Trauma Bonded (Bluebell House Duet #2)

Chapter 1

brODIE

I’d never known panic like I did as we raced from Bluebell House toward Eve, the woman who had captivated me from the first moment she’d crashed into my life. There was a part of me that knew if we lost her here today, I would never recover.

“Take the next left,” Haze bit out as he directed me toward the part of town where his tracker had Eve situated.

Evelyn Lewis, aka Cromwell, had snuck out of the house with Lacey to go shopping.

They were both ignoring our calls, and neither knew that there was a very real danger in Eve’s life still.

I drove on autopilot, faster than was legal or safe, but I didn’t give a fuck. I’d almost lost Eve that day in Tennessee Hallows College, and I wasn’t giving the Grim Reaper a second chance with her.

The day of the shooting, I wasn’t even supposed to be in Tennessee; we’d wrapped filming the day before. I’d left my favorite hat on campus and had refused to leave it behind—it’d been a gift from my gramps, one of the few adults in my life to ever give a fuck about me.

Even odder than the fact I was there was that I could have easily sent one of my bodyguards or assistants to pick it up, but I’d felt a stupid urge to get it myself. Just like Gramps would have wanted. Maybe he knew what I’d find on campus that day, outside of blood and fear…

Maybe he knew I would find my fucking future.

If this were one of the romantasy novel adaptations I acted in, Evelyn Lewis-Cromwell would be my fated mate, and I’d let the world burn down around her to ensure she was safe.

As it stood, only one part of that was still true: I would burn this motherfucker to the ground if one hair on her head was hurt.

Haze’s directions were clipped, any other conversation beyond him. He shouldn’t even have left college grounds, but there wasn’t a chance in hell any of us could have kept him home. Not under these circumstances.

“There’s no reason to believe she’s not okay,” Connor mumbled, his tone hard as he stared through the windshield. “Lacey can look after herself, and if they’re together…”

Andrew leaned forward, the miserable bastard’s face wreathed in worry.

“Yeah, but we didn’t tell her the truth.

That shooting at her old school wasn’t a random or obsessed stalker.

It was connected to her father, and according to Abraham, the threat to her life remains. She shouldn’t be off campus unprotect—”

Connor swung in his chair and jammed his finger into Andrew’s face, almost taking an eye out. “You sit back and shut the fuck up! You’re the reason she snuck out in the first place, and I’m tempted to throw you out of this moving car. It’s in your best interest to keep quiet.”

Those two were tighter than any men I’d ever known who weren’t fucking or blood brothers.

There was a bond between them that superseded even the strong ties and loyalties the rest of us held.

I’d never heard Connor address Andrew so harshly, unless it was during one of their pretend rivalries. But this was genuine.

We were crumbling, and it was all thanks to a sassy, purple-haired beauty. Evie babe had torn through us like a wrecking ball. Only for me, it was done months ago.

And I’d never told my brothers.

“Turn here,” Haze rasped, his eyes glued to his phone. “She’s moving fast enough that I have to assume she’s just gotten in the car.”

My breath shuddered out of me. “That’s a good sign, right? Or is it so fast she’s been kidnapped?”

The panic was next level and I hated feeling this out of control.

I’d been famous most of my life. Famous and powerful, even as a damn kid.

My parents were busy living a life of notoriety and frivolity, but Gramps never let anyone fuck with or take advantage of me.

He taught me the art of protecting myself.

I wished he was here today, because I was a raw, open wound, even as it grew abundantly clear that there was no protecting myself from love. Not when it had blasted into my world and completely changed who I was fundamentally.

“Not fast enough for kidnapping,” Haze assured me, and I was sure those five words cost him as he forced them out. He had always been the hardest of us to read, and today was no different. Whatever he felt in the face of Eve’s danger was hidden behind a stoic facade and terse, clipped sentences.

“Are you hacking into security cameras?” Connor demanded, giving Haze his attention once he’d dragged his furious gaze from Andrew. The latter, who’d done as instructed, had sunk back into his seat. “Or do I need to take care of this?”

Haze narrowed his gaze on Connor. “Getting awfully worried there, Connie. You didn’t seem to mind when it was just Lacey heading out into the city.”

If these fuckers kept pushing Connor, he was going to blow up my car just to shut them all up. He was the most dangerous man in here, and that included our espionage and poisons champion, Haze.

Connor didn’t respond to Haze. He just kept eyeing him like he was figuring out the best place to start chopping pieces off. “I've hacked in,” Haze finally said, “but everything is offline. There’s a power outage in the main streets.”

Fuck. Fucking fuck!

“Faster,” Ethan spat out, leaning forward. Connor’s half-brother was almost as dangerous as the gangster, just with stronger morals and less inclination to want to take over the family business. But all of us were trained. All of us could shoot and fight. We would all step up for Eve.

Pressing the pedal to the floor, I flew around another corner, almost clipping the curb. There was far too much traffic for this speed, but as long as we made it there alive to help her, I would pay every fine and take whatever penalty.

“She’s just driven into the main street with all the designer stores,” Haze said. “We’re closing in.”

Come on. Come on. Come on. I didn’t realize I was muttering under my breath until Connor glanced my way.

“What is it with you and our little brat anyway? None of us have even seen you with a chick for the past what…six months? And yet the moment she wandered into our world, you’ve been all in. It’s weird, bro.”

Weird, bro? Was this dumbfuck not realizing that his own girlfriend was out there in whatever danger he thought Eve was in—enough to have his gun ready and waiting in his lap—and he wasn’t remotely worried about her.

