Chapter Ten #2
“It wasn’t bad, mom,” I said into the phone as we drove away from the hotel venue.
My face was still aching from the practiced smile I’d kept on it all night and I was pretty sure my feet were two seconds away from falling off thanks to the strappy torture devices that Landon and Lisa had insisted I wear, but I was at least feeling much more normal than I had been earlier.
“You know you didn’t have to do the dinner tonight, sweetheart,” my mother said as the sound of a faucet running filled the speaker. She was down in Florida tonight and had already made it back to her hotel room. “You could have just stayed in and had a quiet night.”
“Yes, but then people would have started to ask questions. People were already asking where Carter is as it was.”
I’d managed to fend most of the said questions off with mentions of the flu, but I wasn’t sure how many people believed me.
Carter’s issues were infamous and I could tell they were already coming to their own conclusions about his absence tonight.
But they, at the very least, wouldn’t be leaking things to the press.
The paramedics who had taken him to the hospital, the doctors, nurses, and any other staff he came into contact with had already been given NDAs courtesy of my grandfather who had flown in immediately and was handling this expeditiously on his end.
I felt bad that, even at seventy-five, my grandfather was still having to ride in and save the day, but I knew he wouldn’t hear of me handling this on my own.
My mother said nothing for a moment before sighing. “Maybe you’re right. You know how much I appreciate you.”
“I know…” I trailed off as my gaze moved to the four men in the car with me. After getting dressed they had all turned back into a completely professional security team again.
Even Brooks, which hurt my feelings just a tiny bit after being teased for so long about my so-called flirting.
Other than that, the night ran smoothly with only a few questions about my comments at the omega center this morning which had been making their rounds on the evening news circuits today.
I’d been very careful to keep my words very general and I didn’t call anyone out specifically, but even still I’d known that the comment itself would be inflammatory and my mother seemed to feel the same way.
“Do you want to talk about this afternoon?” my mother asked as the sound of her brushing her teeth filled my ears, giving me a chance to plead my case.
I huffed a dry laugh as we were apparently back to business again. “Which part? The shuttle service or the call to your congress person comment?”
“Both, ideally,” she said around a mouthful of toothpaste. “I’m not saying the shuttle for omega centers is a bad idea, honey, but I just wish you and your grandparents had cleared it through me first.”
“It was an on-the-fly solution, mom,” I explained, remembering talking about something a lot like it with my grandma at Christmas. Once upon a time she’d been the omega at the omega center who didn’t feel safe to leave and go to vote.
I didn’t know what that felt like because I had the privilege of being surrounded by people protecting me since I was born—my right to vote and make it to a voting booth safely was secured, but many omegas were not afforded the same right.
My mother rinsed and spat on the other end of the line. “Okay and the other comments?”
That I had less of an excuse for.
Truthfully, I was angry. The more that Shirley Kirkland explained about the omega center the more I realized just how insulated these people had to become from the outside world.
Sure, they had everything they could ever want right inside of the omega center building right up to the rooftop garden… but that made it harder and harder for them to leave and live full lives unless they picked an alpha pack to protect them.
It was a choice being taken right out of their hands, and as someone who often had very few choices in life, I hated it.
Once this election was over I was supposed to gain more freedom. This was supposed to be my mother’s last election and I had no desire to ever run for office, so this would be it for the Holloway lineage. The end of a dynasty and finally the start of my own life.
I could travel, go back to school, take up weird hobbies that I didn’t have to worry about the optics of… or just simply choose to stay home in my pajamas without the need for a daily schedule set by anyone but myself.
My mother had promised me this and after the events of the day I was hellbent on getting it.
Which may have led to me making more reckless comments than I normally would have this afternoon.
“I’m sorry,” I finally said with a sigh. “They were said without me thinking about them first. I just wish people would hold their representatives accountable—especially when they aren’t doing anything to help them!”
“Sweetheart, you are preaching to the choir here,” my mother said, her tone amused. “But I don’t want you to—”
Her words were cut off by the sound of metal crunching.
A sick, twisting sense of déjà vu enveloped me as the armored SUV we were riding in began to spin.
“Lennon!” someone in the cab bellowed as my head hit the window and everything went black.
“Medical is five minutes out,” someone was saying when I came to again, my head pounding.
“Damn it, what the hell is going on?”
“We don’t know but the ground team is on it, we just have to stay put until they update us.”
It was all too familiar. Just like that night.
Fingers prodded at my forehead and I hissed with pain as I shot up into a sitting position.
“Whoa there, Len,” Brooks was saying, his face wobbling in my vision as he reached for me.
“No!” I managed to gasp as I pedaled back against the wall of the SUV and realized that, at some point, the SUV had flipped. “We’re not safe here. We have to get out.”
My heart pounded in my chest as I began to scramble to find the door handle.
“Lennon,” another voice, Zeke’s I realized, cut into my panic as he tried to pull my hands away from the wall. “We’re safe, it’s okay, but you shouldn’t move around too much. You’ve got a pretty nasty cut on your forehead.”
I reached up to touch my forehead and a low whine left my throat when my fingers came away shining with blood.
“Shit,” Dallas said from behind me, his words tight. “Her panic is not helping things right now.”
“Not safe,” I repeated. It was like coherent thought was escaping me entirely and all that was left was pure instinct and that instinct was telling me we were in grave, terrible danger. “Not safe!”
Waves of fear leaked off of me in heavy shudders as I pulled out of Zeke’s grasp and continued to search for the door handle, but once I found it I realized that the door was so damaged that we were trapped.
“No,” I wailed inconsolably as I stood on wobbly feet and threw my shoulder against the door. I needed to get out of here. Out of this space filled with the stale air of fear.
“Jesus,” one of the guys said behind me as I tried again in vain to free myself.
“Lennon.”
Hands caught my shoulders and half-pulled, half-yanked me off of my feet and down into a lap that smelled of vanilla bourbon.
“No,” I said weakly, pushing against Maverick’s broad chest as he wrapped his arms around me like a steel cage. “Need to get out.”
“Shh,” Maverick soothed, a large, warm hand making circles down my back. “You are safe here with us. Just breathe.”
I continued to fight until he pressed my ear to his chest and I could hear his heartbeat. It was strong and steady, each beat pushing my baser instincts down and bringing me out of myself bit by bit.
Sucking in a deep breath of his scent—something I shouldn’t have been able to smell at all considering the suppressants—I felt my locked muscles start to relax until I melted against him completely and began to sob.
“It’s okay, shh,” Maverick continued to comfort me, even rocking back and forth as I shivered. Then someone, probably Zeke based on the fruit champagne smell, put their jacket around my shoulders and even the shivers started to dissipate as I floated in the comfort of the moment.
I barely even noticed when the sound of crunching came from overhead and hands covered my head to keep the falling debris from hitting me.
“Is she all right?” someone asked from above. “I’ve got the president on the phone.”
“She’s fine, but I don’t think she’s up to talking,” Zeke said as he jumped up out of the SUV and held his hands down for Maverick to hand me up to him.
“I can climb out on my own,” I managed to say, though my tongue felt sluggish.
“Hush,” Maverick told me softly and I managed to look up into his deep brown eyes. There was a softness there that made my insides clench. “You’ve had a long enough day. Let us take care of you and you just rest.”
I nodded and by the time I was hefted up into Zeke’s arms I was asleep again, the sounds of sirens still filling my ears as I let myself trust them to handle things while I checked out of life for a little while.