41. Cash
Chapter Forty-One
Cash
Now that the danger is over, I feel weak in the knees at the risk I put Haven in.
I tangle my hands in her hair and stare down at her beautiful face as she tries to smile up at me, her usually soft features still stricken with tension.
In the distance, there’s another siren.
“Ambulance is almost here,” Jasper says from a few feet away.
I don’t like that he’s a witness to this private moment between us.
“I don’t need that,” Haven whispers.
My chest is so tight, it hurts. “Let them check you out real quick, then I’ll take you home.”
She clutches at my shirt. Both of us just barely holding it together.
Jasper says something into the radio, and the siren cuts out. The ambulance appears a minute later, slowing to a stop, and the paramedics take their time getting out.
This isn’t an emergency anymore. Not on the outside, anyway.
“She’ll probably refuse transport to the hospital,” Jasper says to the first medic who approaches, a bag in hand.
“Let’s have a look anyway. Can you walk?”
Haven nods mutely.
“We’ll go over to the ambulance, then. My name is West. My partner opening the doors for us is Thea.”
They get her up into the back of the ambulance, sitting on a stretcher. I stand at the open door, close enough to touch her, but staying out of the way.
“Any dizziness? Nausea? Ringing in your ears?”
“No.” She rubs at her wrists, and his attention follows.
“You’ve got some abrasions there?”
In the harsh glare of the ambulance’s interior light, the ligature marks look worse than they did in the truck. Raw, reddened lines cutting deep enough to bruise, shallow scrapes where Jeb yanked her around.
My stomach lurches.
“Any numbness?” He turns her wrist in his gloved hands.
“No.”
“Can you wiggle your fingers for me? Good. Squeeze my hand.” He moves his attention to her jaw, tilting her face toward the light. “This laceration needs to be cleaned up. Might need a steri-strip, Thea.”
His partner pulls supplies out for him as he wraps a blood pressure cuff around Haven’s arm and clips a small pulse oximeter to her finger. “Oxygen’s good. Heart rate’s fast. Blood pressure is elevated. I’ll take a blanket to keep her warm.”
I step in close enough to offer her my hand. Her fingers are shaking. She’s in shock, as brave as she is.
“Any chest pain? Trouble breathing?” West continues, checking boxes on a form.
“No.”
“Hit your head at any point? Lose consciousness, even for a second?”
“I didn’t lose consciousness. I was bumped around in the van. I was on the floor.”
West nods and pulls a pen light from his pocket to look in her eyes. Then he gentles his voice. “Other than your wrists and your neck, are there any abrasions anywhere else? On your legs?”
“I don’t know.”
“Can I look?”
She nods, and they get her to lie down.
Jasper’s radio crackles, then he taps me on the shoulder.
I step away from the ambulance so Haven doesn’t have to hear whatever he’s going to say.
“The crime scene team will be here soon, so I’m going to head back to town. I’ll be in touch tomorrow. She’ll be at the ranch?”
For the rest of her God damn life. “Yep.”
“There are victim services she can use.”
I nod.
“Hell of a summer your family is having.”
“What the fuck does that mean?”
He gives me a hard look. “Nothing bad. Just saying… You might use some of those resources, too.”
“You go talking to a shrink every time you have a hard day on the job, Sheriff?” I give him a curt nod. “I’ll be fine. Thanks for your concern.”
Back at the ambulance, Haven is sitting up again and shaking her head.
I jog over to her.
“I really don’t want to go to the hospital,” she says firmly. “I want to go home.”
The paramedics look at me. “You’re staying with her tonight?”
“Every night.”
I can feel Haven react to that, her eyes staying locked on me as West gives me instructions for what to watch for and when to take her to the hospital.
“Any sign of confusion or worsening pain. Numbness in the fingers, or if those cuts start looking infected—redness, swelling, discharge. If any of that happens, don’t wait. Get her to a doctor.”
“Copy that,” I say.
And then we’re finally free. I scoop Haven in my arms, ignoring her protest that she can walk, and I carry her to my truck.
When we get to the ranch, all the lights are out, which is a relief.
I don’t want to explain to my brothers what happened tonight. I’ll tell them in time, but tonight, I just want to get Haven into a hot shower, and then bed, and hold her the whole way.
I don’t even need to tell her to wait for me. She sits stock still on the passenger side until I come around and open her door.
“I’ve got you,” I say softly as she falls into my arms. “You’re safe now. We’re home.”
She nods woodenly.
“Everything all right?” Ridge emerges from the shadows, his hat low.
Fuck.
So much for waiting. If he’s still up, that means he knows something. My own fault for telling him that I couldn’t find Haven. But Ridge probably would have heard, anyway.
“Yeah, it is now.” I tuck Haven in next to me, as tight as I can. “Anyone else still awake?”
“No.” He stops close enough for me to see the furious set of his jaw. “Dax had his own drama tonight, and that was distraction enough from the fact you didn’t come back. But word is starting to spread in town. Mercy heard and texted me.”
Haven lifts her head. “Does she know I’m all right?”
