Cold Hearted: Bad Boy Romance Page 12

  The second guy sent a kick his way. Shannen dropped his elbow and caught the kick on his arm, then tried to twist and take a hold of the leg. The third guy finally moved as he reached, though the thug's leg was already out of Shannen's grasp.

  It wasn't until the blow connected with a strange, dull sound that she realized what had happened, Shannen caught the blow on the ear and he made a decent imitation of a puppet's strings being cut.

  She stared down at the ground, looking at his body. What were they going to do to him? Was he going to be alright?

  The big guy transferred a paper roll of coins from his right hand to his left and shook out pained knuckles. Caroline only barely registered the movement at the edge of her vision.

  He wasn't moving. Was he going to be alright? She hoped to hell that he was.

  As they started to move towards her, slow and confident, it took Caroline several seconds too long to realize that she had forgotten that there was someone else who might not be okay, and she was several seconds too late to try to save herself.

  26

  Caroline Rice was as brave as anyone she knew. At least, she'd never been unnaturally afraid or cowardly. Not as far as she knew. There was her feelings on violence, of course, but that was hardly the same thing. Nobody would begrudge a nurse for wanting to avoid violence, even at higher costs than might seem appropriate.

  So she thought that when things started to go wrong, when things turned bad, she could at least rely on herself to get away, to not panic, to… whatever she needed to do. In this case, it was a short run. Not even very far.

  If she took a few long, powerful, fast strides she'd be back into the public sphere. There were dozens of people leaving the theater, and someone would no doubt help her in this time of need. Preferably sooner than later.

  But instead she backed up and pressed herself against a car and covered her head, which seemed like exactly the wrong thing and was the only option that her body seemed to take seriously in spite of that.

  A shrill shriek came out of her throat, the sound of it surprising even her. A moment later a hand wrapped around her arm and pulled her upright.

  Caroline pulled away, but her arm didn't come with the rest of her. Then another hand grabbed her other arm, and her arms were pulled apart. Someone slapped her. The world became a blur of things happening, things she wasn't ready to even start thinking about. Whatever happened outside of her narrow field of view wasn't real, and whatever happened inside of it was a jumbled, confusing mess.

  Her eyes shut tight and she tried to yank free again, as if surprising them would make the fingers in her arm, tight enough to hurt, loosen up and she would pull away. Then she'd be able to run, she hoped. Because the alternative seemed obvious, and more than that, it was obvious what would happen if she failed. She wasn't ready to accept that.

  Her eyes went wide, wildly searching for something, anything that would answer her. But they didn't. Instead the third guy circled around behind her and wrapped an arm around her neck, holding her still and covering her mouth.

  Caroline could feel her breath coming in hard spurts. She was dangerously close to hyperventilating, and as she felt his hand clap over her mouth she felt herself inch closer to it, even as the breath started to come harder. Her chest burned as it heaved in and out.

  Then the big guy's hands moved a little bit, down her body. His fingers slipped under her shirt and the panic that had been building up in her started to come to a head. She found reserves of strength she didn't know she had and ripped at her arms. It accomplished little more than to hurt her shoulders.

  A voice behind her said something, but all that Caroline could feel, all she could hear, her entire world was the searing hot panic that tore through her as his fingers traced a line across her stomach and upward.

  Then the line stopped. She fell to the ground, no longer supported by the hands around her. Two voices spoke. A man, she heard, and a woman. Caroline's eyes rolled around in her head, refusing to focus as she tried to look at them. The woman said something, but Caroline could only barely hear it, and she couldn't make out the words.

  The woman repeated herself. Caroline tried to focus her attention but all she could seem to do was laugh. The laughter came out like a slap in her own face. She didn't want to laugh. She wanted to do a thousand things, to cry, to scream, to curl up in a little ball.

  Instead, as the woman helped her up, looking between Caroline and the man who had arrived along with her, she just laughed and laughed, even as tears started to streak down her face.

  Somewhere at the edge of her vision, the man's eyes darted over into the darkness. He roused another man's body, one that had fallen onto the ground. Shannen, she thought. Shannen started moving, and Caroline laughed at that, too. She tried to stifle it, but it bubbled out through pursed lips and she laid her head back on the car beside her.

  When she finally stopped, Caroline felt as if something had been lost inside her, something that wasn't going to come back, no matter what she tried or what she did in the days to come. That little piece of her was gone forever, whatever it was.

  The other man reached down for her. She didn't know his name but he looked nice. His coat looked awfully warm, as well. But she didn't take the gloved hand he offered. Nor did she take the hand of the girl. His girlfriend, Caroline thought, though there was no proof of anything like that.

  Something moved at the edge of her vision, and she moved to react before she knew what she was doing. She grabbed out and squeezed. Shannen wobbled at the weight now hanging off of his leg, a leg that had evidently been moving before there was the weight of an adult woman hanging off of it.

  A hand dug into her hair and ruffled it. A voice called out to her. Familiar. She had finally calmed down enough to make out the words. That, or something about that specific voice cut through the veil of her panic.

