Chapter 1
Decker
“Who else can I speak to?” I insist, planting my hands on the counter of the nurses’ station and leaning in until my knuckles are white.
It’s been sixty-one hours. Two and a half days. Might as well have been a lifetime.
I haven’t eaten. Haven’t slept.
Hardly remembered how to breathe or hold myself upright until Hunter called.
“We’ve got her. Lake Chapel General. Third floor.”
She didn’t elaborate. She didn’t bother with any assurances. It would have been a pointless exercise. No one needs to tell me how epically not okay this all is.
“How about a supervisor?” I press. “An administrator? Someone in fundraising.” I stare her down. Hard.
She knows who I am. Everyone in this goddamn town knows who I am. Rarely does my reputation get me nowhere. But here…
The nurse examines me warily. I don’t blame her for the distrust she’s struggling to mask. If she’s worried I’m on the verge of causing a scene, she has good reason. I’m not backing down. She can either make this easy, or I can make her job infinitely harder than it needs to be.
“Please,” I add, my voice hoarse with exhaustion and desperation.
Something about that single word makes her expression soften just a fraction.
“Let me make a few calls,” she placates, spinning in her chair to pick up a phone at the next workstation.
I drum my fingers on the beige-speckled countertop, the surplus of caffeine and a renewed adrenaline fueling me in all the wrong ways. Every noise makes me jump. Every sound scratches against the surface of my brain. I’m barely holding it together.
My phone buzzes in my back pocket—again. It’s been vibrating nonstop for the last hour. Ever since we got word that Josephine was in the hospital.
I can guess at the questions waiting for me on the screen.
I just don’t know who’s sending them this time.
With a long exhale, I force back some of the panic threatening to take over and slide the phone out of my pocket.
Kylian: How is she? What’s the room number?
God dammit. How the hell can I mollify him if he shows up here before I even get back to see her?
I haven’t slept in a solid three days. I’m exhausted—mentally whipped—but my current state is nothing compared to Kylian’s.
He’s run himself ragged over the last two and a half days.
He hasn’t slept; hasn’t stopped. He’s a flurry of activity, and he’s been trapped in an agitated, hyper-fixated state of awareness since the second I screamed his name across the lake on Sunday night.
He’s off his meds. He’s on the precipice of spiraling out of reach.
I reply quickly, because even though I don’t have answers, leaving him in the dark will just make it worse.
Decker: Waiting to see her now. I’ll text as soon as I know more.
“Decker!”
My head snaps up, and the air whooshes out of my lungs like I’ve taken a hit to the sternum when Hunter calls my name. She’s half jogging down the hall, blond curls bouncing on her shoulders despite the exhausted pull around her eyes.
“Hey,” she breathes, extending her hand and running it along the length of my arm. “You made it.”
I made it.
As if I’ve arrived at a barbecue and they’ve been waiting on me to bring more ice.
“Where is she?” I demand, my tone harsher than intended.
Hunter recoils.
Shit. I run a hand through my hair and try again. “Can you take me to her? Please?” I add for good measure.
Hunter darts a look at the nurses’ station. It’s just a quick flick of her eyes, but it’s a hesitation, nonetheless.
“Follow me,” she murmurs, looping her arm through mine and pulling me toward an alcove full of vending machines.
Her pace is slow, languid, even, as if she’s in no rush at all. I’m teeming with restless energy, my exhaustion fueling—absurdly—the desperation coursing through my veins.
Someone needs to pay for this. Someone will pay.
Before Hunter is fully facing me, I pin her against a soda machine and bracket her head with my arms. She’s so petite she barely reaches my shoulder, but she doesn’t startle at the move. She only matches my livid gaze.
“If I find out you had anything to do with this—”
I haven’t even articulated the threat before she’s rolling her eyes.
“Save your breath, Crusade. You know damn well I have exactly one friend in this town nowadays, and right now, she’s lying in a hospital bed because of your antiquated big dick rivalry.”
Heart pounding wildly against my ribcage, I search her face, seeking the lie. She doesn’t shrink under my gaze.
If anything, she looks defeated in the worst way. Eyes hollow, cheeks sunken and pale. As if she hasn’t slept for three days, either. As if the emotions raging inside me—the anger, the fear, the anxiety, the frustration—are raging inside her, too.
After another breath, I look away. Fuck. She didn’t have anything to do with this. Not if the wariness in her eyes and the weight pressing on her shoulders are anything to go by.
Lowering my arms, I blow out a long breath and prop myself up against the opposite wall.
