Chapter 3
EVE
When I first stepped into Bluebell House, Brodie whisked me into the bathroom and left me to shower off the blood and trauma.
One was easier to remove than the other, but by the time I returned, clean and clad in soft pjs, which were the only clothes not to chafe the small grazes and cuts I sported, I felt marginally better.
Mr. Movie Star fussed over me, cleaning the gravel rash and wounds, most of which only required a Band-Aid. “You’re fucking lucky,” he said, kissing each hurting spot better. “You got out of that with far less injuries than I expected.”
I rubbed at a small knot on the side of my head, which explained the headache, but I was fairly sure I didn’t have a concussion. Andrew had ordered Brodie to check my fucking head before he’d stormed out to call his mother about Haze.
When he returned a few minutes later, his face was impassive. “She’s pulling rank and calling in favors,” he said shortly. “We’ll hear back soon.”
His focus returned fully to me then as he towered over me, staring down with an unreadable expression. “Head?” he asked, and Brodie answered immediately.
“She’s got a lump, but no signs of a concussion. I don’t think we need to bring in a doctor.”
Andrew nodded like that was satisfactory. “Explain your reasoning to me,” he said, in that same soft, dangerous tone.
It felt like a lifetime ago I’d snuck out the window to escape Andrew’s asshole ways. Amazing it was only hours, when everything had changed so dramatically. “Ask fucking nicely,” I replied, all but done with his shit.
Brodie opened his mouth, no doubt to run interference again, but his phone rang before he could say a word. At first, I thought he would ignore it, but when he saw who was calling, he let out a rough curse. “Motherfucker. My publicist.”
Andrew tore his gaze from me, which was the first time he’d looked away since reappearing in the room.
He’d been cataloguing my injuries, his gaze sweeping over the range of Band-Aids, and he scowled at the gravel rash on my arm that remained red and angry looking.
“You should take that, Brodie. I’m sure no matter how fast our people scrubbed the footage, something got through. ”
Our people. They were so casual when it came to this sort of thing, as if they controlled the world and everything in it. Nothing would truly touch them, not even Homeland Security. In theory, of course. Right now, they still had Haze in custody, but I didn’t imagine that would last long.
Brodie swooped down to kiss my cheek. “Are you going to be okay, baby?” he asked quietly, right near my ear. I doubted Andrew heard, but I felt the heat of his gaze as he watched us. “My publicist can wait. The whole damn world can wait.”
Reaching up, I brushed a hand across his cheek and sighed at how good it felt to have him close. “I’m fine. Please go and take it. God knows how much damage control you will need to do to get this shit explained away.”
Still, he hesitated, only moving when Andrew let out another very un-Andrew-like growl. Until today he’d been more of a huff and puff kind of guy. He would tap his fingers against his thigh or steeple his hands to peer disapprovingly over the top of you, but he rarely lost control.
Brodie shot him an easygoing smile. “Don’t get your perfectly pressed boxers in a knot, Drew. I’ll go and deal with it and let you have some Evie-babe time. We all know that’s what you’re after, a bit of reassurance that she’s okay after you drove her from the house. Ease your conscience, brother.”
He waggled his eyebrows, then with one last kiss on my cheek, he pulled out his phone and headed upstairs to his room. Leaving me with Mr. Disapproving.
So of course I went right on the offense: “This is all your fault. You know that, right?”
Yes, Eve. That’s the way. Rile the already angry man up.
Andrew’s mouth dropped open, and for a second I thought I imagined a flash of sadness and pain in his expression before it was once again a glare. “How in all that’s fucking holy—”
“You spoke to me like I was an idiot,” I continued, taking great pleasure in interrupting him.
He really hated to be interrupted. “Carrying on about me being clumsy and stupid and how I never listen to a damn word you say. I’m not a child, Andrew Knightsbridge.
You can’t be mad at me for tripping and falling.
You can’t be mad at me for leaving the house.
Especially not when you never tell me why I have these rules. ”
He opened and closed his mouth, and I wondered if I was the only person who ever continually interrupted him.
