Chapter 2
Clara
Thirty silent minutes later, Trips pulls me aside. “We have to go back.”
“No.”
He mindlessly flicks and opens a pair of handcuffs he found in a drawer as he looks across the room at Jansen. The waxy sheen on his skin is fading. I hope that’s a good sign. Emma’s alarm goes off, cueing her to check his temperature, heart rate, and blood pressure.
“We have to. I’m surprised no one has come yet. The LoJack on the car will lead them right here. We both know my father shouldn’t get his hands on Jansen.”
“I can turn off the LoJack.”
“Clara, you know it’s not that simple.”
I want to stomp my foot, the anger and fear still stuck inside me looking for an out. “But it should be, Trips. He took a bullet for me. The least I can do is to be here when he wakes up.”
He glares across the room, Evie looking up as our volume rises.
“Not if it costs any of us anything more than we’ve already lost, Crash.”
Evie stands up, and even from across the room, I see rage coat her face. This woman—a woman I’ve wanted to get along with ever since Jansen told me how close they are—it’s clear I’ve bought her hate tonight.
“This is your fault,” she hisses, striding closer.
“It is,” I say.
Trips steps forward to defend me, but I place my hand on his arm, calling him off. Her anger needs a target. I’m the best candidate.
“Why isn’t he in a hospital? Emma isn’t a doctor. She isn’t even a vet. My brother could die, and instead of getting him help, real help, you dragged him to a storage unit to do backroom surgery on him?”
My heart breaks knowing that anything I say won’t be enough. “I wish he were in a hospital, too. And if this doesn’t work, that’s where he’ll go. But if he goes to a hospital, he’ll go to jail.”
“Why? What the fuck has my brother done besides support your cheating ass?”
“Evie,” Emma interjects.
“Don’t ‘Evie’ me.” She turns her rage on my best friend, and I know if she takes even a single step toward Emma, I’m tossing her out, grief and fear be damned.
“You’ve seen the way she looks at this guy.
The way the other guys talk about her. You don’t think she’s sneaking around behind my brother’s back?
You don’t think she’s with all of them in some capacity?
Do you think I’m an idiot? She’s fucking engaged to this rich asshole!
” She spins back to me, poking me in the chest, tears in her eyes.
“Is my brother not good enough for you? Because you sure as shit will never be good enough for him.”
“You don’t understand,” I whisper, her vitriol so justified in her eyes, Trips vibrating with rage beside me, desperately trying to hold back.
Because she’s right. I’m not just involved with her brother. And he’s unconscious because of me, unable to tell her that this is what he wants, unable to defend this strange family we’ve made in a way she might understand.
Her teeth snap as she shakes her head at me, taking a step back. “There’s nothing to understand. You’re dead to me. And if I have my way, you’ll never hurt my brother again.”
I glance at Jansen across the room, the slow rise and fall of his chest comforting as the tears I’ve kept at bay wet my cheeks. “I never wanted anyone else to get hurt,” I whisper.
Evie turns her back to me, marching toward Emma. I go to intercept, but this time, Trips is the one holding me back.
“And you,” her voice cracks. “I can’t be with someone who’d do this. Who’d side with a cheater and do fucking backroom surgery as a goddamn pre-vet undergrad.”
“Evie,” Emma says, tears in her eyes. “You don’t understand,” she says, echoing my words.
“And I don’t want to. I’m taking my brother and bringing him to a real hospital,” she says, circling the table.
Trips strides across the room. “I can’t let you do that.”
“And you’re going to stop me, big guy?”
“If I have to, yeah. There’s more at stake than you know.”
“My brother’s life is at stake!”
Trips stays calm, and the evidence of his change settles deeper into my bones.
“And he’s stable. If that changes, we’ll call an ambulance.
RJ and Walker will come and wait with you two.
But until then, I’m going to ask you to sit next to your brother and do whatever counts as prayer for you. Because he needs that right now.”
“Prayer doesn’t prevent death.”
“No, it doesn’t. But it might prevent your brother from spending the next ten years in prison, so get your ass in that chair and stop whining about shit you don’t understand.”
She glares up at him, but when it comes down to it, she’s surrounded and outnumbered.
