3. Who Hurt You? – Seven
3
WHO HURT YOU?
SEVEN
T he high beams illuminate the ancient pines hedging in our gravel drive as Atticus pulls through the front gate and it yawns shut behind us.
Every fucking bump jars my battered rib cage, but I’ve been through worse.
I meet Eli’s eyes in the rearview and catch his smirk. I shake my head at him, nostrils flaring, knowing exactly what the fucker is thinking.
He figures I’ve got nine lives. If that’s true, then I still have a few left to spend before my card is punched.
Aurora asked several times about me going to the hospital, saying I could have internal bleeding, but I know what that’s like, and nothing in me says I’m dying. I might have a cracked rib or two, but it’s nothing that won’t heal on its own in time.
“This road isn’t on the map,” Aurora says from the back seat, and I can hear the questions in her words, the ones she isn’t asking.
Where are you taking me?
What are you going to do with me?
Normally, I’d have those answers, but this time, I don’t have a damn clue what Atticus is up to. I do know one thing, though: we weren’t looking to hire a cleaner a couple hours ago. Atticus’s clean freak ass is enough to keep the whole place military clean even without the threat of sergeant inspections.
When I glance over my shoulder, a bolt of heat ricochets up my neck. I grit my teeth through the pain, my gaze locking on to the girl in the back seat, her face illuminated by the glow of her cell phone. She taps and slides her fingers over the screen, zooming in on an offline map.
She’s trying to track where we are. Clever girl.
Only, this house isn’t on any GPS, and the coordinates it gives for fifty miles around are bogus, thanks to the cell jammer Atticus installed last year. Our phones can work with it, but no one else’s will
I open my mouth to give an ominous reply but Atticus beats me to it, offering the simple, boring truth.
“That’s because it isn’t a road. It’s our driveway.”
She lifts herself higher in her seat, trying to see farther ahead, but from here the road still looks dark and endless. It will be for another minute.
“We like our privacy,” I say in a low tone, feeling my lips pull up into a smirk when she can’t hold my gaze for longer than a few seconds before looking away.
She pushes a hand into the fur on the nape of her dog’s neck, giving her a comforting scratch that I think is more intended to calm her own nerves than the pup’s. She’s been dozing between Aurora and Eli for miles now.
Funny, I seem to recall mentioning on several fucking occasions that I wanted a dog only to be shot down by Atticus. The guy actually shuddered at the thought, grumbling about ‘pet dander’ and ‘dirty paws’. But of course now he’s pet-friendly.
There must be something he wants from this girl.
Even all cut up and bruised, with wet hair and running mascara, she’s absolutely stunning. But I know Atticus better than to think he’d bring a woman, with a fucking dog, into our house just to get some pretty pussy.
Aurora’s attention goes back to her phone just as the screen turns dark, flashing with a battery symbol before dying completely. She clutches it tightly, and her throat bobs in her slender neck.
“Do you have a phone charger in…” Her words trail off as we reach the front yard of our cabin.
We call it that because of the rustic feel of the timber and stone frame, but as her lips part in awe, I realize it’s like calling a large caliber rifle a fucking pocket pistol.
Atticus’s watch connects to the house, and it lights up inside as he puts the ‘borrowed’ Dodge into park.
“What the fuck?” Aurora mutters under her breath.
Elijah chuckles, and she glances at him, blinking as if she just realized she said the words out loud.
By the time Aurora is out of the car, Atticus has already retrieved her mangled suitcase from the trunk and shut it again before she can see the evidence of what resided there an hour before she ran me over.
I incline my head to the crimson stain on the top right corner of her suitcase, and Atticus quickly rubs it away with his sleeve.
“Oh. Thanks,” Aurora says, reaching out to take it from him, but Atticus doesn’t hand it over, stalking right past her with a grumbled, “I’ve got it.”
Her dog bounds behind him, stopping next to the door with a soft bark. The beep of Elijah putting his thumb to the digital lock makes Aurora flinch, but as the door swings open, she follows her dog inside as if in a trance.
From here, she has a good view of the cabin’s layout.
In the high-ceilinged entryway and living room to our left it’s all exposed beam, warm colors, and wide-paned glass. To the right is the dining room we never use and the stairway to the basement.
Straight ahead is the main staircase that leads to the couple of upstairs bedrooms and behind it is the hall that feeds deeper into the cabin, through the kitchen, and out past Atticus’s office to the gym and garage.
The dog’s nails click on the mahogany hardwood as she goes straight for the furniture in the living room, sniffing around the low couches and carpet until Aurora calls her back.
“Hey, come here, girl. We have to clean your paws.”
Atticus’s brows lift in surprise. “Grab her a rag, would you, Sev? And, Eli, there should be clean sheets for the guest room in the hall closet upstairs. I’ll get the stitch kit.”
Aurora reaches a hand out like she might stop Atticus from leaving, but he’s already long gone.
