Page 29

Chapter 29

Ravaged

Whitney

Most of the time, I tended to be a light sleeper. Whenever I got sick, though, it took effort for me to wake up. The unexpected sound of my mom’s voice had the power to cut through any sleep fog.

“Oh, I think she’s coming around,” Mom said.

I forced my eyes open against the bright light. “Mom?”

“Yes, honey. The doctor said you should wake up any minute, and he was right.”

I scanned the room. My dad sat in a chair on the other side of my bed. “Hey, Dad.”

He leaned forward and grabbed my hand. “Hey, sweetheart. This is quite a scare.”

“Sorry about that,” I croaked.

Mom handed me a cup of ice. “I knew I should have called you last week. You haven’t been calling like you used to, but I know you’re a busy young woman.”

“Margo,” Dad drawled.

“What, David? I don’t know who to believe, Wyatt or Nadia. Obviously, I need to hear about her new man from her.”

Dad’s face set with an expression I hadn’t seen since I snuck out of the house with my high school boyfriend. I had no doubt Dad had gotten an earful from Wyatt, but he usually listened to me. Hard to say if that would be the case this time. Catching a last-minute flight because I’d been shot probably skewed his views quite a bit.

“As far as I’m concerned, there isn’t much I need to hear if he’s the reason you were in ICU.”

I looked at Dad. “It isn’t his fault, Dad. He did everything he could to keep me safe.”

We went into a stare-down.

Finally, Dad glanced at Mom. “I agree with Wyatt, her new man should be her old man.”

I pressed my lips together to fight against my anger. My energy had been drained and I lost that fight.

“Dad,” I said, waiting for his full attention. Once I had it, I continued. “You haven’t even met him. He didn’t shoot me, someone else did. Weren’t you the one who told me to have an open mind? Weren’t you the man who taught me that there’s always two sides to every story? Now you won’t wait to hear me out? Or even meet the man I love?”

“Love?” Mom asked.

My eyes met hers. “It’s crazy. It’s fast, but he’s the one, Mom.”

A knock came at the door and I saw Aunt Nadia there. She grinned at me. “Sorry to interrupt, but Whitney, I’m so thrilled to see you awake.” She bustled over to Mom and gave her a hug, then did the same with dad and he offered her his seat. She glanced at me. “I couldn’t help but overhear you, and you’re wrong. It hasn’t been that fast with Mensa. The two of you danced around each other for over a year.”

Mom turned her puzzled expression from Aunt Nadia to me. “You never told me about a man you were dancing around last year. The only man you mentioned was the one you wanted to see get arrested.”

I gave her a small smile. “That’s the one.”

“Are you having a nervous breakdown, Whitney?” Dad asked.

“William!” Mom cried.

“She resigns from a very good job, moves out of her place in Jackson, and is in love with a biker, who I’m not convinced didn’t play a role in her getting shot in the chest. On top of that, this man is someone she once wanted to have arrested. Any one of those decisions sounds like a cry for help, and all of them together sound like she needs an intervention.”

“I don’t need help or an intervention. And I got shot in my shoulder, not my chest, Dad,” I corrected.

His eyes widened with his ‘Dad stare.’ “A bullet came out through your chest . That’s what the nurse told us.”

I put a hand to my head because it felt like I had a migraine forming. “Dad, I love you, but I’m tired. If you can’t have an open mind about someone you haven’t even met, then I think you should head back to Wyatt’s.”

Dad sighed. “Sweetheart, I love you so much and I care about you far more than you’ll ever know.”

Aunt Nadia grabbed my hand. “When are they gonna let you outta this joint? Has anyone said?”

“She got shot, Nadia,” Mom said.

Nadia glanced up at Mom. “You don’t have to remind me, Margo. Good lord, the waiting took five years off my life, and I don’t have five years I can lose.”

“Aunt Nadia,” I whispered.

She gave me a sly grin. “I’m joking… sort of, as you say. When do they start you on the therapy? They mentioned that yesterday, that you’d need help to get your full range of motion back.”

“I don’t know. I’m guessing it will be later.”

Nadia widened her eyes. “You do all of it, you hear me.”

I raised my chin. “I’ll do my best. It’s going to take a lot of orders to cover my medical bills.”

She patted my hand. “Don’t you worry about that. I’ll help you out with whatever you need. Focus on getting better. I gotta get back to the shop.”

“Bye, Aunt Nadia.”

She stood, when she was half way to the door, she stopped. “Ooh! Look who’s here. How’s it shakin’, Mensa?”

I looked to the door with a big smile on my face, but it dimmed when I saw how ravaged he looked.

He raced into the room, pausing long enough to squeeze Nadia’s shoulders, then he came around the bed and propped his hip on it before sliding both hands along my jawline holding my face still.

His eyes closed as if he were saying a prayer, then he dropped his forehead to mine. “I love you, Whitney.”

“Love you too, genius.”

He pulled his head back, a mischievous grin on his face. “Thank fuck you’re all right.”

“You must be Whitney’s new man. I’m Margo,” Mom said, reaching a hand across to him.

Mensa stood and went through introductions with my parents. To my relief, Dad didn’t seem to give him a hard time, though I noticed a muscle in his jaw ticked.

An awkward silence sat heavy in the room.

Dad’s blue eyes were cold as they slid between me and Mensa. “How can you love someone you had every intention of arresting?” He tipped his head toward Mensa. “And you – if you wanted her gone every time you saw her, which is what I heard from her brother about your interactions – what changed? How are you two suddenly so serious?”

I’d never been so tired before, which had to be why I didn’t know I could be this angry and tired at the same time.

