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JASON
I ignored the ringing of my phone for the fifth time, ending the call so I could concentrate on the road. I was tired as hell and I probably should have gotten some sleep before making the trek up to Minnesota, but I’d waited long enough. Five years was a long fucking time to resist a woman, and I was done telling myself I didn’t want Tahlia’s friend, Leah.
My phone rang again and I sighed, this time answering it, knowing he wouldn’t stop until I picked up. “What do you want?”
“Tahlia wants to know how long you’re staying in Minnesota,” Johnny rumbled, not sounding very thrilled that he was stuck in the middle of this conversation.
“Who said I was going to Minnesota?”
“You’ve been too fucking distracted for days. I saw you checking flights earlier, and when you couldn’t get a direct flight, you tossed a chair across the room.”
Fuck, I was really losing it if I didn’t see him there.
“It’s about fucking time you got your head out of your ass,” he grumbled.
“I never fucking said I was going to her.”
“Just don’t take too fucking long. Tahlia hasn’t seen her in years. She’s fucking pissed I haven’t let her go to Minnesota on her own.”
“Sounds like a you problem.”
“Yeah, well, I wouldn’t have this problem if you had gotten off your ass and taken care of shit.”
When Tahlia was in trouble and we went on the run with Johnny, watching his ass and keeping his woman safe, Leah was nothing more than a complication. That’s what I kept telling myself. Then I made the mistake of allowing her to walk into my room. The moment she pulled her shirt over her head, every single thought in my head disappeared. I knew I was fucked, but I resisted her to the point of pain.
But I couldn’t fool Jack and Johnny. They knew I held a torch for her. They saw the way I treated women, how they were nothing more than a distraction from the one woman I really wanted. Thankfully, they didn’t say jack shit about it.
“Just get your ass back here as fast as possible. If I have to hear one more fucking time about how long it took you to get her, I’ll fucking kill you.”
“You could just tell her to mind her own business,” I argued.
“Yeah, tell me how that works with Leah.”
He hung up, his orders fucking clear. I wasn’t allowed to come home without Leah or he’d string me up by the balls for making his woman mad. Message received. He was lucky I liked Tahlia so much.
A half-hour later, I pulled down her driveway and killed the lights after I parked. I sat there for a minute, my eyes roaming over the property. Something felt off, like there was a silence that shouldn’t be here. I shoved the door open and stepped out, letting the door softly close behind me as I pulled my weapon. Silence wrapped around me, sending chills down my spine.
I took off for the house, racing up the steps to get to Leah. Butting up against the house, I reached for the door, my gaze narrowing on the broken frame. Slowly, I reached forward and turned the knob, my heart hammering in my chest.
The moment I stepped inside and my boot hit the floor, my stomach bottomed out. The smell of blood in the air nearly made me gag, but I held it in as I scanned the room for any sign of intruders. With each step through the house, the stench grew more pungent. With my heart in my throat, I already knew what I would find, but I prayed it wasn’t her. She knew how to use a gun. Maybe she shot an intruder and ran. If anything happened to her and I wasn’t here to protect her, I would never forgive myself.
The floor creaked as I crossed the living room into the kitchen. My gaze swung through the dark room until it landed on an image that nearly made me vomit. Leah sat limply in the chair, her face nearly unrecognizable from the bruises and blood dripping from cuts. Her once beautiful hair was now stringing and coated in her own blood. And her body…
I choked on emotion welling inside. I was too late. If I had come sooner. If I had…Why the fuck had I waited so long to come for her? I closed my eyes as I breathed through the stench. Fuck, I couldn’t believe this.
Putting one foot in front of the other, I walked forward until I was in front of her. Her skin was pale with no signs of life, but I still had to be sure. With a shaky hand, I pressed my fingers to her throat, checking for a pulse. As my eyes slipped closed, I prayed, searching for even a faint flutter that would tell me there was still hope. But as the minutes ticked by, it was clear that she was gone.
I was too late.
Dropping down to my haunches, I slid my hand down her arm until I interlocked my fingers with hers, remembering our nights together—how I had pushed her away, refusing to admit that I wanted her. And the whole time, she just shrugged it off.
That was Leah, refusing to admit that anyone could hurt her. After all the shit she’d put up with in her life, the way I treated her was hardly a blip on her radar. But she didn’t deserve it. Her father had abused her, smacking the shit out of her and killing her mother in a fit of rage. And she survived it all, even killing her father to end it all.
What did she get for it? Prison. I brushed my fingers along her jaw, swiping my thumb along those beautiful lips. All she did was protect herself from a man who would have killed her. And what did she get for it? A system that treated her as a killer instead of a survivor.
The joke was on them. She was the strongest woman I’d ever met.