17. Twenty
Twenty
Taryn
“Follow the light with your eyes.”
Fuck, my body hurt. My head hurt. Somehow I managed to follow the medic’s instructions, tracking the sharp white penlight right, left, up, left, down, right.
“Any nausea?”
“No,” I answered.
“Did you lose consciousness?”
I gave a small shake of my head, wincing and holding the ice pack tighter to the back of my skull. “I don’t think so, not fully.” Brea’s hand tightened around my shoulder. “Just was kind of dazed for a few minutes, but I don’t think I was ever out.”
The cops had taken Heath away in handcuffs just a couple minutes after he knocked me to the ground. With his family’s money, he’d probably be released on bail before the night was out.
My stomach churned at the thought.
Brea and I sat at the edge of the ambulance bay in front of the apartment. At least they’d turned the flashing lights off; we’d drawn enough attention as it was.
The medic put his penlight away and stripped off his gloves. “Probably a mild concussion. ‘Mild’ being a relative term. Take it easy. Follow up with your GP as soon as you can, and if anything worsens in the next few hours, go to an ER.”
“She’s covered there,” Lin spoke up from where he and Caine stood a few feet back.
Mysterious Caine, with murder in his eyes as he watched the medic evaluating me.
His eyes kept going to the dark spot already blooming on my arm from where Heath had grabbed and yanked it.
His attention made me hyperaware of my smallness, my weakness.
I crossed my arms, rubbing my palms over them as if I were chilly.
Mostly I just wanted to protect the bruise from his gaze, which was heavy like an actual touch.
The medic nodded, and as he stood to pack up, a police officer approached. “I’m Officer Norton. Ms. Maddox, why don’t we find somewhere more comfortable to take your statement.”
We ended up in the lobby of the building. Luckily the lookie-loos had dispersed by then. We urged the guys home too, promising we’d check in when we were finished.
It took about half an hour to detail everything—the history with Heath, the encounter at my work, then the confrontation outside. Officer Norton took notes and met my eye with a kind look when he finished. “Thank you for your cooperation, the both of you.”
“What do we do about Heath?” Brea asked, voice sharp. Anxiety skittered through my stomach like rats in the night.
The officer nodded with understanding. “I’ll log the report when I return to the station. I assume you’ll be pressing charges?”
“Yes,” Brea said.
The officer gave her a tight smile. “Actually, it needs to come from the victim.”
God, that was such a loaded, horrible word. I resisted the urge the shrink into the cushions of my seat. “I don’t want to deal with a legal battle, Brea,” I said.
“Absolutely not. He deserves—”
“It’s not about what he deserves,” I snapped. “We can’t compete with his money. And we’re not going broke paying lawyers, just for him to get out of it anyway. Forget it.” I turned to the officer. “Can…can we just, like, get a restraining order or something?”
My alpha tensed at my side but said nothing. The officer nodded. “That shouldn’t be an issue. I’ll contact you once the report is filed, probably in the next day or so, about next steps for that process.”
I nodded, and with a few more curt exchanges, he left.
I lowered the ice pack from my head and felt the tender spot. It came away blood-free. Finally. “Please stop looking at me like that,” I said.
“This is my fault.” Brea’s voice was too small.
That made me angry. This was neither of our faults. Before I could correct her, though, she pulled me up from the lobby seat. “Do you feel like going upstairs?”
It was a loaded question. Go upstairs, tell the men who Heath was, give them another piece of us, step a little further away from the heat buddies facade.
Did I want that? Did she?
“That’s as much a question for you as me,” I evaded. We both looked to the back staircase door, the one that went straight up to the roof. The one that had been left just a few inches open.
Lin
By the time we slumped into our apartment, night had fallen. I was drained from the surge of alphadrenaline and already sore from the tussle. My keys fell onto the entry table with a clatter.
“You should’ve let the medic look at you,” Caine fussed.
I made my way to the bar cabinet. “I’m fine.”
“You’re fucking bleeding, Lin.”
I touched my (now that I thought about it) stinging lip, pulling my finger away to see a bit of blood. With a muttered curse, Caine grabbed my arm and pulled me toward the bathroom and rummaged through the cabinet.
“You don’t have to—”
“Shut up,” Caine said, turning with a bottle of peroxide and bandage. Without speaking, he dabbed at the cut on my lip with a tenderness that still surprised me somehow.
