4. Lilah
4
LILAH
I’d started to shiver by the time Nolan returned with a small black nylon duffel bag, a pair of black sweatpants, and a down comforter.
“You need to get out of those wet clothes,” he said, holding out the sweatpants.
I glared at him. Putting a sweatshirt on over my wet T-shirt was one thing: no way in hell I was taking off my clothes in this house. Not even for a minute.
He exhaled noisily, then nodded and set the sweatpants aside before draping the comforter around my shoulders.
He knelt at my feet and held a thermometer against my forehead, then frowned when he read the display. I thought I read concern in his eyes, but that was crazy, because if there were three men on the planet who didn’t give a shit about me, it was the three men I’d come to think of as the Bastards.
“Can I take off your shoes and socks at least? Put these on?” He held up two pairs of thick men’s socks.
I hesitated, then nodded.
I looked around the room. It was a big space, a great room I think they called it. The living room had huge vaulted ceilings and a wall of windows that probably offered killer views during the day, and flames danced in the hearth of a fireplace so big I could have walked into it.
The room was open to a dining area with a long table crafted out of a hefty slab of rough-hewn wood that looked like it could have survived a nuclear strike. A kind of loft was visible on the second floor, a black iron railing providing a bird’s-eye view of the massive living area.
I couldn’t really feel my feet but I knew Nolan had worked off my shoes and socks when he looked up at me with real fear in his eyes. “What’s going on here, Lilah?”
I didn’t have to look at my feet to know why. They were swollen, something I could sense more than feel.
“AVS,” I said through chattering teeth. “I don’t have my meds.”
He cursed, then dug in his bag. He held up three different amber-colored plastic bottles so I could read the labels. I pointed to the one in the middle and he removed the cap and shook a pill into his hand before handing it to me.
“Need water?”
I shook my head. I just needed to get the medicine into my body. Then I might be able to start thinking straight.
I took the pill and swallowed.
“I’m going to make you some tea first, try and warm you up from the inside,” Nolan said, working the socks over my feet. Some part of my brain knew it was weird, Nolan Hale of all people doing something as intimate as putting on my socks, but I was too cold, too scared, to think too long about it. “Then I need to look at your hands.”
I nodded and sank back into the sofa. I couldn’t feel the dry socks on my feet but I could sense the absence of my cold wet socks and shoes. I was slowly warming up and drying off, the heat of the fire and the comforter around my shoulders beginning to penetrate the cold that had sunk its teeth into my bones.
The whole place was inviting, built with wood and muted black slate and filled with furniture that was warm and cozy even though it looked like it had all cost a fortune.
Nolan stood, crossed the room, and started moving around the gourmet kitchen, boiling water and pulling boxes of tea down from the cabinets. My brain was short-circuiting trying to make sense of the fact that somehow I’d gone from working at the Dive to being chased through the woods to sitting in the house owned by Rafe Maddox, Nolan Hale, and Jude Carrington.
The fucking Blackwell Bastards.
Nolan carried a steaming mug around the enormous island that separated the kitchen from the rest of the great room and my face heated as I realized I was staring at his muscular chest, bare thanks to the sweatshirt he’d given me.
His torso had been a blank canvas in high school, but now it was inked with tattoos, a montage of images I couldn’t quite make out bleeding into a declaration across his chest: DO NO HARM.
And there was more: one of those symbols doctors used — snakes entwined on a staff, wings behind them — on his right bicep, and a weird skeletal frog on his left forearm.
Once upon a time, I’d thought Nolan was cute, he and Jude the more tolerable of the threesome who had ruled our school. But in the years since I left high school, he’d become a monster in my mind.
They all had.
Now I was face-to-face with the fact that Nolan Hale might be a monster, but he was a hot one, with inked skin, thick dark hair, the kind of symmetrical features sported by fashion models, and a chiseled bod that said “athlete" more than "gym bro.”
Clearly my body was rebooting.
He sat a couple feet away from me on the couch and held out the mug. “This should warm you up. Then I’ll take a look at your hands.”
I stared at the mug, suddenly sixteen again, the past roaring in my ears like an oncoming train.
“I promise it’s just tea,” he said.
“Like your promises mean anything.” I was relieved to hear the familiar bite in my voice. I’d needed help when I’d banged on their door, but that didn’t mean I was weak.
Not anymore.
He frowned and nodded but I took the tea because I was still cold and needed to get back on my feet if I wanted to get away from him, if I wanted to get away from all of them.
And I definitely did.
I sipped at the hot tea — chamomile, I thought, and maybe lemon — and sighed as it worked its way into my body, then sat up straighter when I heard the door open at the front of the house.
“It’s okay,” Nolan said, reading my fear. “It’s just Rafe and Jude.”
Heavy footsteps sounded on the wood floor and a second later Rafe and Jude walked into the living room. They were huge, their broad shoulders obvious even under the bulky parkas they’d thrown on to step outside.
The rifles they’d grabbed from the hall closet hung from their hands, and I remembered hearing that they’d joined the military after high school, had become Navy SEALs (or maybe it was Army Rangers), been deployed somewhere there had been fighting.
They looked like what they were — dangerous men, the kind you didn’t fuck with, not that I needed their military history and the weapons to know that.
