Chapter 18
Chapter Eighteen
Drew
Ifelt every word she directed at Tate, even though I couldn’t hear anything as I stayed low in my seat and watched them through the tinted windows of the truck.
Her feet were stamping all over the place, her mouth moving fast and those little frown lines of hers appearing on her forehead.
Even angry, she still made me smirk. I found her hot as hell when she couldn’t control her emotions.
The disappointment I felt was quickly replaced with a need to grab her by the shoulders and make her listen to my apologies. I might not have been able to give her the white picket fence lifestyle, but that didn’t mean I wouldn’t make sure she had everything she’d ever want that money couldn’t buy.
As she sped off in her car, the back wheels spun uncharacteristically and I knew Tate was getting the ass ripping of his life. If only I could tell her what we’d found on that cut, maybe then she’d realize just how good the kid had done out there.
But all of that could and would be dealt with later.
I was more interested in seeing her face when I pulled up beside her, showing her I could be just as defiant as she was capable of being.
I rolled out of my spot in the shadows, following her down the small lanes of traffic until a car pulled away in front of the truck, leaving me directly behind her.
Then everything happened quickly. The brake lights flashed a couple of times as if they’d been caught by accident, the outline of her body reaching over to where Tate sat. Somewhere over the next few seconds, I stopped breathing.
Her car swerved across the road, hitting the grass banking on the right, unstopping as the back end of her Corolla vanished over the edge.
“Fuck, no. Please, no.” My spine stiffened as I yanked the wheel to the right, skidding to a halt at the top and jumping out as fast as I could.
All I could think about was getting to her. All I could do was hold all the breath in my lungs and move on autopilot, barely even registering the sound of the bikes that rode past me as I slammed my hand on the hood of the truck and ran full sprint to where she was.
The grass banking wasn’t steep, by some stroke of fucking luck, but the cold weather and rain of the week had sent the mud to the surface, causing me to slide down like Bambi on fucking ice as soon as my foot made contact.
The thick soil clung to my leg, but I didn’t slow, jumping up from the bottom as soon as my feet landed on more even terrain again.
The car had stopped completely, the tail lights on full as the car seemed to sit there, waiting until one of us remembered how to breathe again.
The edges of my cut swung under my arms as I ran to her, sliding to a stop at her side before even thinking to check on Tate. I grabbed the handle, yanking the one thing standing between us away as I shouted her name through a heavy, strangled breath.
“Ayda!”
Leaning in, I reached out to her shoulders in a panic as her hands remained clung to the wheel, her head bowed low and her eyes closed, every breath she took in, deep and slow.
The groan of pain and disorientation seemed a long time coming.
Her hands dropped from the wheel and raised to her head where a trickle of blood slowly started to descend from a fast forming bruise.
“Fuck. Tate?”
Pushing myself farther in, I leaned over to Tate and carefully gripped his shoulder.
“Tate, buddy, talk to us.”
His head rolled lazily from side to side, but the twitching of his arms as he flexed his fingers back and forth told me enough.
He was fine, but shaken up to fuck. Groaning as I reached farther over, not wanting to press my body weight on Ayda in case she was hurting anywhere else, I hooked my hand under Tate’s chin and carefully began to raise his head.
The small hiss and moan of pain as his hand flew up to the back of his neck had me pausing.
“That hurt?”
“Just a bit,” he winced out, managing to lift his eyes up to mine as he moved at a much slower pace. “Whiplash or something. No big deal. Ayda? You okay?”
“I don’t know. I’ll tell you when everything stops hurting.
” She groaned, her hand moving to where the seat belt was cutting into her shoulder.
I wasn’t sure what was happening as she slowly started to tremble, and then, without warning, she burst into tears, her head burying in her hands as “sorry” came out in a frequency only dogs could decipher.
Moving without much thought, I unclipped her seatbelt and pushed it away from her, somehow wedging myself in the footwell as I grabbed her face in my hands and held her.
I’d never held a crying woman that way before, but I knew that all I wanted to do was kill every one of those tears that dared to fall down her face.
I wanted to destroy anything that was causing her pain.
“Tell me what’s hurting,” I whispered, my eyes briefly leaving her covered face to glance down at her body before rising to the bump on her temple.
Her shitty old car had no airbags, so I could only imagine the force she hit the steering wheel with when she somehow slammed to a stop. “Is it just your head, darlin’?”
“My head, my heart, my pride… I’m so sorry, Drew. I was a bitch.” She reached out with her right hand, and without much prompting, Tate’s fingers wrapped around hers and squeezed. “I’m sorry, Tate. I didn’t mean—”
The sob that had been building stole her voice.
“Come on, A. I’m fine,” Tate grumbled quietly, looking between his sister and me, asking me for help.
Pulling her other hand away from her face, I lowered it into her lap and dipped my head to catch her eyes.
“The kid’s fine. He’s had worse injuries than this out on the field. Ain’t that right. Tate?”
He mumbled something beside me that sounded vaguely like reassurances, but he was in as much shock as she was. Reaching up, I brushed a small trail of blood out of the way before it dropped over her brow, sighing heavily as my skin prickled.
