Chapter 31
The strippers were ridiculous and raunchy, and the women were loving every minute of it.
Chloe had enjoyed watching Maddie and Tiffany dispose of their irate husbands.
The Chester sisters were not messing around.
While the others whooped it up with the strippers, Chloe edged closer to the slider, hoping for a word with Finn.
But when she looked out, she didn’t see him.
However, she noticed Riley looked worried.
She stepped outside in time to hear a woman screaming in the yard.
“Oh fuck.” Riley took off down the stairs.
Curious, Chloe followed him and was shocked to see Missy with a shiny blade pointed at Finn, who stood before her, his hands raised, trying to talk some sense into her.
Riley moved toward them, trying not to startle Missy, whose full attention was on Finn.
Chloe didn’t think. She reacted, racing down the stairs, prepared to throw herself between him and anything that could hurt him.
The instinct to protect him was so overwhelming that a surge of adrenaline had her running like she had before the RA had made her joints hurt too badly to run.
She didn’t feel anything other than the urgent need to get to him.
Riley was ahead of her, and in the second before he would’ve reached his brother, Missy pounced.
Finn let out an unholy cry of pain that made Chloe see red as she jumped onto Missy’s back, pulling her off Finn.
Everything shifted into silent slow motion as Missy reared back, trying to dislodge Chloe and causing them both to fall backward.
Chloe landed hard, and Missy came down on top of her.
Chloe’s side burned, and her vision swam as Riley pulled Missy off her. She could tell that Riley was screaming, but Chloe couldn’t seem to hear what he was saying.
And then Blaine was there, cuffing Missy.
Riley’s words finally permeated the fog. “She fucking stabbed my brother!”
Finn!
Oh God, Finn had been stabbed.
Chloe tried to get up, to get to him, but her legs wouldn’t hold her, and she collapsed onto the grass.
Riley’s screams grew more frantic. “She got Chloe, too! Somebody call the rescue. Hurry!”
Chloe caught a glimpse of a huge red stain on the front of Finn’s shirt before everything faded to black.
Finn came to slowly, trying to figure out where he was and why the lights were so bright. What the hell was going on? He tried to sit up.
A hand on his shoulder stopped him.
David Lawrence? What was he doing there? Oh right, he’d come to the bachelor party. The party. The strippers. Missy. Oh fuck.
“What’s wrong?” Finn asked David. Why did his voice feel so weird?
“Your ex-girlfriend stabbed you.”
“She what?”
“She stabbed you in the chest. Fortunately, she didn’t hit anything important. You lost some blood and had forty-two sutures. You’ll be sore for a few days, but otherwise, you’re going to be okay.”
Wait. Missy had stabbed him?
He tried to remember what had happened, but it was all a blur.
“She also cut Chloe.”
David’s words cleared the fog in his brain and filled Finn with rage like he’d never felt before. “Where is she?”
“In the other exam room—”
Finn got up quickly, so quickly that his head swam, and his legs buckled.
Riley materialized, grabbing him before he could fall.
Finn fought back against his brother’s tight hold. “Let me go! I need to get to her!”
Riley held firm. “You need to sit the fuck down before you bust open your stitches and bleed to death.”
“Take me to her right now, Riley, or I swear to God, you’re going to need a doctor.”
“Is it okay, Doc?” Riley asked David.
“Take it slow. He lost a lot of blood.”
“Get me to her, Riley. Now.”
Taking David’s directive to heart, Riley moved so slowly that Finn wanted to roar from the minutes it took to walk down the corridor to where Chloe was in a bed with Katie, Julia and Nikki by her side. Her face was pale, her violet eyes huge and tearful when she saw Finn.
“You shouldn’t be up!” she said.
“Excuse me, ladies.” Finn moved to her side when Nikki and Katie made room for him.
He took a visual inventory. “Where are you hurt?”
“My side. It’s just a flesh wound. Ten stitches and a tetanus shot, which was the worst part of it.”
Finn couldn’t recall any other time in his life when he’d felt this kind of fury. He turned to Riley. “Where is she?”
“Blaine carted her off to jail.”
“Call him. Tell him I want her charged with everything. No leniency.”
“I’m on it, bro. Why don’t you sit before you fall over?”
“Move over,” Finn said to Chloe.
She shifted to the left, wincing, and made room for him.
That wince made him feel like he’d been stabbed in the heart. Seeing her hurt broke something in him, especially when she was hurt because of him.
“You should’ve seen her,” Riley said. “She was like Wonder Woman taking Missy down.”
“I was not,” Chloe said. “I just did what anyone would do.”
“You were incredible,” Riley said. “You might’ve saved his life. David said if she’d hit him an inch to the left, he could’ve bled out before they got him here.”
“His life has become very important to me,” Chloe said.
To his tremendous mortification, Finn’s eyes filled with tears. “I could kill her for hurting you,” he said in a gruff whisper.
“I could kill her for hurting you.”
“What do you say we give them a minute?” Riley said to the others.
Katie kissed Chloe’s cheek and hiccupped her way out of the room, followed by Julia, Nikki and Riley.
“Katie has had the hiccups for hours,” Chloe said. “She can’t handle her champagne.”
“Chloe…”
“What if she still has them for the wedding?”
“Chloe.” He held her chin, looked into her gorgeous eyes and kissed her. “I don’t want to talk about Katie. I want to talk about why you would endanger yourself the way you did.”
“She was holding a knife on you. I didn’t think. I just acted.”
He put his arms around her, wincing when the laceration on his chest made its presence known. “Don’t ever, ever do that again. You’re the most precious thing in the world to me, and I can’t bear the idea of you getting hurt because of me.”
“It wasn’t because of you. It was because of her, and I’d do it again in a hot second. Because you’re every bit as precious to me, and I’d rather get hurt than let anyone try to take you from me.”
“Have I mentioned recently that I love you?”
“It’s been a couple of hours, but you were kinda busy being stabbed, so I’ll let it go this time.”
“I really, really love you.”
“I love you just as much, but I really hope we’ve seen the last of Missy.”
“God, I hope so, because we’ve got things to do and plans to make.”
“And love to make.”
He cupped her cheek, drinking in the details of her exquisite face. “That, too.”
The moment was interrupted when Kevin appeared in the doorway, his eyes wild. “She stabbed you?”
“Both of us, actually.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me. What the hell was she hoping to accomplish?”
“Who knows? Who cares? Blaine tossed her in jail, where I hope she’ll stay for the foreseeable future.”
Kevin ran a trembling hand through his hair. “Jesus, Finn. You scared the hell out of me.”
“Sorry.”
“Not your fault.”
“Take a breath, Dad. Everyone’s fine.”
Kevin took a deep breath and released it. “The entire town is in the waiting room, along with eight mostly naked cowboy strippers.”
Chloe glanced at Finn, and when their eyes met, they lost it laughing. The knot of fear that had settled in his chest when he heard she was hurt finally eased. They were both okay, and they had each other.
What else did they need?
Nothing. As long as he had her, he had everything.