  "You're okay," the voice said. Shannen rubbed her hair some more. It felt good. Too good, she thought. She was showing herself to be weak. It was going to reflect badly on her, in the end, she knew, but she couldn't stop herself, and she certainly couldn't change it. They were already past that.

  Her eyes closed and she forced her mind to empty out of all her thoughts. That pleasant feeling, his hand on her head, took her entire concentration and a minute later she forced herself up, putting her weight on his leg.

  A voice spoke, one that Caroline didn't recognize. She realized as she opened her eyes that it was the man speaking, his thick eyebrows knitted up in worry. "Are you okay? I've got the cops on the way already."

  Shannen's sharp inhalation of breath pulled her out of her brief wonder.

  "What's wrong?"

  He looked down at her and had a strange expression on his face. She couldn't place it right away, except that she knew that there was something strange about it. Something unexpected.

  And then he looked off into the distance and pulled her head onto his chest. Caroline let him, let herself stay there as long as he'd let her. She would have stayed for all of eternity if a reason to leave didn't present itself. She just had to hope that it did, or that they figured out a way to sustain themselves on nothing more than a hug.

  His body felt good against hers. Strong. She needed that, needed it more than she could express. As long as he was there, she could be safe, at least for a little while. Some things could touch her, that much she knew. Things that were dangerous and unpleasant and coming, it seemed, for her.

  Shannen had a lot of trouble in his pocket, but he'd tried to get her out of there. He'd told her to move, and it had been her turn to stubbornly dig in her heels. Like he had so many times before.

  When he ignored her, it didn't seem to amount to much. When she'd ignored him, though…

  Her body shook and tears started pouring down her face again, burning hot streaks down her cheeks that she didn't want to understand. That she couldn't understand. She looked up at him and the big fighter pressed his lips against her forehead.

&n
bsp; He surprised her with that. It was the third surprise of the night, the second good one, and it went a long way to reminding her, at least in some small way, that there was something that wasn't all completely fucked up.

  As long as she could hold onto that knowledge, she could keep going. At least, that was what she had to tell herself, because the alternative was to think very hard about what she'd gotten herself into.

  It seemed as if very similar thoughts were going through Shannen's head, she saw. Because lights were starting to appear on the horizon, blinking blue and red, and the way that he watched them told Caroline that he had something to worry about.

  She pulled away and butted his chest with her head. She gave him a look that she hoped said 'pay attention to me, instead,' and the way that his arms wrapped around her, pulled her in tight again and held her, warming her, said that he got the message.

  27

  The police asked questions that she didn't know the answers to. What did they look like? She'd seen their faces very clearly, but the memory of those faces was fantastically unclear. They had two eyes, a nose, a mouth. That seemed pretty likely, but the truth was that she was working more off of the fact that she felt as if, were there any one-eyed men among them, or men without mouths, or two noses, she would have noticed and recalled that.

  At least, that was what she hoped, because otherwise she was less than useless to the police. They were big. One seemed impossibly tall, almost seven feet, and probably two hundred and eighty pounds.

  Shannen's descriptions didn't seem to fit with hers. In every case, she knew, she thought they had been bigger than they were. He gave a fairly somber reporting of what he'd seen. Hers, on the other hand, felt as if it were full of holes and every one of those holes was about to send her spiraling into a fit again. She promised herself that no matter what happened, no matter what was said, she wasn't going to let that happen.

  Not in front of so many people, at least. Finally she just stopped talking, and when the police asked her questions she just shrugged. The questions were hard. Remembering was hard. More than anything she wanted not to think about it, and once she stopped talking and started the shrugging, it didn't take more than once or twice before they stopped asking her to try.

  She let out a breath and watched everything around her. It was all a movie, she knew. Like the one she'd just finished watching. In that movie, they'd gotten into trouble, just like they had in the parking lot. The girl was in danger. It looked like her man was powerless to help her, when the danger came.

  In the end he'd come up with some sort of clever plot to get back at the bad guys. In the end, the girl was saved and they lived happily ever after. At least, there was no reason to believe that they didn't live happily ever after, and sometimes you read into it.

  She was fine with the ending. It was happy, it was pleasant, and she wouldn't mind one bit if her own story ended that way. If it ended right here with the strangers having run off the men who had attacked her. Coogan's men. The words flashed into her mind and the pain came welling up in spite of her.

  She frowned. She wasn't supposed to get hurt if she didn't talk. If she just let everyone else do all the talking then she'd be fine. That was what she kept telling herself, at least, and she had no reason to doubt that.

  There was a movement off to the left. She let her eyes track over, slowly. A woman cop came up to her and knelt down, looking slightly up at her. Everything was wrong.

  "Are you okay?"

  Caroline shrugged. She was supposed to know not to talk to her by now. She'd been very clear about that, in her own way. Why was this woman ignoring it?

  The woman's face strained and frowned, and then she grimaced and turned away, heading back where she'd come from. That was exactly what Caroline wanted. Walk away, please, and leave her in peace.