“Take me to her.”
Hunter stands tall, crossing her arms around herself and pursing her lips.
“I will. But there are a few things you need to understand before we go back there.”
“Hunter,” I warn.
“We only have permission to be with her because Dr. Ferguson spoke directly to the nurses on this floor,” she starts, giving me a pointed look. “Otherwise, we’d be waiting out there.” She points toward the waiting area near the nurses’ station.
We?
Before I can ask, she continues.
“She’s been sleeping a lot. They had to sedate her when she arrived. Even now that they’ve weaned her off those meds, she’s groggy and exhausted. Every time she wakes up—”
“Is she hurt?” I demand.
I’m still in the dark. What happened? What did they do? Is she okay? Fuck.
Wrenching my hands through the ends of my hair, I pace the three steps it takes for me to get from one side of the alcove to the next and focus on calming my breathing.
I can’t remember a time I felt this unhinged. This out of control. This… helpless.
“Bruises. Scratches. Based on what she remembers and what the guys told Greedy—”
At those last couple of words, I see red—deep crimson, the blood of every person involved in taking her, using her, hurting her.
I’m up in Hunter’s face before I can temper the impulse.
“If your brother and his South Chapel goons—”
She shoves her palms into my chest to silence me.
“He’s not my brother.”
When a rumble rolls through my chest at her response, she pushes against me again. She’s not strong enough to move me, but I take a couple of steps back and give her space.
We stare each other down, chests heaving. Hunter’s not the enemy, and the only way I’m getting to Josephine is through her, it seems. So I have to play nice.
Shuttering my eyes, I take a deep breath and start again. “Look, I’m sorry. I’ve been going out of my goddamn mind—”
“It’s fine,” she replies weakly, sweeping her hair over one shoulder and twirling the ends. “I get it. But we’re on the same side here. Just… just try to keep it together. You flying off the handle in that room is not going to win us any favor with the nurses.”
I nod, accepting the chastisement for what it is. If I’m here by the grace of her and Dr. Ferguson, her stepfather, there’s no way I’ll throw away this shot.
Hunter continues. “She’s not seriously injured. Everything…” She licks her lips and swallows thickly. “She did it all to herself, Decker.”
My heart stutters, then beats so hard I worry it’ll crack my ribs. But I can’t get a single word out. Can’t articulate a single question.
Tilting her head and examining me, Hunter murmurs, “Breathe. Not like that. Not on purpose. She hurt herself trying to get away from them. She told me…”
Hunter trails off as she inhales a shuddering breath.
“Please. Hunter. Tell me what happened. Tell me how I can help.”
Wrapping her arms around her body again, she closes her eyes.
“She told me that what happened on Sunday triggered her. She lived through some kind of trauma when she was in high school—I don’t know any details,” she insists as she meets my gaze, “but whatever the South Chapel guys did set her off in the worst way.”
Josephine alluded to the experience the night we shared a hotel room.
That far-off look of panic in her expression. The grip of fear that was palpable as she stood before me, wilting in front of my eyes.
In that hotel room alone with her all those days ago, I really saw her for the first time. Her strength. Her resilience. The ruthless, unapologetic decision to fight, to survive, to live.
I recognized it, because it was the same choice I was forced to make after my mom died. She’s been hurt. Irrevocably changed. But she’s worked hard to rise above. Whatever she survived, she refused to let it define her.
If what they did on Sunday night had the power to set her back or send her to a dark, hopeless place…
“I need to see her.” My voice cracks. “Hunter… please.”
Nodding, she ducks around me into the brightly lit hospital hall. A glance over her shoulder and a quick wave are all it takes to get me moving.
I whip out my phone and send off a text to the group as I hurry to catch up.
Cap: Headed to her room now. Will update ASAP.
“There’s one more thing you need to know.”
In my periphery, she grimaces.
“She doesn’t want to be alone. At all. We’ve been taking turns, staying with her around the clock.”
There it is again.
We.
Hunter’s not the only one who’s been taking care of my girl.
She stops in the middle of the hallway, placing her hand on my arm and squeezing. “Do not overreact or make this a thing, Decker,” she warns. “It’ll only upset her more.”
Her words have barely registered when the door on the left opens and a man backs out of the room. He holds on to the handle and pulls it shut in slow motion, taking care to release it at a glacial pace so it doesn’t make a sound.
When he turns, I see red.
The deepest crimson. The blood of my enemy. The blood in his veins.
Turning from the door with a satisfied smirk plastered on his face is none other than Greedy Ferguson.