Page 60 of Crushing Clover

I kicked the downed, vomiting man again and again, adrenaline helping me ignore the pain in my feet and the ugly, dripping ache between my legs. When he turned onto his side, gasping for breath, I shoved him to his back with my foot and heel-stomped his throat. He wheezed, eyes bulging in panic.

Part of me tried to stop myself from doing him irreparable damage, but if he’d done this to me without any hesitation, who knew what he’d done to other, more vulnerable girls?

My priority should have been getting away.

In the dark, shadowed figures converged upon us.

Two. Three.

Fuck.

Warren’s security detail? This guy’s coworkers? I could only stagger back a step before they were on us.

Did they all think they were going to take a fucking turn?

I stumbled back a step then held my ground, pushing my hair out of my eyes, my lips drawn back in a rictus grin.

Fuck these guys. I was going to claw their fucking eyes out.

Two of them piled onto the guard, beating the living shit out of him.

“Clover!”

I fought to claw the third one’s face, but he was strong and unexpectedly fast.

“Clover, stop!”

Saint?

“Let me go!” I shrieked. He’d let this happen—he’d sent me away. I was going to fucking kill him, too.

“Shh. Clover. It’s done. You’re safe.”

“You’re letting him sell me!” I screamed, trying to break his hold. I slid down through his arms, then scrambled backward.

“No! We didn’t know he was going to take you, Clove. We won’t let him take you away.”

“You’re lying!” I spat, feeling like a cornered animal. “You’re just trying to get me into that fucking car!”

“Did that asshole hurt you?” Saint demanded. Even in the dark, his body was tense.

I didn’t answer. Why did he care?

“Her underwear,” Lucky croaked, holding them up, then balling them in his fist.

Rush swore.

They…they were upset?

I blinked and inhaled the night air, trying to clear my head. My brain felt scrambled.

“I should have guessed. I should have known. Treacherous fucking bastard.” Saint sounded weird.

Off. “I’m sorry I took my eyes off you for a second.

I never thought he’d go behind our backs.

I expected gloating—that we’d owe him more money.

Not this.” He was trying to pull me to him, but I was still trying to escape his grip.

Lucky crushed into the back of me, trapping me between them.

“You sent me away,” I shouted against the crisp linen of Saint’s shirt. “You let him sell me! I thought you gave a shit.”

“Shh, baby.” Saint was clutching me to him, his fist buried in the fabric of my dress and trapped there by Lucky’s body. “We didn’t send you away. Of course we give a shit.” He was shaking—I’d thought it was me, but it was him, too.

“We love you,” Rush said against my hair. I hadn’t realized he was hemming in my other side. Trapped between the three of them, I felt tiny. “Even if Saint doesn’t know how to say it.”

Saint lifted me in his arms, and they brought me to the truck.

“The guy—” I whispered, worried.

“He’s dead,” Rush replied. “He won’t be doing that to anyone again.”

“Dead?”

“I don’t know if it was you or us, but it won’t be the first body Warren has had to deal with.”

Then there was only shaking. It felt like I was going to come apart from the inside—that I might shiver into dust. My teeth chattered, and even being wrapped in Saint’s suit jacket and carried against his warm body couldn’t make it stop.

They bundled me into the truck, and put me on Rush’s lap, where he held me huddled against his hard, warm chest. I’d thought we were going back to the house, but when I opened my eyes again, Saint was parked in front of a hospital.

“I don’t think you can leave the truck here,” I mumbled, shaking so hard my words were probably hard to decipher.

“They can tow it. I don’t give a fuck.” Saint strode ahead of us, shooing people out of our way like a rock star with a particular hatred for paparazzi.

“How did you get me back?” I demanded. “Did Warren force you to take another loan?”

“Don’t you worry about that shit.” The grim tension around Saint’s eyes as he glanced back at me made him look even more formidable. “You had to know we were coming for you,” he said, his tone disapproving.

“I wasn’t thinking straight.”

He grunted, mollified.

*

By the time we pulled into the driveway at home much later, I ran for the door.

They followed close behind, unlocking it and ushering me inside.

I took the stairs to Lucky’s room two at a time and went into the bathroom.

I stripped out of my filthy, destroyed dress and threw it in the garbage, then got into the shower to scrub at myself under the hottest water I could bear.

When I was done, Lucky was standing in the doorway, like my bodyguard.

“You okay?” His entire bearing was sweet and troubled. Worried.

“I will be.” I swallowed and tore my gaze from his when I felt my lip trembling.

If I let myself fall apart, I might never get the pieces back together.

I kept reminding myself that what had happened wasn’t as bad as what had happened to me at the resort, but it had left me shaken anyway, tangled as it was with the short-lived belief that the guys had abandoned me.

“If you want to talk…”

I shook my head. “Thanks, but I’d rather not.”

It was too fresh, too raw, to let any of it out of my head yet.

