CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
THE NEXT MORNING when I wake up, I wonder how I fell asleep in the first place.
After everything that happened and everything he told me and everything I decided after he left me in the room to rest, I don’t know how I ever relaxed enough to let my eyes fall closed, let alone sleep.
But somehow I did. Maybe all the events of yesterday wore me out, and it didn’t help that he gave me some pain medication for all my injuries.
When he had time to make a drugstore run, I didn’t know and I didn’t ask.
Just like I didn’t ask about the breakfast he served me.
All my favorites including the kind of juice I prefer, just like that first morning.
And over breakfast, he talked. Something he never usually does.
He told me he had a talk last night, with the Graysons and none other than my brother.
He said they’re all looking into who could be behind all this, but their best guess is that it has something to do with my father.
At first, it took me a few seconds to take in the fact that the Graysons are working together with my brother.
Or that he—the man who wants nothing to do with the Turners ever, and yes, for a good reason too—had a talk with Brecken.
Who is more or less like my father. Or at least, that’s what I always thought, but the fact that my brother is willing to help in order to protect me—and to find Radisson’s sister—is making me rethink things.
When I’d pondered that surprise, I thought about my father being involved.
I don’t doubt it. If someone wants to hurt me and they’re willing to go to these lengths to do it, it definitely has something to do with my dad.
He’s never been the most popular, for obvious reasons, and I can see why someone would think I’m the perfect target if they want to make my dad pay for something.
Only I wish they knew my father doesn’t really care about me all that much.
If I died, he’d probably mourn me for a day, mourn all the opportunities he lost to make more money.
But other than that, it wouldn’t really bother him.
Anyway, Radisson also said that while others are digging into things, I’m going to stay with him. We’re going to move from the cabin to a different location. One that’s more secure and that only a few trusted people know about. But first, we need to go into town to get some supplies.
Which is where we are. In town.
After driving in his truck for over thirty minutes, we’ve just arrived.
He parks in one of the very few empty spots on what looks like a busy street.
The sun is out and people are walking about.
I see coffee shops, restaurants, stores of all kinds, from a convenience store to a couple of clothing stores; from a candy shop to an apothecary.
This is the busiest, most crowded place he could’ve brought me to.
If I screamed for help, at least a few people would stop and look.
Maybe a couple of them would come to my rescue.
Actually, I don’t even think I’ll have to scream because one look at me, with my scrapes and my ripped dress from yesterday, and people will know something is wrong.
That I’m maybe being held against my will.
“You remember the rules, yeah?”
His voice breaks into my thoughts and I look away from the window.
Just like the last time I was in his truck, he seems to shrink the space with his large, muscular body.
He’s wearing the same clothes as yesterday, too, and while they aren’t as dusty as they were, there are still splatters of blood all over them.
The white bandage over his shoulder is partially visible through the open collar of his shirt.
And as usual, his sleeves are folded up to his elbows, and I can see the scrapes and cuts on his forearms as well.
Some of them are shallow and already healing, but some are deep and an angry red.
I don’t exactly remember all of what happened when he dove over me, except that his arms felt strong and secure and like a cushion against the harsh world, and he took the bullet that was meant for me—he took a bullet for me!
—but from the looks of it, he also took the brunt of our fall yesterday.
Plus, the state of his knuckles. One look and you’d know he tried to beat someone to death with his hands.
They are torn up and shredded. Skinned and bruised like I’ve never seen on anyone, even on him.
I’m not sure how we’re supposed to go out there and not have people notice something is wrong.
Not have them notice his threat of a body and intimidating muscles that make him look like a criminal, a cowboy criminal with his weathered black Stetson; and in my torn dress, it looks like I’m the crime he committed.
But the reality is, he’s my self-appointed bodyguard.
“We make four stops. That’s it. In and out, thirty minutes tops,” he continues when all I do is stare at him. “You’ll stick close to me and let me do the talkin’.”
“You hate talking,” I say in the most asinine way.
