Page 102 of Cruel Betrayal

Noah won’t go after her tonight. It’ll be too risky when he doesn’t know where I am.

And as long as I get to her first, he’s never going to be able to put a hand on her.

I put the phone on the seat beside me, looking at the feed every now and then as I weave through traffic, getting closer and closer to the restaurant.

I park the car out front, heart pounding in my chest, head light. Thankfully, I think most of the wounds have at least scabbed over, so I don’t track blood into her building.

She’d probably kill me herself.

As I haul open the door, she turns around, her eyes wide, the color draining from her face. “Ezra?”

“Hi, love.”

She puts her hands on her hips, taking me in. “I see you went to the fight.”

“And took one hell of a beating so I could make sure I could leave it.” I close the door behind me, twisting the lock in place.

“You need to go to a fucking hospital.”

“You’re not going to do that, though, are you?” She sighs and pulls her phone out of her pocket.

I start to say something, but that light feeling in my head gets worse.

I could be floating, for all I know. She’s certainly moving in front of me, the edges of her body becoming blurry and starting to dance.

“Love, I don’t feel so good.”

Chapter Thirty

EZRA

Jade glaresdown at me as I slowly open my eyes, my entire body aching.

“You’re a fucking idiot, you know that? A stupid fucking idiot who is only going to get himself killed because he’s too fucking stupid to pay attention to what’s going on around him.”

“Well, hello to you, too.” I sit up, looking around at the piles of rubble, my head spinning, sunlight streaming through the open windows. It was nearing the middle of the night when I got here. “What happened?”

“Your dumb ass went to that fight, got your stupid ass beat, and then, like a fucking idiot, you drove here and passed out.” Jade is seething, pacing back and forth in front of me.

“Fuck, you’re like a walking thesaurus, aren’t you?”

She shoots me a death glare. “If you think this is funny, I’m going to kill you. And don’t try me. I’ll do it. Do you know how hard it was to get Sean to go wake Ellie up in the middle of the night so she could come down here and make sure you weren’t dead? I had to beg him to do it. He’s not happy, and he’s probably goingto kick your ass once you’re healthy enough to handle an ass kicking.”

I get to my feet, holding onto the wall framing to pull myself up. “If I had known you cared that much, I would’ve gotten my ass kicked like that a long time ago.”

“Don’t you fucking start with me.” She stops and whirls around to face me, her hands falling to her hips. “You almost died. There’s no internal bleeding by some fucking miracle, but your ribs are broken, so I hope breathing hurts for weeks.”

“You should be hoping I get better soon so I can give you better orgasms than the one you gave yourself.” I try to lighten the mood.

It’s only when I move a little closer to her that I see the tear stains down her cheeks.

Everything in my body is on fire as I move, but I push through the pain to get to her.

My arms wrap around her, and I crush her to my body, kissing the top of her head.

At first, she’s tense. She puts her hands on my chest like she’s going to push me away. But then her hands knot in the fabric of my shirt—whose shirt it is, I don’t know, but I wasn’t wearing one when I left the fight—and she pulls me closer.

The sobs rip out of her.