  When all was said and done, when everything was finished, she was sitting in a cold night in a cold car. The engine roared to life, and in a few minutes the warmth would start to pour out of the vents. The ice chilled all the way down to Caroline's bones, and she knew with a disappointingly severe sense of conviction that in the end she wasn't really anywhere near as safe as she had been, nor as confident.

  "You didn't just talk to them, did you?"

  Caroline's voice was low. Almost low enough that she wanted to repeat herself. But she knew, deep in her chest, that he'd heard her regardless. There was a long silence, thick enough that you could practically cut it with a knife.

  Shannen's hands fitted around the steering wheel, tight. He flexed his fingers to loosen them up, but an instant later they were tight on the leather wheel again.

  "Did you?"

  He cursed below his breath. "I'm sorry," he answered.

  Caroline could feel the tears threatening to come out again. She forced them to stop. She wanted to cry, and her body wanted nothing more than to oblige her, but she wasn't going to give them the satisfaction. She wasn't going to give herself the satisfaction. She was stronger than that. She had to be stronger than that.

  "What now?"

  He let out a long breath. "Now?"

  "What are you going to do now?"

  He looked at her with a cold expression on his face. She would have been upset by it if she thought that it was meant for her, but she didn't need to be told that it wasn't. He was examining her face, and he wanted her to know he was thinking about her, but the expression on his face was in no way tied to his feelings about her.

  "Now I'm going to go home. I've got someone with me."

  "You're going to go home and you're going to stay home," she said.

  "Not fucking likely," he answered. His voice was low and hard. "Unless you're planning on trying to stop me."

  "You've got bigger problems. Just let it go."

  "You think they'll just let it go?" Now some part of that anger was turned on her, and she wasn't sure how she was supposed to feel about it. She certainly didn't know how she was supposed to react. But she wasn't about to try to figure any of that out, not right now. There was too much else that could go badly.

  "I can't let you leave," she said. Something scratched at her throat and her eyes from inside her skull, and she knew that if she let herself keep talking it was going to be through a veil of tears.

  "Then I'll stay," he said. His voice was still low, still dangerous, still held a knife-edge. She knew that he was probably lying, but she knew that her only hope was to keep him there as long as she could, to keep him interested in whatever she had to offer.

  "Promise," she said, leaning towards him. Her head felt good as her forehead pressed against his shoulder.

  "I promise," he said. The air was starting to blow warm, and as she straightened the constant blast of warm air hit her right in the face. It was oddly comforting. Caroline put up her hands to absorb some of that warmth.

  "Then take me home." As the warmth started to dig into her skin, starting to warm her muscles and make her feel normal again, the shaking didn't go away. She looked down at her body and tried to figure a way that she could force it to stop. It apparently decided that it wasn't going to listen to her.

  They drove slowly. Shannen had never been fond of the speed limit before. He'd never seemed to think it was anything more than a guideline to be considered. But now he was driving as carefully, as slowly as she had ever seen him. It was almost unsettling to watch. The expression on his face soured more and more as they drove.

  But she watched that expression carefully, and every time he looked at her it slipped, just a little bit. Every time, it turned into something that might have been worry, if she thought Shannen O'Brien was capable of it.

  He let out a long breath as they eased up to a stop in front of the house.

  "You have work tomorrow?"

  "No," she said. "I don't."

  "Good, then maybe you don't have to call off." As if it were a foregone conclusion that she'd take his advice on the subject, when he'd never once listened to hers, on anything at al
l.

  "I don't want to go inside."

  "You're going to have to eventually."

  "Carry me," she said, halfway joking. When he eased out of the car and started going around to her side, she didn't know what to think. When he opened her door, she froze up. He reached past her and clicked the seat belt. He caught it before it could whip past her and eased it back into its place.

  His arms wrapped around her and bundled her up before she knew what was happening. She stayed there, frozen, unsure of what she was supposed to do. Unsure of what she wanted to do.

  "I'm scared," she said. He hefted her up and kicked the door closed, then turned towards the house.

  "I know."

  He carried her up the steps. She liked that, for reasons she didn't particularly want to unpack right now. But it didn't stop the shaking.

  "Shannen, I'm scared," she repeated.

  "I'm right here." The words were like a bottle of Valium, and she relaxed against his body. He was right here. And as long as she could, she was going to make sure that he stayed that way.

  It was better that way, she thought. Better for both of them. Because if she let him, she knew exactly where he was going to be going as soon as she nodded off, and she knew that she wasn't going to like the outcome.

  "Can you stand up?"

  She pressed her head into his shoulder and shook it. "I don't wanna."

  "I need to get my keys."

  Caroline let out a long breath and pulled herself together.

  "Okay," she said. When he let her down it was hard to keep that brief feeling of safety. But it was all she had.

  28

  The first thought that Caroline had, when she finally forced herself through the door, was that she needed a shower. It wasn't normally her pattern to take one, so late in the evening, but there were plenty of things that weren't remotely normal about that day so far. One more change of pace wouldn't hurt.

  If anything, she thought distantly, it might help. Everything else around her seemed to be going to hell. If she could just have one thing to herself, that might be enough. It might have to be enough.