Chapter 7
Seven
“Wow, you’re so determined.” Thanks, I do everything out of spite.
—Dru’s secret thoughts
DRU
His smile was breathtaking.
He’d smiled before, of course, but this one was definitely a genuine smile that really had my heart beating fiercely in my chest.
“What…”
The lights flickered, and the walls once again groaned.
The wind had picked up yet again, and my stomach was starting to hurt at the thought of what might happen.
“What, what?” he asked as he moved to the cabinet closest to the kitchen entryway and pulled out a bag of dehydrated milk.
I swallowed hard and said, “I don’t remember.”
That happened a lot.
Lord help you if you interrupted me when I was talking, I’d never be able to finish my thought.
His lips quirked.
Ding.
Ding.
Ding.
He stopped next to the iPad that was dinging like crazy and slid it open, this time without any fancy legwork on his end to get it unlocked.
“Whoa.” He twisted toward me. “Look at this.”
I sidled up to him and glanced at the screen, my breath hitching.
“Whoa,” I breathed.
The article he had pulled up said, “Deadly Twin Tornadoes Rock Arkansas.”
“Is it a video?” I asked, reaching out to click the play button at the top of the screen.
Sure enough, the video started to play, and the more I listened to, the harder it got to hear.
“Deadly twin tornadoes tore through the area of the White River in Arkansas around five p.m. Central Time. Sources say that even more bad weather is set to come for the same area, and urges citizens to be ready for even more. First responders are out in full force tonight, and many more are on their way from neighboring cities and states. As of right now, the tornado ripped through…”
The same deadly storms that the woman’s voice had just warned about was among us.
I had no doubt that more was to come, I was just hoping that Mother Nature spared us.
The video finally finished, and I leaned my hips against the counter next to the man who had the ability to affect me by doing nothing.
“What’s the plan?” I asked as the wind howled.
“We’re going to find a room to buckle down in and wait,” he said. “One with no windows, and interior-only walls.”
“But first, let’s do this diaper change,” I suggested.
The walls creaked around us before he said, “We’ll take it and go.”
He grabbed all the supplies that he would need, finding some masking tape in the drawer closest to the back door, and jerked his chin at me. “Go. To the door right off the living room. It was a utility room.”
I went, not letting myself freak out until I was behind the closed door next to the nicest set of washers and dryers—yes, washers and dryers plural.
“Do you think that it’s a tornado?”
He patted the dryer and said, “Put ’im down.”
I did, watching with rapt fascination as he changed the baby, then wrapped him up with a couple of towels and some masking tape.
Only when he was done did he say, “The radar said that it was heading right toward us.”
I felt my stomach sink.
I’d hoped that I wasn’t right about where my thoughts were headed.
“We survived two disasters already, right?” I asked nervously. “What’s one more?”
The lights went out, and the bravado I’d been feigning fled the scene.
I tensed, but only until a set of arms came around me. “Let’s sit down.”
So that was what we did.
We listened to the world around us, not saying a word, until finally the wind was just gone.
In its place was such total silence that it made my eyes squeeze shut.
“We’re not dead, are we?” I teased.
The arms around me squeezed a little tighter. “No.”
“What do we do now?” I breathed.
He threaded one hand up into my hair and started to massage my scalp. “We wait for my club to find us.”
It took them eight hours.
And I’d never in my life been so happy to see a group so scary.
Mostly because I was way overstimulated because the tiny baby had absolutely refused anything bottle-wise since he’d had the last one his mother had prepared.
I was at my wits’ end, and listening to his hungry cry for a second longer sounded like torture.
But Finnian wouldn’t allow us to leave.
We’d exited the closet, but we hadn’t gone farther than the living room.
When the first sounds of a four-wheeler reached our ears, Finnian stood up languidly, unfolding himself from the couch with a savage grace that sent shivers down my spine.
“That’s them.”
His club had arrived, and they were as scary as ever.
I stood up, the baby in my arms crying like crazy, and headed to the front door right along with Finnian.
When we got there, it was to see several very large men getting off four-wheelers and side-by-sides, looking rugged and handsome, and a hell of a lot intimidating.
