Page 127 of Stripping Bare

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She shot him.Tessa stared at Keith’s body on the trail, then at his gun dangling from her fingers. She stopped him. She didit.

Jonah crashed toward her through the trees and skidded to a stop. His cousin pushed him aside and took the gun fromher.

“I shot him,” shesaid.

“But you didn’t kill him,” Maggie reassured her. “How did you get thegun?”

“He had to set it aside to put on the gear. I just reacted, grabbed it and ran, hoping he was so focused on Jonah that he wouldn’t come after me. When I heard him moving in the other direction, Ifollowed.”

“Tessa, why the hell did you risk yourself like that?” Jonah tried to gather her in his arms, but Tessa wiggled out of his hold. Right now, she couldn’t afford to lean against him. Soften towardhim.

“Because it was time for me to do the protecting. The saving,” she said softly. “Now you know what it feels like to have the choice taken out of your hands. Now you know how I feel about what youdid.”

The look on Jonah’s face broadcasted his anguish, his apology. “I didn’t want you to find out about the shit I pulled with Shaw and the others because I knew you’d look at me exactly thisway.”

When the EMTs tried to load Jonah and her into the same ambulance, she balked, telling them she wanted to ride alone. Soon she was lying in a St. Elizabeth’s hospital bed with five leads snaking from her chest to a telemetry monitor. Apparently, Jonah had given the doctor the background on Benery’s technique for trying to kill her, so that meant a full cardiac workup for her. And although she’d been given instructions to rest, that was impossible with a blood pressure cuff inflating every fifteenminutes.

The damn thing was just starting to pump again when the door opened and Jonah walked into her room wearing a hospital gown. The vee neck revealed burn marks on his upper chest. His face was as scratched as hers, and a bruise was forming on his left elbow. They were a pair allright.

Her heart seesawed in her chest, with love and resentment each trying to slam the other into thedirt.

“We need to talk.” His voice was low and slightly slurred, probably frompainkillers.

Talking was the last thing she was interested in doing. What she wanted was to go to sleep and wake up in the morning to discover none of this had everhappened.

That she’d never gone to Tucci’s and opened herself up to being hurt by thisman.

“Are you okay?” heasked.

Tessa could feel tears forming, but she’d be damned before she cried right now. “No. If I could wrap this blood pressure cuff around your neck, I’d happily do it. You tampered with people’slives.”

His hazel eyes took on the sharpness of brass tacks. “I did, and I would do it again in a heartbeat. Tessa, Shaw and the others didn’t justtamperwith your life. They damn near destroyedit.”

“So you felt like you had to step in and do something aboutit?”

“They needed topay.”

“That’s what the legal system isfor.”

“A system you and your parents didn’tuse.”

“So you took things into your own hands. Did you even think about how I would feel about you getting revenge for me? For manipulatingmylife?” She sat up and the leads pulled at her skin. Minor pain compared to what she was feeling inside. “Why? Why would you undermine me thatway?”

“You’d been awarded some scholarships, but not enough to cover everything. I just topped off what the school had alreadyprovided.”

“So you stole money to send me to college. Jonah, my parents would’ve helped me with therest.”

“But you wanted to do it on your own, didn’tyou?”

At the time, shehadbeen proud. So gratified at the thought of having somehow paid her own way. Now, the memory of her full ride to U of W made her insides ache. She’d believed she’d earned that scholarship money, but it had been bullshit all along. “God, you were behind my graduate school fellowships, too, weren’tyou?”

“I didn’t have anything to do with those. You earned them.” Jonah lunged forward and reached for her hand, but she slipped it under the sheet. His jaw hardened, and he retreated to lean against thewall.

“Yay me,” she said, not bothering to cover the cold bitterness of her tone. “Tell me, did you hack the dealership’s system and give me that zero percentage loan when I bought my first car? Maybe you called these companies in North Carolina and blackmailed them into meeting withme.”

“Now you’re just being ridiculous. You’ve done all that on your own. But after the rapes, you were struggling. I just did what you and your parents couldn’t at the time. Believe me, none of those guys got a fraction of what theydeserved.”