Chapter Five Annabel
As I floated back into consciousness, a sigh escaped my lips. The excruciating pain that had cloaked me was gone. While I was appreciating the blessed relief, a sudden panic seeped into my pores. Did the newfound peace mean I was dead?
Prickly fear crept from the top of my head down to my feet, and I shivered. My groggy mind whirled with questions. Where was I? What had happened to me? When I tried desperately to widen my eyes to see where I was, they would only open halfway. They felt too swollen to fully open.
Just as I struggled to remember what had caused my eyes to swell, the events of the last few hours came racing back to me. Mendoza’s face masked in rage, his fists flying in fury, and his harsh words, “I’ll kill you for letting another man’s name come off your lips.”
When a bright, blinding light snapped on above me, a hoarse scream broke across my busted lips.
Any peace I had felt was fleeting as I realized I wasn’t in Heaven.
Instead, I was surely back in hell. But as I started thrashing around, I realized I wasn’t in Mendoza’s quarters.
Instead, I was laid out on a hard table.
Once an antiseptic smell entered my nose, I couldn’t help wondering if I was in a hospital.
“It’s okay, sweetheart. No one is going to hurt you.”
I froze at the kind words which were spoken with such care.
Fluttering my eyelids, I managed to open them enough to see someone I didn’t recognize in front of me.
He didn’t wear a Diablo’s cut. Instead, he was outfitted in medical scrubs.
As if he could sense my fear and the questions I had racing through my mind, he said in a low, kind, voice, “My name is Dr. Edgeway. One of my men found you back at the compound. You were hurt badly, and you needed surgery to save your life.”
Vaguely I remembered men arriving at the compound.
Even though I had been in such agony, I remembered the chaos around me—the screaming, the explosions, the loud, threatening voices.
But Mendoza had beaten me so badly I couldn’t do anything but lie on the floor and await my fate.
Just as I felt myself fading, I had seen Jesus.
He had gotten me out of Mendoza’s quarters.
My savior had given me a name. I wracked my brain to try to remember it. Finally, it came to me.
“Rev?” I questioned.
The doctor’s brows shot up in surprise. “He’s just outside. If you want him, I’ll have him come in.”
For reasons I couldn’t understand, I wanted the stranger with me. “Please.”
He nodded. As he turned to the door, the room began to grow darker. I fought hard to stay awake to see my savior. When I saw him framed in the doorway, I couldn’t fight any longer, and I once again fell under the harsh tide.
***
When I once again resurfaced, I found myself in a darkened room.
Relief flooded me as I imagined I must’ve made it out of surgery.
After shifting in bed, pain tore through my abdomen, causing me to gasp.
A warm hand met mine, and immediately, I jerked away, recoiling from the touch.
I could hear the panic in the muffled cry of apprehension that escaped my lips.
Who was touching me? Where was Dr. Edgeway?
I didn’t like the nearly constant uncertainty I now found myself in.
“Shh, Annabel, it’s okay. I’m not going to hurt you.”
That voice. It didn’t belong to the doctor from before, but somehow it was still familiar to me.
Slowly, I turned my head on the pillow, searching through the darkness for him.
A light flicked on over my head, and I was finally able to see him.
His kind blue eyes met mine, and instantly, they eased some of the fear.
The striking color seemed such a contrast to his mahogany hair.
He sat in an uncomfortable looking chair pulled flush against the bed.
In the silence, I drank in his comforting appearance—his long, jean encased legs, the T-shirt that appeared to be covered in blood or dirt, his shoulder length hair, which was swept back from the face that gave me a reassuring smile, his broad chest.
When I realized we were alone in the room, sharp jabs of fear pricked their way over my skin.
My rational mind told me to be frightened of him.
He was a stranger—a strange man at that.
He towered over me with muscles that could inflict great harm.
But everything I needed to know about him was in his eyes.
Searching them showed me that he was a gentle giant and he seemed like someone who I could trust.
At what must’ve been my continued apprehension, Rev held his hands up. “I’m not going to hurt you, I swear. As long as I have a breath in me, no one is ever going to hurt you again. You’re safe.”
I stared at him, weighing his words. “Y-You saved me,” I whispered.
“I guess you could say that,” he replied.I was shocked when he shyly ducked his head. The reaction seemed so foreign from the tough guy persona he exuded.
“You got me away from Mendoza and that horrible place.”
“Yeah, I did.”