“You didn’t hit anything. You stopped the car. You’re safe now. The heart and pride can take a back seat for a while. We need to get you home so we can take a look at your head. We’ll deal with all the other crap another day.”
“This is my fault, all my fault. I just… I’m an idiot.”
She swiped the tears from her cheeks with her trembling hand and sucked in a steadying breath.
As she released it in a long stream, her cheeks pinked and her eyes closed, the sudden burst of emotion catching up with her.
In need of drawing attention away from her emotional outpour, she held her hand between us, her eyes fluttering open as she studied it.
“I can’t stop shaking.”
Trapping her hands between both of mine, I stilled her, keeping my eyes on hers as I pressed my palms together and held her firmly. “There. All stopped,” I whispered through a sad smile. “I’ve got you now.”
Ayda stared at our hands for the longest time.
Her breaths seemed to return closer to normal with every cycle of inhales and exhales.
When she finally looked up and met my eyes, all I could see was everything she wanted to say, but couldn’t with Tate in the car.
Instead, her fingers curled around mine.
“I want to go home.”
“That I can do,” I breathed back. “I’m just going to need a phone from one of you to call the guys so we can get this thing towed away. Plus, Harry is better with tending to the wounded than I am, believe it or not.” I smirked, lowering my mouth to her fingers and brushing my lips over them.
“Right. My phone,” she said, tearing her eyes away from mine and looking over at Tate, who pulled her purse from between his body and the door sheepishly.
I didn’t wait around to ask what that look meant. Slipping out of the car, I pulled her bag out with me and reached inside for her cell. Scrolling through like the big thumbed, useless idiot I was, I found the number saved under ‘Home’ and despite the situation, felt my lips curling into a smile.
Kenny answered, but it was fleeting. He slammed the phone down in anger, still pissed at me for the Tate shit, and told me they’d all be here within fifteen minutes.
That was enough time for me to have a walk around to the other side of the car and check the damage.
It wasn’t anything that a good wash down, a brake test, and maybe some new tires couldn’t fix, but I wasn’t going to tell Ayda that.
From now on, she’d be riding in a car that at least had some airbags.
I helped Tate out, watching as he cracked his neck when he stood up straight, the new, baby-like wrinkles on his scrunched up face showing he was in more pain than he wanted us to see.
“You think you can make it up there, brother?” I asked, pointing back to the mudslide I’d come down.
Not too far to the left was a gravel path, one that would be much easier for two wounded Hanagans to climb.
Well, one at least. Ayda wasn’t going to do anything but rest in my arms, no matter how much she fought me on it.
“Sure.” Tate nodded. “I’m good.”
The kid was earning more and more points for bravery as the day wore on.
“You grab her bag. I’m gonna go get your sister.”
“Got it,” he croaked out before clearing his throat.
“We’ll talk about everything later, Tate.
” My hand tapped his shoulder gently before I ran around to the other side of the car and pulled Ayda up in to my arms. As predicted, she told me she was strong enough, and she told me she could walk, but my silence as my arms curled under her body told her this wasn’t up for debate.
With her hands clasped around my neck, I felt her breathe in against the leather of my cut before dropping her head to my chest and giving up her fight.
By the time we made it back to the roadside, the men were pulling up in convoy—one tow truck, two bikes, a repossessed Ram truck and a crashed out Corolla. We couldn’t have looked more like a Mickey Mouse motorcycle club if we tried.
Sliding Ayda into the front seat of the repo car, I let Harry through as he gave her the full check and tried to talk her around.
No part of me wanted to take my eyes from her, but it was only when she repeated that she wanted to go home that I knew I had no choice.
She needed looking after the way she’d done for me so many times before.
Walking back around the hood, I paused when I saw Slater coming towards me, his feet slipping and sliding as he climbed back up the slope with the end of a rope in one hand.
“Didn’t you see the pathway over there?” I smirked, pointing over his head and watching as he squinted down in the dark before cursing quietly to himself.
“I like a challenge.” He eventually grinned.
I was just about to reply when I saw his eyes drift over my shoulder and heard the thunderous roar of engines rolling down the street we were parked on.
It was now the early hours of the morning and no one should be on the streets of Babylon except for us and the cops, and seeing as we were all accounted for, the fact that three bikes were heading our way had my spine straightening and my eyes narrowing as I turned to watch them fly past us.
Only then did the noise seem familiar, and I remembered the bikes that had tore past me on my way to rescue Ayda and Tate.
As I watched their backs disappear into the distance, I heard Slater step up closer behind me.
“Unmarked,” he said quietly.
“No leathers,” I added.
My teeth ground together, the muscles in my jaw flexing back and forth as I squinted down even more and flared my nostrils.
What we’d just seen didn’t make sense, but then again, what did make sense these days?
All I could do was listen to that sixth sense of mine that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand to attention.
“Vacation riders just passing through?”
I didn’t answer right away, instead turning around and taking a glance at Ayda who was resting her wounds with her head back. “Probably,” I lied to Slater, not telling him that I’d seen them before, as I tapped him on the shoulder and began to walk away. “Let’s get my girl and her brother home.”