We’d known each other for decades, yet sometimes I still found myself trying to figure Caine out.
Growing up, we’d been something like mirror images of each other.
Where I’d been in a comfortable home with a pleasant family, Caine had bounced between foster homes every few months.
I’d been the goody-two-shoes to his unruly rebel.
For a while, none of those differences mattered though.
We were just kids, two young boys who felt safe with each other.
A trust had formed almost from the moment we met at the corner store—me, buying a chocolate bar; Caine, slipping his candy bar onto the counter beside mine so the cashier would ring them up together.
He’d been my first real friend—beyond playground pals, beyond casual school buddies. The first person who’d made me feel safe, and seen, and accepted for all the good, bad, and ugly. He’d been my first kiss, two awkward teenagers who didn’t know what the hell we were doing.
Then Caine had presented as alpha just after he turned fifteen, a year before I did.
He’d always been halfway in darkness. But something about the awakening of his alpha—the rush of hormones, the sudden clash of instincts and desires and impulses—pushed him beyond where I could reach him.
He’d stopped coming to school. Stopped coming by for dinner.
When he aged out of the system at eighteen, I saw him even less.
Then, one day, he was gone. I didn’t see him again for eight years. When we finally found each other again, that trust, that connection between us hadn’t dimmed in the slightest. Even Brooks felt it when I introduced them. We knew we were pack.
Still, Caine kept himself separate from Brooks and me. He loved us both, I knew. Brooks knew. But the pain of those eight years, those battles, had shattered him. And rebuilding had hardened him.
So moments like these, his careful fingers tending to my wounds, held an intimacy that I craved from him.
As though sensing my feelings, Caine swallowed, his face changing from angry to shameful. “I should’ve been out there.”
I shook my head. “No, you shouldn’t have.”
“Just fucking standing up here, calling the cops. I could’ve—”
“It wouldn’t have been safe with you down there,” I whispered. I grasped his face with one hand and forced him to meet my eye. “It’s not just an adrenaline surge with you, and you know that.”
Shame burned through our bond, and Caine squeezed his eyes shut.
He’d immediately told us about his first session with Brea, and the second.
I was surprised, honestly. Brooks and I had had a hell of a time even convincing him to try therapy.
Vulnerability was an effort from him at the best of times, and vulnerability with a person he knew? Triple that effort. At least.
Whatever had happened that first day, though… he wanted to try now. For that alone, I thought the world of Brea.
“You think they’re okay?” he murmured.
I sighed, swallowing down my previous statement. “Shaken up, but as far as I could tell, yeah. They’re finishing up with the police.”
A scowl marred Caine’s face, and he grunted again. Caine had a strong distrust of the police. But they were the ones in charge of keeping the peace. They weren’t perfect, but who else would see to it that that fucker was punished?
Wish that was up to me.
Alphadrenaline threatened to spike again, and I rested my forehead against Caine's shoulder, both of us standing stock still as we reined in our respective emotions.
This visceral instinct startled me. I couldn’t even entirely blame my alpha, either. The words he’d thrown at her—the names he’d called her—had angered me , the man, just as much as me the alpha.
Because Brea and Taryn felt more like mine than they should’ve.
A moment passed, and I stood up. Caine finished patching me up.
He stepped back. After a moment, he huffed a breath and passed through the door.
I didn’t need to ask where he was going.
I simply followed him out to the roof. The night was breezy but warm.
We’d left the door downstairs open, just an inch, so the women would know we were up here. Hopefully, they’d come.
Half an hour passed, and Caine’s impatience grew by the minute. A muscle twitched in his cheek when ten more minutes went by without anyone joining us. “We could just go downstairs and demand some answers,” he muttered.
“It should be their choice to share,” I replied. “Strictly speaking, it’s none of our business.”
Caine scoffed. “ None of our business ,” he repeated below his breath. Louder, he said, “You need to be careful with that omega.”
“Because some jackass attacked her in broad daylight?” I snapped.
He cut a sharp look at me. “Sounds like our sweet resident omega has a history of spurning lovers. Best not to add yourself to the list, don’t you think?”
I couldn’t lie. The thought had crossed my mind. Still, we didn’t know the whole story, and even if she had cheated or left him, he clearly wasn’t someone who could be trusted to protect or care for anyone. I wanted to hear from Taryn what all this meant.