He felt the same pull as me but was too stubborn to accept it was about more than keeping Andrew safe from whatever repercussions came with not helping Eve’s father.

Still, maybe it was time to tell them everything. Secrets sure as shit hadn’t gotten us anywhere. “I was there that day.”

It was a simple sentence, and I didn’t expect any of them to figure out what that meant immediately, but I should have known Haze and Ethan would be the first to put the pieces together. Genius assholes that they were.

“You were there the day of the shooting?” Ethan leaned forward, his expression heavy with worry and confusion. “How is that possible?”

“The filming,” Haze added, as if an afterthought. “He was filming that movie out that way, remember?”

With a huff, I flew through a red light, ignoring the horns as I avoided multiple crashes. “Right, the filming was in Tennessee, and we wrapped the day before the shooting. I was about to head for my plane when I got a call from the college that they’d found Gramp’s hat.”

“The red one,” Haze muttered, and in the mirror I noted that everyone was nodding as they knew how much I loved that damn hat. “You never wear that anymore.”

For very good reason. It reminded me of blood and loss, and the realization that my entire life trajectory had changed.

“The red one,” I confirmed. “The only piece of my gramps I have left, and I fucking forgot it on campus. Knowing I wouldn’t be able to leave without it, I headed to pick it up on my way to the airfield. I didn’t even have security with me. I’d sent them ahead thinking I’d be five minutes behind.”

“You hate having security in the car with you, you don’t have to explain to us,” Andrew said sullenly, clearly still sulking about his bestie being mad at him.

“Right, well, there I was, hurrying across campus, keeping my fucking head down so I wouldn’t get spotted.

I picked up the hat from the admin, and then on my way back to the car, fucking chaos rang out.

Students were screaming and running, and there was a distinct sound of gunfire.

Multiple shots. I took cover behind a building, trying to figure out where it was all coming from. ”

It didn’t matter how clinically I described it.

In my mind I was drowning in the smell of blood and sounds that day.

That mix of terror and copper still woke me at nights when the dreams fucked me up.

Not to mention the absolute fear of not knowing if you were running to or away from the shooter.

It was impossible to tell in the crowds, which was why I’d stayed put and hoped I wasn’t about to die.

“The noise of gunfire went on for a while,” I continued, voice growing flatter as I fought the press of memories. “Security swarmed just as I started to move toward my car. Only I stumbled across Eve first.”

All I’d caught was her brown hair, and then she went down almost at my feet right as police and SWAT intercepted the gunman.

Who had subsequently gotten away in their pursuit.

“She was covered in blood. She’d been shot in the back while she ran, and I whipped off my hoodie and pressed it to the wound.

Everything was fucking pandemonium, so I just lifted her into my arms and raced across the college.

I drove as fast as my car could handle, with a dying chick in my lap, and I swear to God she opened her eyes at one point and I was gone.

Blue and gray storms cut into my soul, and I’ve never been able to forget her face as she stared up at me. ”

Her beautiful, golden face, drained of color, fading from this world. I’d never prayed as hard as I did that day. Never wished for a miracle, until I held a dying angel in my fucking arms.

The car was silent for many seconds, and I knew that they were assessing and trying to understand how this had happened.

It felt like a huge coincidence, that of the hundreds of millions of people in this country, somehow I saved Eve’s life.

Then she’d shown up here in my college, all but falling into my lap.

“The best explanation I’ve got is fate,” I said, shrugging my tense shoulders.

“I was meant to be there that day, and when they wheeled her away from me in the hospital, I felt like that took a part of me too. Don’t ask me how or why, but the moment I walked into Eth’s class and saw her sitting there, I knew she was mine. ”

I wasn’t letting her go ever again.

“And mine,” Ethan snapped fast, as if he’d been waiting for a moment to prove his claim. “I didn’t save her life, but I calmed her trauma. We all fit together.”

The air was heavy, but there was no time for more confessions as we finally closed in on the dot. “She’s stopped,” Haze said suddenly, sitting straighter until his head brushed the ceiling. “Fuck, that’s not a normal pause in the middle of an intersection. She was stopped.”

“I will fucking kill them all,” Ethan snarled. “Who was it that shot her? Who the fuck was he?”

That part I didn’t know. All I heard was that he’d managed to evade all the roadblocks and manhunts. “He had help. He couldn’t have skipped out on that many swat and trained officers otherwise.”

“Definitely,” Andrew said, leaning forward.

“We know he’s connected to Abraham. I can only assume if he called me, then he’s mixed up in some bad shit.

Like, possibly on a level we might need Mom to deal with.

” All the men in this car were either mafia, rich, famous, or highly trained in espionage, so if Eve’s dad was involved in a situation the president of our country needed to deal with, it was terrifying on a level I had no words for.

Connor dropped the hand not wrapped around his weapon on the door handle as if he was about to leap from the speeding vehicle.

“Once Eve is safe,” he said in a voice so cold it made my bones ache, “you will phone that weak-ass fuck masquerading as a father and find out every piece of information. And we are going to tell her everything too. She has to know the danger she’s in so she stops being a goddamn brat and risking her life. ”

“Next street,” Haze snarled. “She’s just around this corner.”

I swung around it barely touching the brakes, thankful I had training in evasive driving, and when the view on the next street appeared, it almost stopped my heart.

Lacey’s car was on its side, having clearly been rammed over, and Eve was kneeling in the glass just outside the window, while a fuck held a gun to her head.

I screeched to a halt and jumped out the door right as the bang ripped through the air.