2. Chapter 2
BLUE
Three things happened immediately.
I opened the moving closure in the box where he’d wedged the shotgun and used his momentary shock to tug hard at the gun's barrel. He wasn’t prepared for me to act offensively, and the weapon slid through his grip, wedging itself awkwardly in the opening until it was stuck. Behind him, the two other men raised their guns to target me, and I ducked to the ground, pressing my chest to the floor as if to hug it.
The ringleader cursed savagely as he tried to unstick the gun from the cage, and in his haste to retrieve it, a bullet discharged over my head, blasting through the open window box. Sharp bits of material rained over my head.
And Aaron, the stranger with the scarred chin and pretty smile, cursed savagely under his breath. “Well, fuck. Now, you haven’t given me any fuckin’ choice.”
I squeezed my eyes shut as a cacophony of sounds erupted in the small space. The harsh exhalation of air as something thunked against flesh and then the heavy weight of something hitting the plexiglass door; male exclamations cut off by curses, then gurgling noises like someone trying to breathe underwater. Finally, the low boom of a shotgun discharging punched through the air, followed by the tinkling rattle of glass exploding, shards of it falling to the linoleum floor.
Meanwhile, I rolled over onto my back and scrambled back against the L-joint of the counter, secured in the corner. There was a bat Grouch kept on the bottom shelf, and I grabbed it with both hands, laying it across my lap in case worse came to worse, and I had to fight each asshole off myself.
I was thrown back to the worst moments of my life. The roots of my hair still stung as I remembered being dragged down the hall by strong hands fisted in my locks, my throat raw from screaming. No one had come to save me, then. Not even my own father.
I blinked away the cold horror when a gunshot ricocheted through the store. When my gaze lifted, it was just in time to see an unmasked face pressed to the plexiglass door. The man’s cheek was cut open, the flesh distorted against the plastic, blood leaving a red smear behind as he slowly slid to the ground.
Behind him, breathing heavily, his nylon stocking discarded, nose bleeding, and jaw already bruising, stood Aaron.
We locked eyes through the bloody glass, both of us panting so powerfully that our shoulders rocked with the movement. There was righteous fury in those dark-as-soot eyes, but concern also bracketed his drawn mouth. When he moved forward slightly, I flinched. My nerves were drawn so tight I thought I’d break in two.
“Hey, hush, Blue baby,” he murmured, holding his hands up in surrender. “Not gonna hurt you, okay? I just wanna get you outta here ’fore these motherfuckers come to, again. You press the panic button?”
I nodded slightly, but even that felt like an effort.
The man lying on the ground pressed against the plexi wasn’t moving.
“Hey, give me those pretty blues, yeah?” Aaron coaxed, dropping into a crouch so I didn’t have to crank my neck up. His expression was utterly open, wide-eyed, and soft-featured with sincerity. It should have looked strange, such gentleness on a tattooed, gun-wielding badass, but it suited him somehow. “Ignore the blood. Those idiots deserved it and more for threatenin’ ya. Just focus on me and take some deep breaths. Yeah…yeah, that’s my girl. In and out. My mum used to say in for seven, hold for seven, out for seven. Can you do that?”
He watched me as I struggled to do what he said. A count of seven was long, though, and I sputtered through it, coughing and hiccuping on sobs that threatened to swell in the wake of each breath.
I’d seen a lot of shit in my life, but I’d never had three men make any sort of attempt to abduct and sexually assault me.
“Alright, I’m thinkin’ I overestimated your lung capacity,” Aaron corrected with a lopsided grin as I choked on my ragged breathing again. “Just breathe, Blue. When you feel up to it, you think you can open this door for me? I wanna get you outta here ’fore these brutes come to.”
“T-The police,” I protested weakly.
I hated cops, but I owed it to Grouch to stick around and give them a statement.
“I’ll take you to the station myself when these fuckers have been processed and put in cuffs, yeah? Blue baby,” he murmured, voice dipping into molten chocolate, sweet and so smooth, “you’re shakin’ alone in a bloody cage. I get I’m a stranger, but I’m dyin’ to help you out here. Will you let me?”