“So you saved me, and I’d like to thank you.”
He glanced up to give me a sad smile. “You’re welcome.”
When I tried pushing myself up in bed, pain once again charged through my midsection like a locomotive, causing me to wince. “Do you need more pain medicine?” Rev asked.
“No!” I answered a little more loudly and emphatically than I should. I felt embarrassed at Rev’s raised brows. “I’ll be fine,” I added more calmly. The truth was I didn’t like feeling woozy and incapacitated. The last time I had been drugged was when I had been kidnapped.
Once I had ridden out the pain, I asked, “How long have I been out?”
“A day.”
I gasped. “I was out that long?”
“After being beaten and going through surgery, you needed it.”
“How bad was I?”
Rev grimaced. “Breakneck wasn’t sure you would make it through the surgery.”
“Breakneck?”
Rev chuckled. “I mean, Dr. Edgeway.”
“He was very kind to me when I woke up before surgery.”
“He’s an amazing doctor. If anyone could have saved you, it was him.”
Staring into Rev’s face, I recalled more of what had happened before I went into surgery. “I asked him to get you, didn’t I?”
He nodded. “And I came to you.”
“Yes, you did,” I murmured, as I vaguely remembered him standing in the doorway before I slipped into unconsciousness again.
“I stayed by your side the entire time you were in recovery. It’s probably good we were in Mexico because I’m pretty sure an American hospital wouldn’t have allowed me to stay.”
I couldn’t rationalize why I found myself so drawn to him or why I had felt the need to have him with me during surgery.
After all, he was a stranger to me. Sure, he had proven himself to some degree by rescuing me from the depths of hell, but I still knew so little about who he was.
And I couldn’t deny the ugly reality that I had learned about men having to earn my trust. It seemed they always had their motives.
So was Rev really a knight in shining armor or had I once again met a wolf in sheep’s clothing?
When I shook myself free of my distracting thoughts, I found Rev staring at me.
I hadn’t cared about my appearance since I had been kidnapped.
Although I had been forced to look good for Mendoza, I didn’t seek his approval.
For some strange reason, though, I found myself worrying about what Rev thought of me now.
I brought my hand, which was currently tethered to an IV pole, to my hair. “I must be a mess.”
“No. I was just thinking how much better you already look after surgery. I was so scared for you when I found you in the compound.”
“I thought you were Jesus,” I murmured, alluding to what I had said at the compound.
“I’m still just Rev,” he teased.
For some reason, I found myself smiling at his response. It felt good to smile again and to have someone tease me. It made me think of the past before everything that had happened to me with Mendoza. “So what kind of name is Rev?” I asked.
“Road name.”
I jerked my hand from his in revulsion. No, it couldn’t be true. Surely someone as kind and caring as Rev couldn’t possibly be like Johnny and his friends.
When I continued staring at him, Rev said, “It’s not what you think.”
“You’re a biker, right? What else is there to think?”
“I’m a Hells Raider. We’re nothing like the Diablos.”
“You sure about that?” I countered before I could stop myself.
A defiant look flashed in his eyes. “I’ve never laid a hand on a woman that wasn’t consensual. And I’ve sure as hell never beaten one. Even if I’d wanted to, my club would have taken my cut if I did. One of our by-laws is no man is ever to abuse his old lady or any other woman.”
“Really?”
He nodded. “It was a wedding gift our former president gave to his wife. She’d had a rough go in life—lots of men had hurt her over the years.”
Even though I didn’t know her, I felt a strange affinity with this president’s wife. We had both found ourselves members of a club no one would ever want to join. “He sounds like a good man.”
A pained expression came over Rev’s face. “He was.”
“Was?”
“He got killed a few months ago.”
“I’m so sorry,” I replied. My heart went out to Rev because I could feel the severe sorrow emanating from him.
“Thank you.”
Grimacing, I pushed myself up in the bed. “And I’m sorry for accusing you of being like the men who…hurt me.”
“Don’t be sorry. You can’t help the way you feel. And I know what you went through.”
Cocking my head at him, I asked, “So what’s Rev short for?”
“Reverend.”
My brows show up in surprise at the thought of Rev having a religious calling. “You’re a minister?”
“No, but my father was.” At what must have been my continued inquisitive expression, he drew in a breath. “When my brothers and I patched into my father’s club, we took road names that bound us as a family and honored his former life as a minister.”
“Former life?”