I didn’t miss how one of the biggest of them all, a man with the name “Knight” on his breast pocket, walked right up to Finnian and lifted him straight off his feet in a large bear hug.
But they didn’t keep my attention.
No, what held it was the massive gash on one of their arms and the angry look on all of their faces.
Oh, and the destroyed outside world that’d taken even more damage after the sun had gone down and the wind had hit.
Finnian was sure that we didn’t get hit by another tornado, though. Just damaging wind.
We wouldn’t know for sure until we got back to civilization.
“Here,” one of the men said as he got off his four-wheeler and started walking toward us, a cooler of something in his hand. “I brought breast milk and some formula. We weren’t sure which to get you.”
“Thanks, Audric.” Finnian walked forward to take it. “Kid’s not havin’ any powdered milk. We tried, but he definitely didn’t like it. I’m guessing it was breast milk. Formula and powdered milk can’t be all that different, right?”
Audric.
The man who’d lost his wife the same day that Finnian had lost his son.
The one with the baby—though she couldn’t be much of a baby anymore. She was likely a toddler now. School age almost.
“You’re the computer genius.” Another man walked toward me and stared down at the baby in my arms. “Got a set of lungs.”
“Yeah,” I said, not thinking when I shoved the kid at him. “Can you take him?”
He blinked and took the baby, but he did it so expertly that I knew that he had kids of his own.
He didn’t fight me on taking the kid, and instead said, “Finnian, get me set up. I’ll feed him.”
I was more than happy to let them take the reins.
I did, however, walk back into the house for the laundry room where I’d spied the first aid kit.
I caught it up and walked back outside to hear Finnian saying, “…Dru. She was seated next to me on the plane.”
They all looked up to me when I came back out.
I set the pack on the railing and pointed at the scary one with the gash on his arm. “Come here. Let me clean that up.”
“Yes, ma’am,” the scary one said instead of arguing.
I didn’t make a big deal of all the burn scars on his arms, face, and neck—all the available skin I could see—but I did note that they were old. Healed as best as they ever would be.
“Jasper, we’ll leave you here. Gotta go clear more of that road.”
Jasper, obviously the one that I was working on, jerked his chin up. “Ten-four.”
I fixed him up in complete silence while the rest of the men went to help clean up the area so we could get out easier.
I did notice that they’d given a bag to Finnian—they called him Apollo, though—and ordered him to get changed.
He came back out long moments later in worn-out jeans, a t-shirt, and work boots.
They all appeared to be his, too, because they fit him like a glove.
I tried not to let my drool dribble down my chin as I watched him walk away, but it was a close thing.
“Known each other long?”
I looked into the eyes of Jasper, likely the scariest man that was there of the four that’d arrived, and said, “All of about twelve hours or so. We met on the plane. I got upgraded to first class.” I didn’t want to ask what I had to next, but I did anyway.
“Do you know anything about the plane crash? If anyone else survived?”
It’d been hours now.
There was no way that they didn’t know about it.
“From the preliminary reports, y’all are the only two.” He paused. “Three. The baby made it. But they don’t know about you yet.”
I nodded. “Can’t wait for that circus.”
He snorted. “Don’t envy you at all.”
No, I’d bet he didn’t.
After I got his arm patched up, I said, “This is going to need stitches. It’s good enough for now, but when you get back to civilization, you’re going to need to get it taken care of.” I shoved everything back into the pack, planning on taking it with us. “What did you do?”
“Barbed wire fence that was hanging from a tree. I thought it was a branch.” He paused. “It wasn’t.”
“Ouch,” I muttered.
The one that’d been feeding the baby came up and said, “He’s done. Much happier now.”
I knew he wanted to hand the baby to me but, “I can’t. I’m sorry. But I’m just…”
The man looked at me with a calm, calculating stare before he said, “You don’t have a choice.”
Then I was holding the kid in my hands, and I wanted to scream.
It was too much.
The plane crash. The tornado. The twelve hours of screams.
I just couldn’t anymore.
I broke.
I plopped down onto the lopsided steps and started to cry.
Luckily, the man was right.
The baby didn’t scream.
He was happy and asleep.
But still.
I just lost it.
Utterly lost it.