Before I could even process an answer, I was nodding. My hands clutched at the bat across my lap, squeezing so hard around the metal I thought for a moment I might bend it. Then I looked back into Aaron’s warm eyes, as chocolatey as his tone, and got to my feet.
The view from up there was different. I could see where the other two thugs lay on the ground like toys discarded by a psychopathic kid, clothes askew, limbs akimbo at angles that definitely meant they were broken.
Aaron had fucked them up .
Not just knocked them around a little or stood his ground in a fair fight.
No.
This man with the gentle eyes and cocky grin had dismantled the criminals the way a veteran dismantled a gun; as if it was muscle memory, as if it was almost boring it was that easy.
When my eyes flew back to him, he was standing too, palms to the sky in a frozen shrug of faux-innocence.
“Won’t hurt you,” he promised.
“I don’t know you,” I countered, but I took a step closer.
“No,” he agreed, a flicker of that charming grin before he sobered entirely. “But there isn’t a bone in my body capable’a exactin’ violence against a woman. My sister…” A brief spasm of pain contorted his face. “She was kept in a cage for a long time. I don’t like seein’ ya in there, scared and alone.”
“Put the gun down,” I asked, mostly just to see if he’d do it. At this point, the guy had risked his own life to save me, a perfect stranger. If he was going to hurt me, he would have done it already or at least let the thieves do it themselves.
Aaron hesitated, gaze flicking to the prone bodies before he slowly dropped the shotgun to the ground. When he straightened, he surprised me by stepping closer to the plexiglass between us in order to press his large hand to the door. Blood was streaked across his broad palm, and silver rings adorned nearly every finger, but none of that was alarming for a girl who’d grown up around rough men.
“Empty,” he murmured, “unless you open this door and take my hand.”
On the ground, someone moaned.
It settled my uncertainty. My hand only shook slightly as I undid the lock and tried to push it open. The body of a passed-out thug blocked my way until Aaron wrenched the door so powerfully, it pushed the man across the floor. Blood followed like rust stains in his path.
Before I could dwell on it, Aaron took my hand in his surprisingly warm, calloused grip. I still had the bat in my other grasp, comforted by it like a child with a teddy bear.
“C’mon.” He tugged me forward toward the front door.
On our way there, a hand lashed out and gripped my ankle like a vise.
I let out something like a squawk of alarm, kicking instinctively. The chunky heels of my blue platform combat boot hit the asshole square in the chin.
Despite the horror of the entire situation, Aaron, witnessing that, laughed .
He laughed like we were on a first date and I’d just told a good joke.
Like we were walking through a fucking meadow and not a vandalized gas station convenience store.
And somehow, that husky grind of vocal cords made me smile too.
He tugged on my hand again, breaking into a jog as we hit the door to the shop. We rocketed through it into the hot spring night. The scent of asphalt was rich in the air from being baked all day under the sun and then rained on during a brief spring shower. Under that, a faint whiff of Aaron’s masculine cologne reminded me of cigarettes after sex.
We pulled up short at a massive black Harley Davidson motorcycle with blue flames painted onto the body. Seeing it doused me with cold water. It was a good reminder that the man holding my hand was just as dangerous, if not more so, than the guys he’d beaten into mincemeat back in the store.
This man was a weapon. The only question was whether he would attack or defend me.
Given what just happened, I was optimistically inclined toward the latter.
“Fucking mother fuckers ,” Aaron cursed savagely as he noted the slashed tires on his bike. “Fuck!”
He turned as if he planned to stalk back into Evergreen Gas and beat them again for daring to touch his ride. A part of me wanted to roll my eyes, bikers and their fucking bikes .
It was lucky that we turned back to look at the store, though, because one of the nylon-masked men had dragged himself to his feet and was stumbling to the door.
“Fuck,” Aaron cursed again, and I had the sense it was a well-used word in his lexicon.
“The van,” I pointed out, jerking my chin at the rusty, dishwater-grey van parked at one of the pumps. “You have the keys in the pocket of the jacket you took from one of the guys, remember?”
Now that I wasn’t being threatened with sexual assault, my natural calmness had kicked in. Sure, it was a fucked-up situation, but I’d been through enough like it, if not worse, to keep my head.
