Cash (The Henchmen MC Book 2) (24 page)

“Malc was right,” he said, nodding over my shoulder at Leo.

“Yep,” Leo agreed then moved to look at me. “Come on, let's go.”

With that, I followed him into the storage container maze that was the innards of Hailstorm. By the fourth container, I was certain that if you didn't know the layout, you genuinely could get completely lost. Half of the rooms were all but empty, jutting off into what looked like deadends. Past the barracks-style bedroom, we finally arrived at a door with a small glass window through which I could see a naked to the waist Lo lying on her stomach on a hospital bed while one of her men, dark-skinned, shaved head, wearing a white tee and jeans, sat over her with white gloves on his hands, pressing something into the broken-open welts on her back.

Leo pushed open the door and led me inside. Beside the man bent over Lo, the only person left in the room was Malcolm whose face was in severe lines. The air around him seemed to be buzzing with a mix of rage and concern. It was a feeling I knew well.

“She's not moving,” I said, getting close to the side of the bed.

“Knocked her out,” the guy pressing compresses to her wounds said, not looking up. “She'd skin me if I let us all hear her cry through this,” he added, gesturing toward the suture kit he had laid up beside him.

“Fuck,” I said, looking down at her perfect back ripped to shreds. “I was there,” I said, shaking my head, feeling the realization settle heavy inside. “I had been there and she was one fucking floor beneath me. I could have saved her from this!” I yelled, grabbing the metal stool beside me and hauling it across the room.

“Don't go there,” Malcolm said, shaking his head as he watched me.

“How the fuck can I not go there? I was
there.
I should have looked harder for a door. I should have noticed the fucking basement windows from outside...”

“It's not your fault some sick bastard tortured her. That's not on you. That's on him. She doesn't need your anger. She needs you to be here for her. She's not a victim. Don't treat her like one. At least... not if you want to be able to be in her life in the future, that is.”

“I'm gonna be there,” I said, a kind of certainty in my words I never usually felt, let alone expressed. I was going to be there, in her future, even if I had to claw my way into it.

It made no sense. True, I'd met her a year... closer to two years before. But I only got to really know her the past several days. But it didn't matter. I never claimed it was rational. All I knew was, she was mine. And she wasn't 'mine for the night' or 'mine for the time being' like women had been in the past... she was mine without an expiration date. Because I had never met a woman like her- a woman covered in steel but so soft inside. I'd never met a woman who liked to fight as much as she liked to fuck. And speaking of fucking... I needed more of that with her. Like... a lifetime of it.

So, yeah, it didn't make much sense. But what in my life did? I'd always made decisions flippantly, recklessly. I always threw myself into whatever felt right in the moment. That was how I lived. I wasn't someone to sit around and write fucking pro and con lists and hem and haw every situation, every choice to be made, every repercussion of each choice. I went with my gut.

And my gut was telling me that I was going to be in Lo's life.

So that was the way it was going to be.

I watched, hands curled into fists, as the guy with the gloves went about stitching Lo back together.

“Relax, Cash,” Malcolm's voice found me, though one look at him and he didn't look much less stressed than I did, “Mike here knows what he's doing. He was an EMT in his life before.”

Feeling marginally better, I sucked in a breath, slanting my head toward Malcolm with a wry smile. “For a bunch of survivalist nutjobs... you all have normal fucking names.”

Malcolm snorted, shaking his head, trying to fight the twitching of his lips. “Hey we can't all be Reign, Cash, Wolf, and... Repo now, can we?”

“Think you maybe want to get your face fixed up?” Mike asked, surprising me because I was pretty sure he hadn't looked up at me since I came in.

“I'm fine.”

“Sure, sure,” he said, nodding. “No big deal. Just a bloody, open wound dripping down your face. No big deal. You probably won't get sepsis and die.”

At that, I felt an unexpected laugh rise up. “Fine, I'll clean up my face. Got any whiskey laying around?”

At that, his gaze finally came up. “Please don't tell me you pour booze on your cuts normally.”

“Okay... I won't tell you that,” I grinned.

“It's amazing you're not covered in nasty scars.”

“Hey... battlefield medicine, man.”

“In what military are the soldiers carrying around alcohol?”

“I dunno,” I smiled, rocking back on my heels. “The Russians. Can't imagine them going into battle without a shit ton of vodka in their bloodstream.”

Mike smiled, shook his head, and went back to working on the blissfully unconscious Lo while Malcolm waved a hand toward the bathroom at the far end of the room.

I went in, put some peroxide on the cuts, put on a couple butterfly sutures, and swabbed on some antibiotic cream before washing the dirt and blood off my hands and looking up at my reflection in the mirror.

There was a tightness around my eyes that I made an effort to release before I made my way back out of the bathroom. Mike was standing, fiddling around with some kind of huge sheet of gauze, slathering something onto it, then taking the giant dressing and laying it across Lo's entire back.

“When she wakes up, we're going to need to get her up and wrap some gauze around her to keep this on,” he explained. “But there's no use trying to get her up when she's unconscious. She'll be out for hours.” With that, he snapped off his gloves and shrugged at us. “She'll be fine in a couple days. I'll take the stitches out in a week or two depending on how everything heals, but she will be up and moving in a day or two.”

We nodded and Malcolm thanked him and he walked out. Alone, Malcolm sighed loudly, looking down at Lo. “I hate to leave her, but I have some stuff I need to see to...” he paused, looking at me, “and you'll be here for her, right?”

“Of course,” I said, sitting down on the stool Mike had vacated and brushing my hand down the side of her bruised face. I couldn't wait until I could see it undamaged again, until I could touch her without having to worry about hurting her.