Pushing myself to stand, since I was done with him crowding over the top of me, in a softer voice I told him, “You’ve been dismissive, bossy, and arrogant from the day I met you, and I don’t understand why. ”
That wasn’t totally accurate. He’d actually been really nice the day I met him, but it had all deteriorated from there. “Just talk to me, please. Tell me what happened today and how you all made it to the scene so quickly.”
My head was clearer, and with it I was starting to question a lot of what had happened today. They had to have known I was or could be in danger before it even happened, right? Otherwise, how would they get into town right as the shooter was taken out by my badass friend?
The boys could only have gotten there that fast if they’d already known something was wrong.
Andrew spluttered, “You were almost shot. A-fucking-gain! Did you learn nothing from your last school? Have you no brain in your head that could piece together the dangers of sneaking out without, at minimum, one of us with you? Brodie told us how torn up you were when he found you in Tennessee. He had to hold pieces of you together as he drove you to the hospital, Evelyn.”
My vision wavered as my stomach lurched, and the rising tide of memories washed through me, tainted in a different light by this new information he’d just dropped on me. Or more like slammed into me with the force of a bullet.
In a flash, I was back in Tennessee Hallows College, screaming as the panic filled me until it felt like it was leaking from my eyeballs with the torrent of tears.
I remembered the pain as I crashed to the ground; the knowledge I was about to die; the scent in the air that day, which I could only explain as death and gunpowder, even though I’d never smelled either before that moment.
The shrill ringing in my ears faded as hands wrapped around my biceps, and I was hauled against a firm, broad chest. It took me many minutes to get my ears working again, and I finally realized that along with that tinny sound in my head, there was also a low whimpering cry that spilled from me.
“Eve. Evelyn. Sweetheart.”
Andrew had me held against him, his hands shifting from my arms to my back as he ran his palm soothingly up and down my spine, doing his best to avoid any injuries.
Probably so he didn’t have to touch a used Band-Aid.
“Fuck, I’m sorry. I’m doing this all wrong again,” he muttered.
“I fucking do everything wrong with you, no matter how good my intentions are.”
He spoke as if he wasn’t sure I was listening, the words tumbling out of him in another very un-Andrew-like mannerism. “I’m just trying to protect you. I need to protect you. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
With each of his desperate apologies, those keening cries slowed in my chest, and I was able to suck in some deep breaths.
Andrew's hands stilled, but then he started to move them even more slowly, and despite the fact that I was no doubt snotting and crying all over his shirt, he didn’t pull away.
“That’s it, sweet girl. Breathe with me. In and out. In and out.”
It was like he knew my learned reflex to calm myself and he was helping me remember.
“Brodie was there that day?” I asked hoarsely, the words shuddering with my ragged breaths.
“At Tennessee Hallows?” I was trying to understand what he meant, and while the words made perfect sense, it still felt as if he’d spoken in a foreign language.
Andrew pulled me so close that I could feel every hard line of his body, and weirdly, he appeared to be even more muscular than the other boys I’d been up close and personal with.
I wasn’t about to examine why feeling him, so warm and masculine beneath me, knocked more of the panic from me.
Andrew's uptight demeanor usually had me forgetting that he was an athlete and hugely disciplined man who worked out daily.
“Brodie was there filming,” he explained softly.
“He was at the college that day to pick up something and came across you during the shooting. I shouldn’t have fucking dropped his secret on you like that.
I don’t know what the hell came over me.
You upset my equilibrium, and whenever you’re around, I no longer work at my full rational capacity. ”
With no idea how to handle that confession, or what it even meant, I focused on the part I could deal with.
“How is it possible that Brodie was there that day and now I find him at my new college? Did he have something…” I couldn’t even bring myself to finish that sentence.
As soon as the thought entered my mind, I pushed it out just as fast.
Brodie would never hurt me. The gunman was the same evil asshole Lacey just blew away. It had to be one of those weird coincidences.
“Fate,” Andrew said with a strangled laugh.
“That’s what Brodes called it. He said he felt a connection to you that day, a day he wasn’t even supposed to be in town, since filming had wrapped and he was on his way home.
Then when he walked into Ethan’s classroom, he said his world stopped spinning. ”