I shrunk back instinctively and they slowed their steps, like they could read my body language.
“What’s the word?” Nolan asked.
“Gone,” Jude said. I hated myself for noticing that he’d gotten even hotter in the six years since they’d graduated from Blackwell High. Back then Jude had been lean and swim-team muscular, with a narrow waist and the kind of quiet, broody energy that made all the girls weak in the knees.
Now he was bigger and broader, his fair hair shaved short and close to his skull. His dark eyes were sharp as they studied me, and I had a flash of memory: Jude in high school, his blond hair falling over his forehead as he drew in the notebook he’d carried everywhere, slamming it shut when I got close enough to try and look during AP Euro.
“Any idea who they were?” Nolan asked.
Rafe shook his head. “Took off back into the woods before we could get answers.”
Jude made a snorting sound. “You weren’t looking for answers.”
Rafe glanced at me, then back at Nolan. “How is she?”
“ She is right here.” I was feeling more like myself, like I might actually survive when just an hour before I’d been pretty sure I was going to die in the snowy woods.
Jude turned his gaze on me. I almost melted under the heat of it, under the intimacy of our history. “How are you?”
“Fine.” I lifted my chin, tried to sound strong even though my voice shook because fuck if I was going to show an ounce of weakness around the three men who lived in my memory as the Bastards. It was bad enough that I’d practically fallen through their front door, that I was sitting on their sofa, drinking their tea.
Nolan held the thermometer against my forehead. “Temp’s almost normal. Mind if I take a look at your hands?”
I hesitated, then set down the tea and held out my hands. He took them in his, and I drew in a breath at the shock of contact. I didn’t know what I’d expected — for his skin to feel like a snake’s probably — but it wasn’t like that. His hands were dry and warm, a little rough, like he wasn’t a stranger to hard work even though he was obviously living in the lap of luxury.
His hands were a lot bigger than mine, but they were surprisingly gentle as they investigated my fingers.
“Can you feel this?” he asked.
I knew he was squeezing my fingertips, but mostly because I was watching him do it. “Kind of,” I said. “My fingers kind of… sting.”
He knelt on the floor and peeled off my socks, then repeated the exercise with my toes to the same end. “You need to get in a warm bath,” he said, putting the socks back on. “Then you should probably be seen at the hospital, just to be safe.”
“I’ll get right on that.” I tried to stand, then wobbled and fell back onto the sofa. It was hard to walk when you couldn’t really feel your feet.
“Yeah, that’s not going to work,” Nolan said. He looked up at Jude and Rafe, who had removed their parkas and leaned the rifles against the wall while Nolan inspected my hands and feet. “What’s it like out there?”
“Still snowing,” Jude said. “We can plow our way to the road, but that doesn’t mean the road will be clear.”
Shit. Was I trapped with the Blackwell Bastards in the middle of the woods during a snowstorm? Because that didn’t sound sexy at all to me right now.
It sounded fucking terrifying.
Nolan sighed and looked up at me from his spot at my feet. “You’re going to have to stay until the roads clear.”
I shook my head. “No fucking way. I’ll crawl home if I have to.”
“Home” was a one-bedroom apartment I could barely afford in Greenvale, a town not nearly far enough away from Blackwell Falls, which I’d been trying to escape since I’d gotten my GED four years earlier.
It wasn’t much, but I’d made it my own, and I felt safe there. Or I had anyway. I hadn’t had time to think about what it meant for me long-term that Vic’s minions had chased me through the woods.
“Can’t let you do that,” Nolan said. “You need to keep warm, keep your hands and feet warm if you don’t want to lose fingers and toes.”
That didn’t sound appealing. I wasn’t overly vain, but I kind of liked having all my fingers and toes.
Jude crossed the room and lowered his big frame to one of the overstuffed chairs by the fireplace. “We have guest rooms.” I almost fell into his soulful brown eyes as he spoke, softly, like he was trying not to spook me. “They have locks on the doors.”
I rolled my eyes. “Bet you have the keys too.”
He nodded slowly. “We can give you the key, but I’m guessing it won’t make you feel any better about the situation.”
“You’re right,” I snapped, “because the situation sucks.”
Rafe stalked to the fireplace and grabbed a poker, then added a log from the stack set into the stone hearth. “Why were they chasing you?”
At first I hadn’t thought I’d heard him right. “Excuse me?”
He turned to face me, then folded his ginormous arms over his equally ginormous chest. “Why were they chasing you?”
There was a note of accusation in his voice. “Are you insinuating I deserved to be chased through the woods by men on snowmobiles?”
He scowled and shook his head. “Just asking questions.”
Clearly he didn’t want me here any more than I wanted to be here.
Nolan sighed. “It doesn’t matter. Not right now. She needs rest.”
His mention of rest reminded me that I was trapped. Trapped with the three men I trusted less than any other men in the world, and that was saying something, because I couldn’t think of a single man I trusted other than my little brother Matt.
I swallowed hard against the sting of tears. I was not letting the Bastards see me cry. “I can’t believe this.”
Nolan sat next to me on the sofa. “I’m sorry. I know this sucks, but you’ll be safe here until we can get you out. And I know my word — our word — doesn’t mean much, but you have it.”
I blinked, waiting until I was sure my voice would be steady. “Fine.”
What choice did I have?