Only as she slips her hand into her pocket on the way to her chair, I realize she isn’t going down without a fight. I sprint forward and catch her elbow, tugging the phone from her grip with a practiced move. “I’m sorry, but I can’t let you do that,” I say, the tears still streaming down my face.
She screams at me, rage and fear pouring from her in words meant to destroy me, but Trips steps in, wrestling her into the chair. With a snick, he handcuffs her to Jansen’s bedside.
She looks at him in shock, her rage earned but misplaced. Mostly.
“Please,” I say. “Wait and see. We won’t let him die, but we can’t send him to prison because of your fear.”
Emma’s hand shakes as she reaches across Jansen’s still body for her girlfriend, only to have Evie pull away. “Don’t touch me. We’re done.”
The shock on Emma’s face is quickly covered as her alarm goes off, reminding her to check Jansen’s vitals again. “Call the guys,” she says, not addressing the heartbreak that echoes in the storage room as she busies herself with his care.
I nod, putting Evie’s phone on the cabinet, then taking Emma’s phone from her, texting the guys in code, too wracked to call.
I have to be strong. One moment of weakness, of showing Jansen how badly I’d been hurt, has led to this: to inpatient treatment, which I hate to admit was long overdue, and from there to whatever caused him to break out tonight and come for me.
I want to be honest with him, with all of them, but right now, their worries are already sky high.
Having them higher won’t help us get what we want.
Their concern risks everything. Or at least, Jansen’s has.
This was never part of the plan. I’d never imagined having to make this choice for him a year ago—jail or backroom surgery by a pre-vet student.
It wasn’t one of the contingencies.
Inching forward, I press a kiss to his cheek as Evie struggles to push me away from him, whispering in his ear, a private message for just him. “I love you. I love you so much, but you can’t save me. Not right now. Right now, I’m trying to save you. Trust me. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
Then I back away, not wanting to leave him, but knowing Trips is right. Our lack of keepers tells me that whatever is waiting for us at the estate is bad.
“Are you sure you can’t run again?” Emma asks, tears glistening in her eyes.
I shake my head. “That was always temporary. They’d almost found us.
It’s part of what made us come back. But we regrouped.
We have a plan.” I wrap my arms around her, her body trembling.
“Keep him safe for me. I trust you. If he has to go to the hospital, bring him. We’ll find a way to deal with the fallout," I lie, not knowing how we'd fix this mess.
She nods against me. “I think he’s going to pull through. He’s young, strong, and healthy. And based on stories, he hardly ever gets sick. But I’ll stay with him until he’s out of the woods. And if he has to go to the hospital, I’ll hold off the cops as long as I can.”
I swallow more tears, forcing something almost smile shaped onto my face. “Never my bail call,” I say.
She responds how she always has. “Always your partner in crime.”
Trips wraps his arm around my shoulders, pulling me away, the burn of Evie’s glare against my back impossible to ignore, even as I do exactly that.
Wiping the crusty blood from the steering wheel, Trips watches me as I build a wall around my fear, setting it aside to prepare for what comes next. “Do you want to drive?” he asks.
A tiny smile pricks at the corner of my mouth. Trips giving up control over the steering wheel without a good reason is something I never thought I’d see. “Not right now. But thanks for checking.”
He chucks the dirty paper towels in the back, rolls down all the windows, then we climb in, the metallic tang of Jansen’s blood impossible to escape between the upholstery and our own blood-soaked clothes.
We warn the poor girl at the front that Walker and RJ are on their way, then drive silently back toward the estate—back to a prison of roses and blue walls, back to a warden who’s never happier than when he’s forcing the people around him to destroy the parts of themselves they thought were immutable.
I thought I was smart. I knew it with every ounce of my being.
What we just did wasn’t smart.
Returning isn’t smart either.
Trying to outwit him is the epitome of dumb.
And I’ve lost another piece of myself, lost it to this life, to the future I’m carving out for myself.
But with each long-held truth that falls away, a different woman is revealed.
This woman doesn’t always make the smart choice. No, this Clara makes the strategic choice.
I’m going back to my prison. But if I ever doubted that we needed to play the long game to win against Trips’ dad, his face as he watched me fight to keep Jansen alive has put those doubts to rest.
I’m playing this game to win, because the alternative is death—for everyone I love, either soul or body.