I heard Malcolm's feet retreat and the door open and close and we were alone. “Fucking sorry, baby,” I said quietly, my hand running down her arm.

I watched her slow, steady breathing for a long time, until my eyes got too heavy to stay open anymore and I dozed off, slumped over the side of her hospital bed.

I woke up to my hair being tousled sometime later. My eyes snapped open, immediately alert. And there was Lo, laying on her stomach, her face turned to me, her lips turned up in a small smile.

“I thought it was a dream,” she said in a groggy voice.

“You thought what was a dream, gorgeous?”

“You saving me. I had a dream that you saved me the night before and I thought... I thought I had passed out from the pain and was dreaming again.”

“Wasn't a dream. Of course I came to save you. There was never any question about that, Lo.”

“Stupid fucking carpet store,” she said, getting her spirit back. “How did I miss that?”

“Who would think he would buy a place and sit on it for years, never once contacting you? Shit don't make any sense.”

“He wasn't sitting on it. He was making a replica of our old apartment, down to every last kitchen towel and the position of my perfume bottles. He's out of his mind.”

“He raised his hands to this perfect fucking face,” I said, running my pointer finger down her cheek. “I think that proved how fucked in the head he was.”

Lo offered me a small smile. “How bad is it?” she asked, waving a hand lazily around. “I can't feel anything still, but I know it can't be good.”

“It's nothing. Mike got you all taken care of.”

Lo's brow arched up and her eyes got small. “Don't talk to me like I'm a fucking child, Cash. I can handle it.”

There was my girl. I felt my lips curving up. “Fine. It's jacked. You're held together with stitches at this point. That what you want to hear?”

“Yes, actually, if that's the truth.”

“It's the truth.”

“Okay,” she nodded, taking a deep breath. “It's gonna hurt like a bitch when I wake up again, isn't it?”

“Yeah,” I nodded. “But they'll just come back in here and shove a needle in your ass and it will all be better.”

She snorted, wincing a bit as her smile spread. “They'll give me pills, you idiot.”

“I like it my way better,” I laughed.

“You just want to see my ass,” she smiled.

“Hell fuckin' yeah. Nice and plump and...”

“Bite-able,” she supplied, letting out a quiet version of her tinkling laugh.

“I still haven't gotten the chance to bite it yet. You know... we're alone in here...”

“Go to sleep, Cash,” she said, shaking her head.

“Really, I could just pull your pants down real quick and...” I paused, seeing tears rise up in her eyes unexpectedly. “What?” I asked, my thumb brushing one away as it broke free of her lashes.

She shook her head a little. “You'd make a pretty good leading man, Cash,” she said oddly, closing her eyes without further explanation.

With nothing left to do, I did what I was told, I went to sleep.

Twenty-three

Lo

I came awake suddenly in the early light of the morning, the pain a searing, awful thing that felt like it spread from my back and took over my entire body. My breath hissed out loudly as I tried to shift slightly to ease the crick in my neck.

“Fuck,” I groaned, flopping back down.

“Babe,” Cash's voice reached me, sounding annoyingly awake. I tilted my head to see him walking toward me from the bathroom, his hair wet from the shower, dressed in clothes that didn't belong to him- charcoal gray work pants and a faded green Army shirt. There were fresh butterfly sutures down the side of his face where a bruise was visible under the cuts. He was the most beautiful sight I'd ever seen. “Don't,” he said when I went to push up and fell again on a cry. “Fucking Christ, woman,” he said, attempting annoyed but it came off as concerned nonetheless, “I get it, we all get it- you're a badass and don't need nothing from no one, but you gotta let people help you out sometimes.”

“Where's Mike and Malcolm?”

“They're not helping you with this,” he said, shaking his head, a small smirk playing at his lips.

“Why not? They're both trained. Malcolm had training in the military and Mike was...”

“An EMT.”

“Exactly. So they would be more qualified to...”

“They ain't seeing your tits, babe. Sorry.”

“What?” I half-accused, half-laughed.

“Those might be on your body and all... but they're mine now. And neither Mike or Malcolm are getting to see them.”

“They probably already did. You noticed I'm shirtless, right?” I asked, fighting the smile because I didn't want him to know that his possessiveness was giving me the warm and tinglies.

“Sure. But that was then. This is now and I'm gonna be the one to help you stand and wrap those bad boys up.”

“You're ridiculous,” I said, but I was smiling.

“You love it,” he countered with a wink.

I had a sneaking suspicion that might be a little too true.

“Right so now... we're gonna get you up on an arm and then swing your legs off the bed. Then you can just sit there while I wrap you up.” His hand went under one of my arms and pulled as I pushed, biting hard into my busted lip to keep from crying out. “Seriously? With the stoic shit?” he asked, watching my face. “Not gonna think less of you if you curse and spit about it, babe.”

So then, I did. And I earned a smile for it to boot.

Fifteen minutes later, Cash took a few steps back, watching me while he held his chin in his fingers.

“Was it completely necessary to make a fucking tunic out of the gauze?” I laughed, looking down to where I was wrapped from pelvis to five inches over my breasts. Hell, there were even straps.

“Yep,” he said easily, moving back toward me and extending his hand. “Bathroom?” he asked with a shrug when I furrowed my brow at his hand.

“Right.” There were things you didn't want to admit to a man you were sleeping with, especially only a few days into said naughty-bits-rubbing, and one of those things... was telling them you had to pee. But, given the fact that I was pretty sure I'd double over in pain if I tried to make the journey myself and the fact that I really did have to go, well, I took his hand.

The move across the floor was excruciating in both actual pain and slowness. I felt like every time my foot landed that the sensation shot up my back. By the time we reached the bathroom, still steamy from Cash's shower, I was sweaty and clutching painfully into Cash's arm for stability.