“My…bag,” she says under her breath, and I realize Atticus still has the filthy suitcase. He’s probably going to put it into quarantine.
“Be right back,” Eli offers with a smile for Aurora as he rushes up the stairs. I feel more than see her eyes shift to me and then away as she folds herself onto her knees to busy herself comforting her dog.
I run to grab a rag from the kitchen and come back to see she hasn’t moved an inch.
“What did you say her name was?” I asked her on the road, but I don’t think she ever said.
Aurora tips her head up, and I fight a smirk at how fucking delicious she looks on her knees. A blush rises on her high cheekbones as if she understood exactly how I was looking at her.
“It’s, um, Eleven,” she replies, taking the rag from me to quickly clean off Eleven’s paws before straightening to her full height.
“Eleven?”
“Yeah, it’s from Stranger Things . But mostly, I just call her Ellie.”
“What’s Stranger Things ?”
She peers up at me, a knot between her brows like she thinks I might be from a different dimension. “You’ve never heard of Stranger Things ?”
My smirk fades as I take in the dark bruise on her temple. It stands out in vivid violet against her olive skin. Beneath it, across her cheekbone, is the cut I noticed earlier, but now, in the light, I can see it’s more than a bit of split skin.
That shit was carved in with a knife. The edges are too perfect. The line is too straight. Before I realize I’ve done it, I have her chin between my fingers, angling her face more into the light.
She jerks away, but not before I catch the bruising over her collar. The unmistakable marks of fingers where they squeezed too tightly along the right side.
“Who hurt you?”
She takes a half step back, her lips pulling up in a false smile meant to misdirect me as she scoffs. “I don’t know what you mean.”
I wave a hand toward the wounds with a derisive snort. “You have fingerprint bruises on your neck.”
My eyes return to them, and I swear I see her pulse jump. She’s so damn thin I notice, too. Like she hasn’t eaten a proper meal in weeks.
Who is this girl? And who the fuck looked at that face—lips made for sinning and eyes like a doe’s—and chose violence?
She shakes her head at me as if I don’t know strangulation marks when I see them.
“It must’ve happened in the crash. Probably from the airbag, or maybe the seat belt or something.”
“Mmm,” I reply, letting her spoon-feed me her bullshit, knowing damn well no one can make a victim talk until they want to.
When she meets my eyes again, she sees something there that makes her pause.
For a heartbeat, I wonder if she’s decided to be honest. If she’ll give me a name to cross out for her.
I wait, noticing the ring of honey-brown around her pupils and the gold flecks littered across her jade irises. She breaks eye contact first, and I nod to myself at her choice to remain silent.
Fair.
She doesn’t fucking know me.
Reaching out, I pinch the hem of her Pink Floyd tee, rubbing the damp fabric between my fingertips, watching as her hands curl into fists at her sides.
“You’re wet,” I say, and her cheeks flush. I lift a brow, smirking as I wonder if her thoughts went to the same dirty place mine did. “I’ll grab you something dry to sleep in.”
“That’s all right, I don’t need you to?—”
“Wasn’t a question.”
“Okay, all set.” Eli descends the stairs, eyes darting between Aurora and me with a question in them neither of us answers.
“Are you hungry? Thirsty?” Eli asks, and I leave him to play chaperone, my fucking ribs and joints protesting each step I take upstairs to my bedroom.
The lights in my closet flick on as I open the doors, illuminating rows of gray and black fabric, dark-wash denim, and fine suits that once belonged to Eli’s dad. I pull out a pair of gray drawstring sweatpants from a dresser drawer in the center island, where I keep my shit for working out.
She should be able to cinch them tight enough to stay on her narrow waist. I grab one of my plain black tees as well. It’ll be like a dress on her, but it’ll work.
I head for Elijah’s dad’s old room. He doesn’t stay here anymore, and since it’s the only other room in the house with a proper bed, I assume it’s what Atticus referred to as ‘the guest room’. As if we ever have guests.
When I pass the stairs, Eli is on his way up with two silver mixing bowls from the kitchen. One empty and one filled with kibble that must’ve been in Aurora’s bag.
He must’ve left her upstairs in the room to get settled while he grabbed it out of her bag for her.
“I can take them to her.”
He eyes me for a second but passes them over. “They’re for the dog.”
“Eleven,” I tell him.
His brows wrinkle.
“The dog’s name—it’s Eleven.”
“Seriously?”
“Yep. Together, we make a whole convenience store.”
Eli snorts, but when I turn to leave, he stops me with a serious expression. “Did you see the bruises on her neck?”
“I did.”
He lowers his voice as if she can hear us from all the way down the other end of the hall. “Those aren’t from the crash.”
“Clearly.”
“She say anything to you about where she was coming from? Or heading to?”
I shake my head, starting to walk away. “But I intend to find out.”
“Hey, meet us in the garage. We need to close those cuts,” Eli calls after me, and I wave the dog bowls in a noncommittal gesture to tell him I heard him.
It can wait.