel and parked. When he got out, he pulled out his kutte, and I saw the ink on his hand, and that’s when I knew.”

Room 105. The words jumped into her head, and she said them aloud before she knew it. “Room 105.”

Rad’s hand shook around hers. Her hand shook inside his. Her whole body shook with anxiety remembered and relived.

Seeing her trembling, Rad moved his arm from the back of the sofa and smoothed his hand over her head. Even as she felt his tension and anger in the unsteadiness of his touch, the tender gesture eased some of her disquiet.

“I went home. I had the evening I’d planned. Took the bath and everything. I thought about paging you, but I didn’t. By the time you called that night, I’d made a decision about what I needed to do.”