He runs his eyes over my face, and by the way his own features tighten up, he’s noticing the bruise on the side of my head.
He doesn’t like the sight of it. I know.
He also doesn’t like that I’ve got worse scrapes on my arms and my legs.
Not because he told me but because he didn’t have to.
When I flinched and reached for the pain meds he gave me last night, a tic started up in his jaw and his green eyes turned pitch-black.
I knew it was because he was picturing annihilating the people who did this to me.
“Hate havin’ you out in the open like this more than talkin’. Where people can see you, talk to you,” he rumbles.
I swallow. “Why, because you’re afraid I’m going to tell them… something I shouldn’t?”
He shakes his head, his eyes penetrating. “No, ’cause I don’t want ’em hearin’ your angel voice.”
My breath snags in my throat and I have to swallow again. “Is that why you, uh, gagged me yesterday? Because you didn’t want them hearing my voice.”
After everything he’s done, both to hurt me and then to protect me, I’m still stuck on a few things.
Like him gagging me and freaking me out even more.
I didn’t like it the very first time he did it, that first morning I woke up in the woods, and I hated it even more when he did it yesterday.
It felt like he took every inch of my power away without my say-so.
And maybe it’s apparent on my face because he replies, “Didn’t like doin’ that.
I know it scared you, but I didn’t want ’em to think they were worthy to talk to you or to have you talk back.
” He clenches his jaw for a few moments as if he’s imagining it, me talking to those men.
“Or beg ’em for mercy, for ’em to let you go.
’Cause you didn’t need to. Not when I was there.
When it should’ve been ’em, beggin’ me to spare their lives before I killed ’em anyway. ”
And they did, didn’t they? The one who had the chance. The other two never knew what hit them.
This is crazy. I know that. Objectively.
I also know if someone likes something crazy like this, they’re probably crazy too.
And I might be because I’m glad those men are dead.
I’m glad he killed them for me. But more than that, I’m glad he gagged me.
No, not glad. I’m ecstatic that he stopped me from begging because that’s what I was going to do.
“That’s…” I lick my dried lips and trail off.
He glances down at my mouth before finishing, “Psychotic.”
I keep looking into his eyes. “Yes.”
He keeps looking back. “So be it.”
“Why did you do it the first time then?”
He glances down at my mouth again but doesn’t make me wait long for an answer.
“’Cause I ain’t worthy of hearin’ your angel voice either, never been.
Addicted to it, yes; deservin’ of it, no.
” He lifts his eyes again, all dark. “Back then, you wouldn’t shut up, and the only other way I had to make you was somethin’ you woulda liked even less. So I picked the lesser of two evils.”
I frown, wondering what he means. When I figure it out, my belly clenches and so do my thighs, and I press myself into the door.
My eyes skitter down to his lap like I can actually see the thing he was going to use to shut me up and not just his burly jean-covered thighs.
My retreat, as always, doesn’t escape him, and his nostrils flare. Then, “You ready?”
“You were right,” I blurt out, and he frowns.
“What you… said last night. A-about wanting to use me, the Turner Princess, to get your sister back.” His lips tighten, but I keep going, “So I don’t…
I don’t understand why you’re trying to protect me.
I know we had a connection before you knew who I was, but I’m… me. I’m still a Turner, and—”
He cuts me off, his jaw pulsing. “Yeah, you’re still you. You’ve always been you. A princess. My Princess.”
“I’m not yours,” I tell him, quickly and emphatically.
His jaw pulses harder, but he continues as if he didn’t hear me, “It was never your fault what your father did to me, to my family. Like it was never your fault that my head’s so fucked up over it that I can’t see straight. That I punished you for your daddy’s crimes.”
My breaths are all shaky as I absorb his words. Soak them up like they’re my absolution. Absolution for being the daughter of a monster. But I can’t change my blood, can I? I’ll always be a Turner, and so I insist, “But I don’t think… I think maybe it’s better if my brother—”
“Let’s go,” he clips before I can say more.
I want to argue but I know it’ll be futile, so I nod.