Ridge nods.
“Good.” She sags against me.
I squeeze her. “We’ll tell the others in the morning. All’s well that ends well.”
“Hell of a gamble.”
“There wasn’t time.”
“I guess you were sure you could pull it off by yourself.” He says it sarcastically, then tips his hat at Haven. His tone shifts for her, at least. “You all right?”
“I will be.”
“Yeah. That’s the way. Sleep tight.” And then he’s gone, fading into the inky darkness toward his cabin.
Belatedly, I wonder if I should have asked about what the hell happened to Dax.
Haven tips her face up, her brow furrowed in concern at the tension between me and my brother.
I press a gentle kiss to her forehead. “He’s pissed he wasn’t the one to smash Jeb in the face a few times.”
“I want to say that I feel the same, but as much as I fantasized about how to fight my way free…”
“That’s my girl. But I’m glad you didn’t have to.”
“I don’t know that I could have.”
“You’d have found a way, if you needed to.”
“I should have fought harder when he put me in the van.”
“Don’t let those shoulds get in your head.
He had the advantage of surprise. By the time you were at the cabin, you had the upper hand, I promise you.
I heard you. You kept him talking, and that’s the most important thing you could have done.
You know what he didn’t do once you were out of the cabin?
Even try a little to distract me from how I was punishing him.
He just took a beating like the little bitch that he is. ”
“I really thought you were going to kill him.”
“So did he, and that’s what mattered. But I didn’t feel like going to jail again. I’ve got a girl to take care of now.”
I open the door for her.
The first time I brought Haven here, it was under false pretences, and that was a mistake that I won’t make again.
As she steps inside, I catch her around the waist and press my lips to her temple. “I know you need to sleep, but there are things I want to say…that I need to make sure I say before—”
She interrupts me. “I was hoping for a shower. Together.”
My body reacts immediately, a heavy pulse of awareness reacting to her directness. My beautiful, sexy girl. No longer inexperienced. No longer shy with me.
More giving than I deserve.
I close the door and follow her through the dim main floor to the wide staircase that leads to the lower level. Our private space.
She glances back at me as she takes the first step. “Will you help me get clean?”
Fuck.
I want to. God damn it, I want to. I’ll give her my body and soul, whatever she needs to wipe away the pain from tonight. But there’s something I need to say first.
At the foot of the stairs, I sweep her into my arms again and carry her into the bathroom, where I set her on the counter.
When she got ready for the wedding, putting on this pretty dress and lovely sandals, she wasn’t sure about me. I’d let her down, and coming to her rescue tonight doesn’t absolve me of that mistake.
I kneel in front of her and undo the straps at her ankles. First her right foot, then her left. Carefully, I avoid the red marks from the zip ties as I caress my hands up her calves, to the hem of her dress. “You really did look beautiful today. You always do.”
Her face crumples. “I didn’t feel beautiful tonight.”
I surge to my feet, the rest of what I was going to say immediately set aside. “What did he say to you?”
“A bunch of nonsense.” She sucks in a sharp breath. “I realized tonight that, most of all, I make Jeb uncomfortable. And I have for a long time. And after I outgrew the teenage years, where all he saw when he looked at me was the potential of something, he was furious that I changed.”
“You grew up. You became a fully formed adult.”
“He tried to justify it in other ways, but yes, that’s exactly it. I didn’t realize how much his early interest in me messed with my head until I had to stare his distaste in the face tonight. He didn’t know what to do with me.”
“That’s not about you.” I can’t have her thinking less of herself because that twisted asshole didn’t think she was pretty.
“I know.” She sucks in a quick breath. “I actually think he wouldn’t know what to do with any grown woman, which is why he never married.
It wasn’t until I really provoked him that he snapped and reached for sexual violence as a way to control me.
I don’t know if he could have raped me, even though he wanted to, I think.
Just to punish me. It wouldn’t have been about attraction. ”
“Fuck. I wish I’d gotten there sooner. I hate that you had to think about that. You were so strong.”
“I thought about you.” She gives me a tremulous smile. “All I could think of was you. How you make me feel loved.”
“I do love you. I’m so sorry I couldn’t say it when you did. That was fucking dumb.”
“Don’t say that. It’s okay.”
“It’s not. I want to be everything you need.
And that includes saying words that scare me.
Not because they aren’t true, but because they are.
My entire life, love has been terrifying and scarce at the same time.
” My fingers are fucking shaking as I work my hands around her back, unzipping her dress.
“A long time ago, I made some unconscious rules for myself, and I never considered what that would mean when I met my person. Rules that protect me, but hurt you, aren’t rules I want for myself.
Even if they’re unconscious, even if you understand them.
You said that a foundational rule of our relationship is that it needs to be mutually beneficial, and I agree. ”
“That was when it was all fake.”
“It was never fake for me. I thought you needed that. I thought that was a smart way to have you for a little while, knowing I would have to let you go. But I always wanted you to be mine, for real. And if that isn’t clear by now, then I want to re-negotiate the terms of our relationship. Immediately.”