Aaron cocked a brow at me, then shook his head as if he wanted to piece me together like a puzzle, but he knew he didn’t have the time. Instead, he led me again by the hand to the van and opened the driver’s side door with a key on a Morton BBQ keychain. When I moved to go around to the passenger side, the door to the gas station exploded open.
“You’re both fucking dead ,” the man screamed across the tarmac.
“Get in,” Aaron barked, lifting me easily with both hands on my waist and thrusting me into the driver’s seat before following in quickly after me. For a single moment, we were tangled in the seat, his big hand on my thigh, squeezing tightly in a way that shot sparks straight to my groin. And then I was scrambling over the console awkwardly with the bat in my hand, his shoulder pressing into me for momentum.
The first gunshot crack ed across the empty lot and pinged against the metal pillar beside the van.
“The fuckin’ idiot,” Aaron grumbled as he cranked the old engine to life and peeled the van into a half donut to reverse out of the station. “Shooting at a goddamn gas station.”
On cue, our attacker fired again, the bullet lodging with a sharp click and thud into the side of the van. Aaron cursed again under his breath but otherwise seemed perfectly calm as he efficiently maneuvered the ungainly van around the pumps and out onto the street leading to the Sea to Sky Highway.
I sat there for a moment before I realized I’d clutched the bat to my chest like a shield. A little laugh expelled with my breath as I carefully lowered it into my lap.
“You got a thing for baseball?” Aaron asked so dryly that I wasn’t certain he was joking at first.
A shocked smile tweaked the left side of my mouth. “Please, the Seattle Mariners are the only team to support over here, and they suck.”
I tried not to be too pleased when Aaron tipped his head back, strong throat working around a hearty laugh. When he was finished, he peered at me under a dislodged piece of dark hair falling across his forehead. I noticed his slight widow’s peak and loved the slightly piratical look it gave him.
“You seem pretty damn calm after what just happened,” he noted, but a question was buried there.
“Because I’m making quips about one of the world’s most boring sports?” I returned with a shrug. “Some people use humour as a shield, you know?”
He snorted, checking the rearview mirror for pursuers. “Yeah, I know a little somethin’ about that.”
“You think they’ll follow us?” I asked, turning in my own seat to train my eyes on the dark stretch of the highway behind us. The ocean glittered like navy velvet beneath diamanté moonlight to one side of the asphalt, and mountains rose on the other, steep and forebodingly black in the night.
“Depends on what they got in this piece’a shit,” he muttered. “You wanna check it out?”
I hadn’t buckled my belt yet, so I just turned in the seat and crawled over the console into the shadowy depths of the van. It only took me a moment to realize I wished I hadn’t.
There was money, stacks of it, in an open duffel bag to one side and another that rattled when I unzipped it to reveal thousands of dollars worth of jewelry. My sparkly silver nail caught on the scalloped edge of a diamond necklace, lifting it from the tangled mess of expensive gems. It had to have been at least a hundred thousand dollars just for the one adornment hanging from my finger.
“Aaron,” I said, but my shock and receding adrenaline made my voice a harsh rasp. “Aaron.” I tried again. “I think we stumbled on a serious jewelry theft.”
I raised the diamond necklace higher for him to see in the rearview mirror and wasn’t surprised when I received a muttered curse in response.
“Hold on, Blue. Let me call a buddy’a mine.” He lifted his hips to fish a phone out of his back pocket, then left it on his thigh to order voice command to call a person by the name of “Lion.”
“Hey, man. Just on a run, but I got a little situation here I’m wonderin’ if you can shed some light on. Anythin’ goin’ ’round about a jewelry store robbery?”
“You got your head buried in the sand? Twelve stores have been hit in the past two months from downtown Vancouver to Whistler. You got a lead?”
Whoever Lion was, he had a rough, slow drawl like a Canadian cowboy. It was almost sinfully hot.
Aaron looked at me crouched in the back, his eyes dark pits in the shadowed interior of the van. I wondered what he would do. He was clearly an outlaw, and in my generous experience with outlaws, they didn’t have much respect for the law. Would he turn over the evidence or keep the treasure for himself?