Using my legs, I gingerly pushed myself higher up on the bed. “Dad! What kind of question is that? Can’t you start with what he does for a living? How he got into motorcycles? Something like that?”

Dad shook his head. “Why go through small talk when what I care about is you? If he loves you and this lasts, I’ll have plenty of time to find out what he does.”

I sighed.

Mensa twisted his hands up. “What changed was tackling her to the ground and getting her away from danger when Rod started shooting at a mutual friend of ours. Then he shot at us, which forced us to leave.”

Dad scratched his upper lip. “It took someone shooting at my girl for you to realize you were interested in her?”

I caught myself before I rolled my eyes. “There’s a little more to it, Dad.”

Mensa shrugged a shoulder. “Your son chasing us away from the scene to another town over, making us think there was a heightened threat, didn’t help. Or really, it forced us together.”

Dad shifted his gaze from Mensa to me, and I wanted to shrink under the scrutiny, but it hit me that Dad had part of our story wrong. “I never really hated him, Dad, and once I got to know him, things—”

Aunt Nadia lurked near the doorway. “For heaven’s sake, Bill, for some of us when it happens it happens.”

Dad shot Aunt Nadia a dry look, then focused on Mensa again. “If you’re so protective of her, how’d she get shot yesterday?”

I grabbed Mensa’s hand. “Don’t answer that. This isn’t the time, and I meant what I said, Dad, if you can’t have an open mind, go back to Wyatt’s.”

Mensa stared at me and I couldn’t figure out what was working in his eyes. He looked like he was trying not to smile, but the way things were going for me, maybe he was trying not to patronize me. After a beat, he dipped his chin. “Woman, I’m going to answer him because if we have a daughter, one day I’ll be asking questions like that.”

“You’re pregnant?” Mom asked.

Mensa and I looked at her and said, “No.”

“That’s good to know,” Mom muttered.

Mensa turned to Dad. “She got shot because I didn’t know she’d have to leave Hard Pressed before noon. The earliest we could have someone watching her was twelve o’clock, and on top of that, she’d gone to the UPS Store the day before. It seemed highly unlikely Rod would find her, shipping packages.”

“Then why did he?” Dad asked.

A memory hit me, and I recalled the words of the biker who jabbed me with the needle. Never thought your tracking device would pay off, Rod.

I caught Dad's gaze. “Nobody knew there was a tracking device in my purse, Dad. Mensa especially wouldn’t have known that, Dad.”

Mensa pulled my hand on to his lap and gave it a squeeze. “It’s okay, Blume,” he whispered.

“It isn’t, Mensa. None of this is your fault or the prospect’s or anyone else’s, but Rod’s.”

Mensa widened his eyes at me. “The prospect didn’t do much right by you, Whitney.”

“Who’s ‘we’?” Dad asked.

“What do you mean?” Mensa asked.

“You said, ‘the earliest we could have someone watching her was twelve o’clock,’ I’d like to know who ‘we’ is.”

A sideways smile twisted Mensa’s lips, and it drew my attention to his sexy beard. “‘We’ is the Riot MC brotherhood. They know that even though I haven’t put a cut on her, I’ve claimed her. And that means, every one of my brothers will sacrifice themselves for her.”

I scoffed. “That’s crazy. The police are the—”

Mensa whipped his gaze back to me. “The police keep the order out there, but the lawyers and judges – hell, my uncle was a prime example – they fuck up the order using the law, of all things. There are cracks in the system and my Riot family doesn’t fall through those cracks, because we protect what’s ours.”

Dad sighed and stepped forward. “Your mother and I will be back later.”

“When he’s not here, isn’t that what you mean?” Aunt Nadia asked.

“Nadia,” Dad started.

“Oh, no, Bill. Don’t you ‘Nadia’ me. She’s asked you twice to open your mind to her man. It’s the least you can do, and the best way to do that is to stick around. Not run away because you don’t like what he’s saying.”

After a long, slow blink, Dad looked at Aunt Nadia. “I also need to cool down.”

Mom leaned closer to me. “Well, I’m staying, so you can bring me an iced coffee when you’ve cooled off.”

“Margo—” Dad started.

“No. I’m going to chat with Whitney and her friend.”

Dad shook his head. “I’ll be back.”

“I’ll walk with you, Bill,” Aunt Nadia said.

“Your brothers sound very protective,” Mom said.

Mensa moved off the bed and sat in the seat on my left. “We are. None of us likes when women are threatened.”

“How long are you and Dad in town?” I asked.

“Your Dad’s heading back in a few days. My ticket is open-ended, since I have no idea how much help you’re going to need.”

I nodded. “That’s a good point. I don’t want to cause problems for Aunt Nadia.”

Mensa cleared his throat, leaning forward with his forearms resting on his knees. “Whit, you won’t need her help.”

I widened my eyes at him. “I’m not going to be able to shower or get dressed on my own for a while.”

He tilted his gaze down to his boots, then raised his head. “I know, woman. You won’t need her help.”

“Why not?” I asked.

He cocked his head to the side. “Did they give you drugs recently? I’ll be around to help you.”

Mom crossed her legs. “That seems like an imposition. Especially since I can stick around for her.”

“It isn’t an imposition, Mrs. Blume. This is serious, and I’m not leaving her side when she gets released.”

“You sound rather dedicated to her,” Mom said.

“I am.”

Mom stared at him.

Mensa gave her a boyish grin. “Don’t worry. I’ll prove to you how serious I am.”

Mom nodded. “I don’t doubt it. I’ll talk to Bill. He’s protective of her, and getting that call from Wyatt that our girl had been shot… it threw us, since we thought we didn’t have to worry about that any more.”