He helped me towel off then dressed me in one of his old T-shirts and a pair of ratty sweatpants.

Rush entered, followed by Saint. Both had been standing right outside the door, waiting for me to be done.

“I’m so sorry. I should have guessed he’d do something to make us reckless,” Saint said, brows lowered.

“He wanted to put me in a position where we’d owe him more money.

He’s been trying to get us to take a loan for a second location in New York, but we weren’t biting.

This was his idea of keeping me indebted to him and under his control. ”

The air left my lungs as I searched three pairs of hard eyes.

“No! You took another loan from him?” I demanded. “After all the shit you went through to pay off Cygnet? You should have let him sell me. It wouldn’t have cost you a dime.”

“Don’t fucking talk like that.” Rush’s voice was rough with emotion. “Even if we had to owe him money for the rest of our lives, getting you back would have been worth every fucking penny.” He kissed my forehead. They were all being careful not to manhandle me the way they usually did.

I turned my gaze to Saint.

“I know you don’t like me very much, but I’m not a fucking monster,” he grumbled, glaring at me before he strode out of the room. As he went down to the kitchen, it sounded like he was trying to stomp his boots directly through the stairs.

“But where did you get the money? How much do you owe now? I’ll work it off, I swear.”

“There’s no new loan. Don’t worry about it.”

“But the money… Where did it come from?”

Rush shook his head. “Not your problem, baby.”

He headed for the kitchen too, leaving me alone with Lucky.

“What do you need?” Lucky asked, gazing at me earnestly. “Do you want to be alone, do you want to stay here with me, or do you want to come downstairs to bed?”

“He… I…” I swallowed, not wanting to say it out loud.

“Don’t worry about any of us doing anything until you’re ready. Even if you’re never ready, it’s your choice.”

“It might take months.”

“Then it takes months. Do you think we can’t figure out how to amuse ourselves Without getting pissy with you? We need to find you someone to talk to, too, but that can wait until tomorrow, yeah?”

I nodded miserably.

“I need to know, Luck. I won’t be able to sleep if you don’t tell me. How did you guys scrape the money together to get me back?”

He rose from the bed and peeked out the door, as though making sure we were alone. When he came back, he took me by the hand. My heart gave a little tremor of apprehension.

“I’m going to tell you, but you can’t tell them you know yet. They’ll skin me alive.”

If they hadn’t borrowed money from his father, then what? Loan sharks?

“You have to promise not to scream,” he said, voice low.

What the fuck was he talking about?

“Promise.” Dread twisted my stomach.

“We gave him Cygnet.”

All the air left my lungs in one horrible wheeze. I choked, coughed, but managed not to scream as his eyes pleaded with me to control myself.

“I’m not worth that,” I whispered harshly, shaking my head in denial. “Why the fuck would you do that? Why? You guys have worked so hard to get to where you are—worked day and night. It’s everything to you. And you just…gave it to him?”

“It was either that or borrow more money.”

I sobbed, shaking my head. “Call Warren now. Tell him you changed your mind.”

He arched a brow. “You think we can’t rebuild things even better? We’ve got a name for ourselves now. We won’t be working out of the old food truck for long.”

“The food truck?”

“It’s busy but fun.” He gave me a cheeky grin. “You’ll like it. There are no tables to wait on, but I’m sure you can find something else to do.”

Saint strode back into the room, carrying a tray, with Rush directly behind him.

“You fucking told her?” Saint snapped, handing the tray to Rush and flicking Lucky’s ear in annoyance.

“She doesn’t need to be thinking about that right now, Luck,” Rush admonished. “We talked about this. It’s the last thing she should be thinking about right now.”

“She needed to know. She was worried.”

“But I’ll never be able to pay you back! That restaurant meant everything, and you threw it away for me?”

Saint sat down beside me and hesitantly wrapped an arm around my shoulders. I slumped against him. I had to be dreaming. There was no way Saint, of all people, was comforting me. This all felt surreal.

“We didn’t throw it away. We exchanged it for something more important. For someone more important.” He kissed my forehead. Was I dreaming? “Besides, we know how things work now, and we can do it again. Better.”

“But it wasn’t how you saw your lives going.”

He snorted. “Life never works out the way people think it will. It’s chaos.

A mess you share with people who give a shit about you, if you’re lucky,” he said to me as though I’d been concussed.

“Sometimes love is four people joking around and bitching at each other. You belong with us and that’s it, understand me?

I don’t want to hear you second-guessing the decision we made for our family. ”

I wanted to keep arguing, but I didn’t have the energy. Giving up, I blew out a long breath, nodding even though I disagreed with their decision. It was probably too late for them to take it back.

All I could do was try to make sure they didn’t regret it.

Saint gave me an awkward but heartfelt pat. He got up and handed me the tray he’d put together. I held it in shaking hands and my eyes swam with unshed tears.

He’d made me a mug of hot chocolate and a plate of freshly toasted Pop-Tarts.