A tiny part of me I was afraid to listen to also wondered if he factored me into his mental math. Would a man nicknamed Boner give a shit what some random girl thought about the situation?
I ripped my gaze away from his, unable to bear the intensity of his scrutiny.
And that was when I saw it.
The jean jacket.
I would have recognized it anywhere, even half folded and crumpled between two boxes in the shadowed recess of the back seat. It was distressed in a natural way, born of wear, and not fabricated to look that way. The left sleeve had been barely hanging on until I’d sewn it back together myself with vivid blue thread.
My heart beat a vicious tattoo in my throat, choking me as I leaned forward to pull the jacket into my lap. I must have made some kind of distressed noise because I was vaguely aware of Aaron calling my name.
But I couldn’t focus on him.
Only on the vivid blue thread I was tracing with my thumbnail.
“It was him,” I breathed the words as if they were punched out of me.
“Who?” Aaron’s voice was a sharp exclamation point of sound, but I still couldn’t answer.
The man I’d spent years with. The man I’d told my secrets to.
This was the same man who had stood across from me in Evergreen Gas Station with a gun leveled at my belly. The same man who had suggested he knew someone who might think I was worth something. I knew it with a certainty that chilled me through to the bone.
A vicious, full-body shiver rocked through me so hard my thumbnail cut through the blue thread on the shoulder of the jacket owned by Otto Granger, my thieving, scumbag ex-boyfriend.
“Blue!” Aaron growled, swerving to the side of the highway even though the road barely had a shoulder. He clicked his seat belt free and twisted to lean between the front seats to reach me. The touch of his hand on my thigh grounded me like a lightning rod, that electric hatred receding until my head was clear enough to think again.
When I looked up at him, his tanned face was tense with worry, those night-dark eyes scouring my face and body as if searching for visible wounds. I wasn’t sure how to tell him they were so far beneath the surface there was no hope of excavating them.
“Who was it?” he asked, softer this time, as gentle as the thumb rubbing over my denim-clad thigh.
“Otto,” I whispered on a defeated exhale, twisting the jean jacket while I imagined it was Otto’s neck. “My ex-boyfriend.”
Aaron’s brow climbed into his broad forehead. “Your ex-boyfriend just robbed the gas station you work at? You a new employee, or did he know you worked there?”
I didn’t have to answer. He read the truth in the toxic tangle of humiliation and rage stamped like a brand I was afraid would never fade on my face.
The stranger with the absurdly pretty features rocked back to run a hand through his thick mess of dark hair and blew a raspberry between his lips before surmising, “What a motherfuckin’ bastard.”
A short bark of laughter erupted from my throat. “Yeah, pretty much.”
He peered at me from under that errant lock of hair that seemed to perpetually flop across his forehead. “You got bad blood with him? Before now, that is.”
“I came home from work one day, and he’d cleaned out my savings.” It hurt to admit to this beautiful man that I’d been such a fool, but I wasn’t a proud person. I’d never had much to be proud of, not my family, my prospects, or even my looks or personality. I was a pretty average girl with a pleasant face and body who was lucky to be left alone in life. “The night before, we fell asleep talking about our future––you know, marriage, puppies, babies in bassinets––but…” I shrugged, my heart beating loudly in a chest that felt mostly hollow. “Men do that.”
“What?”
“Say things they don’t mean.”
Aaron’s thick lashes swept his cheekbones as he closed his eyes as if in pain. Close to him like this, all the markers of a bad boy—the tattoos, the heavy silver jewelry, and the slight menace in his continence—seemed so insignificant. He looked romantic, leaning toward me in the dim yellow glow from the front seat overhead lights, his Byronic features etched in pure gold and liquid shadow. I wanted to trace the line of his nose with my fingertip and test the texture of his plush lower lip with my teeth.
Then his eyes opened, and all that softness was erased by the heated intent of that stare.
He moved closer so quickly I flinched, but he wasn’t perturbed by it. If anything, his brows knotted with further resolve, and he slowly but deliberately crawled into the back seat so he was facing me on his knees. When he took my face between his big, rough hands, I found I could barely breathe through the tension that seemed to smoke between us.