Deep, heaving sobs left my body in a rush, and I hunched over, still careful to not squish the baby, and cried.
I don’t know how long I cried for, but by the time the men came back, I was still crying.
“Jesus,” I heard Finnian say. “What the fuck?”
The baby was taken from my arms, and Finnian dropped down on his haunches next to me and said, “Dru, what’s wrong?”
“I just wanted a second!” I wailed. “I just…a break. A second to breathe! And that man wouldn’t let me.”
“Way to go, Doc.”
“It’s not like I had much choice,” the man named Doc said. “I was just trying to help y’all so we could leave faster.”
“You could’ve waited a few seconds. It’s not like we’re in a real rush,” Finnian snapped.
“You may not be in a rush, but we are,” another one piped in. “It’s bad, Finnian. We need to get out of here.”
I wiped my tears. “I’m sorry. I’m fine.”
I forced myself to quit crying and gathered my pride. “I’m ready.”
The trek from the broken-down river house to civilization was a long one.
And the men were right.
It was bad.
What I imagined, and what I actually saw, were nowhere near the same thing.
I was showered, changed, and sitting on a couch with a little girl on one side of me, and the infant on the other.
I was mentally and physically exhausted, but I pulled myself together enough that they trusted me with the kids.
They being a man that they called Gunner, who’d brought his wife and his little girl along with him.
Gunner’s wife, Sutton, had smiled at me sadly and helped me get cleaned up. She’d let me borrow some clothes, and they’d let me borrow their hotel room to get clean.
I’d taken her up on her offer of clothes and food.
What I hadn’t done was expected her to trust me enough with her kid after she’d for sure heard about my meltdown at the cabin by the river.
But there I was, hanging out in a hotel room, while everyone else helped with the aftermath of the tornado and the plane crash.
But my brain had a burning question that needed answered, and the moment that Finnian showed up, dirty and more exhausted looking with a phone in his hand and a small smile on his face, I knew I had to ask him.
The toddler girl’s father came in shortly after Finnian and walked to his little girl, picking her up and cuddling her close.
He walked back out the hotel room door, and my brain just couldn’t compute.
The man holding the little girl, that I could now see outside the hotel room talking with a bigger group of big, scary man, definitely wasn’t the one who’d gone home with a little baby girl years ago.
Finnian stopped next to me and gently took the seat, his mouth open to speak.
But I beat him to it.
“What’s going on here?” I whispered to him. “I thought that the brown-headed one with the green eyes was her father.”
Audric.
The one that’d brought the formula and the breast milk with him earlier.
Finnian snorted. “That is a long story.”
“I can’t wait to hear it,” I whispered. “I’ve seriously been racking my brain trying to come up with the answer. I have nothing else to do but to obsess.”
He leaned backward, bumping me with his thighs as he slouched down low in his seat.
He was careful not to disturb the baby as he did.
“Long story short, Audric wasn’t the father. Gunner was—he’s the one that’s holding Lottie,” Finnian answered. “I have some good news.”
“What?”
He showed me his phone. “I found the baby’s father.”
Relief hit me like a physical blow. “Oh, thank God.”
“Bad news is, the dad’s a piece of shit.”
My heart kicked. “Oh, no.”
“Like, the biggest piece of shit that I’ve ever looked into in my life,” he continued. “The woman was headed toward a compound in East Texas that specializes in helping women who are abused to find new homes. New lives. She’d boarded the plane, but never made it to them.”
“And if the ex finds out he has a kid, there’s no way in hell that kid is going to live.”
I blinked at the large man with salt and pepper hair filling the door.
“Um.” I hesitated, unsure if I should say more.
But Finnian stood up and walked toward the man, offering his hand. “Sam, I’m glad you could make it.”
“Glad we could finally meet in person, but wish it was under different circumstances,” the salt and pepper-haired man grumbled, his eyes coming to me. “You’re Dru?”
I nodded.
“Thanks for helping.” He looked worried now. “I have to talk to you about something. You’re not going to like it, but I hope that you’ll agree to go along with our story, because otherwise this man is going to kill this little kid, and we won’t have a legal leg to stand on to get him back.”
I felt my belly somersault. “What do you need me to do?”