I trembled, but he stilled me within the frame of his palms and rounded his spine to bring his eyes directly in line with mine.
“I’m a stranger. You’re a stranger. We part ways in a minute, and I’ll just be a crazy memory for you. You’ll be that girl with the blue hair stuck in my mind like a question mark I’ll always wish I’d answered. But no matter what happens, I want this night to change somethin’ for ya.”
“My predilection for scumbags?” I joked weakly.
Aaron wasn’t moved. “I want you to get that you’re worth somethin’. First moment I saw you, I lost my fuckin’ breath to the sight’a you. Not ’cause you’re damn pretty, Blue, but ’cause a man like me knows pretty girls. Nah, the sight’a you knocked the air straight from my chest ’cause a pretty girl with a sweet smile was mannin’ a gas station in the middle’a the night on a dangerous stretch’a highway, and I thought, this girl doesn’t have anyone in her life to tell her not to risk herself like this. She’s fightin’ and clawin’ for everythin’ she’s got, and what she’s got is no one. And, Blue baby, that sucker punched me. A girl like you should have a whole army’a family at your back keepin’ ya safe and makin’ ya promises they always intend to fuckin’ keep.”
That hollowness in my chest was suddenly filled with warmth, with a sloshing, overwhelming fullness that threatened to drown me. The wet of it leaked out the corners of my eyes and trailed down my cheeks. Aaron caught the dampness on his thumbs.
“Gonna hug you now, that’s alright with you,” Aaron said, a question buried in his confident tone.
Warning bells should have been ringing, alone with a stranger on the side of an empty highway in the middle of the night in a sketchy-ass van, but they weren’t. Instead, I felt a connection, tentative but tangible, building between us.
So I hugged him.
I threw my arms around his neck and pressed my chest into his. He caught me with a little chuckle but held me with a tenderness that felt somber, almost sacred. I knew he mostly felt sad for me, but I didn’t really care. I hadn’t even had someone to pity me in so long, and even that was nice.
“You gonna tell me your name now?” he asked into my hair.
One of his big hands cupped the entire back of my skull, making me feel almost nauseated with pleasure.
“No.” I pulled away and pretended to preoccupy myself with Otto’s mangey jacket. “Blue sounds nice enough in your mouth.”
“Tastes good too. You wanna kiss it off my lips?”
I rolled my eyes so hard they hurt, but keeping the wild giggle at bay in my throat was a struggle. Aaron gave me that crooked grin, eyes dancing like he knew he was full of shit, but he didn’t give a fuck because it was fun.
He was fun.
Somehow, after being held at gunpoint, I was enjoying myself.
Our moment was shattered by the telltale rumble of thunder climbing up the mountain road.
The distant murmur of motorcycles.
“Friends of yours?” I asked on a breath as adrenaline sluiced through me again.
Aaron cocked his head as if he could discern the exact notes of the cacophony. “Better not risk it. C’mon. I was headed to Whistler on business. I’ll get shit settled there, and it’ll give those bastards time to get arrested or get gone.”
“And then?” I couldn’t help but ask as I followed him back into the front seat.
I didn’t have to look at him as I buckled my seat belt to know he was smiling that impish, sexy grin.
“And then, I take you out.”
“I don’t date bikers.”
“Who said anythin’ about datin’?” he countered with a roguish grin.
“Fine, I don’t sleep with bikers.”
“Blue baby, the way I do it, there’s no sleepin’ involved at all.”
I rolled my eyes while I angled my body to look out the window as Aaron pulled the van back onto the highway, but when he started chuckling, I thought it was safe to let a smile break through. The reflection of my curved mouth in the dark mirrored window was a welcome one. I’d always looked prettiest when I smiled, and that didn’t happen so much anymore.
Even then, I couldn’t count the number of times Aaron had made me smile in a single night. That might have been the moment I realized he was more dangerous than the tatts and experienced fighting already made him seem. Because a man who could make a woman smile on demand was a special kind of magic, one I wasn’t sure I was strong enough to resist even though I’d vowed to stay out of trouble.