The Marked Men Series Books 1–6: Rule, Jet, Rome, Nash, Rowdy, Asa. Jay Crownover

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СКАЧАТЬ the ground but the next time I was cognizant of anything I was strapped to a stretcher and being loaded into the back of an ambulance. The lights and the sirens were making my head throb and a young paramedic was firing a million and one questions at Ayden as she scrambled up into the back with me. She immediately grabbed my hand and squeezed it. I noticed she was crying almost as hard as I had been.

      “Gabe?” My throat was on fire and talking made it feel like I was speaking through a forest of razor blades.

      Ayden brushed away her tears with shaking hands and I winced as the paramedic turned his attention to me.

      “The cops have him. His dad showed up as they were putting him in the back of the police car. The mace you used on him was hard to miss so he couldn’t really deny he was in our apartment. How did he get in through the security gate?”

      I flinched as the paramedic prodded at my shoulder. He turned sympathetic eyes to me. “You’re going to have to get it reset. It’s dislocated and I think the cut on your forehead is going to be deep enough that it’s going to need to be glued or sewed shut. Sorry.”

      I wanted to tell him it was okay because I was alive and at least Gabe hadn’t gotten away with the ultimate violation, but talking hurt too much. When he asked about needing a sexual assault exam I shook my head no and squeezed Ayden’s hand as she started crying again.

      “My mom.” The words were broken and not just because of my throat. “She gave him the code because he told her we were getting back together.”

      Ayden let loose with a string of swear words that would have made Rule proud and we spent the rest of the short ride just clinging to one another. The next two hours were a blur of doctors and police officers. After the first fifteen minutes, it was clear I wasn’t going to keep up my end of the conversation with my vocal cords being as abused as they were. I had to resort to writing everything down. Gabe was in lock-up, at least for the night, and there wasn’t anything his dad could do to get him out. The detective who took my statement let me know there was a good chance his family would post his bail in the morning and he would be out, but there was now a mandatory restraining order in place and there wasn’t a thing his dad could do about it. Not that it mattered; they were keeping me at least a night in the hospital to see how bad the damage to my throat really was, and I needed superstrong painkillers to dull the migraine I was battling on top of the pain of having my shoulder shoved back into the socket.

      My mom and Jack showed up sometime near dawn and my dad came as well. I told Ayden I didn’t want to see any of them, which caused a huge scene. When my mom started screaming that it was probably one of the thugs I had met while I was dating Rule, Ayden totally lost her cool and informed all of them that if it hadn’t been for my mother giving Gabe the code to the security door of the apartment this would have never happened. That shut everyone right up. My dad forced his way in using his medical connections and I spent a solid hour ignoring him and glaring while he apologized profusely. When he tried to kiss my cheek I turned my head away and made sure he could see the absolute disgust in my eyes. Part of Gabe’s obsession had to do with all the things these people represented and I just couldn’t abide having it around me right now. They all left after a nurse threatened to call security if they didn’t stop disturbing me.

      Ayden pulled up a chair and propped her feet on the edge of the bed, and we both fell into a fitful sleep as morning rolled around. I would only doze on and off, needing more pain meds as my shoulder started to ache and various other parts of me that had been abused made themselves known. Ayden vanished somewhere around noon, which was fine because another round of doctors and detectives came by.

      Gabe’s dad had managed to get him out on bail, but there was no dispute about how bad he had hurt me and the police were looking at charging him with attempted murder. They made me tell my story over and over again, and I never wavered from the brutal facts. Gabe was sick and needed help, but more than that he needed to be somewhere where he wasn’t able to do this to someone else. Feeling entitled enough to own another person despite their feelings in the matter was beyond mentally unstable.

      Ayden came back in with yogurt and some granola, looking sheepish. “I called Cora to let her know what was going on. I didn’t even think about the fact that she would freak out while she was at work.”

      I went completely still and turned wide eyes to my friend.

      “Apparently Rule threw a major fit when he heard what happened and, needless to say, he’ll be here in, like, five minutes. Sorry, but I figured you should know. I guess I could ask the hospital staff to keep him out if you want, though I have a feeling stopping him when he’s all worked up might be a chore. There’d be another ex you’d have to send to the slammer for the night.”

      I wasn’t sure how I felt about him coming here. On the one hand, all I had wanted for the last month was to see him, to have him acknowledge me, but on the other, it shouldn’t have taken a vicious and violent wake-up call to make that happen. I sighed and rocked my head back and forth. She was right, anyway: keeping him out if he had made his mind up to storm the castle was going to be more of a hassle than I needed right now.

      “It’s fine. I can handle him.” My voice was still raw and scratchy but at least it hurt marginally less to use it now.

      “You don’t look like you’re in any kind of shape to handle anything.” She wasn’t wrong. My arm was in a sling, I had a three-inch gash glued shut and wrapped in a white bandage on my forehead, matching the setup on my hand, my lip was split open and crusted with blood, and I had a wicked ring of black-and-blue bruises circling the pale skin of my throat. To top it all off, I was sporting a dandy set of black eyes from being shoved face-first into both the door and the floor.

      “It’ll be fine. He can come see that I’m all right, then go about his day, which I’m sure is all he wants to do.”

      She gave me a skeptical look and patted my feet where they were stacked up under the itchy hospital blanket. “All right then. If you swear you’re going to be okay I’m gonna run and find someplace with coffee that doesn’t taste like tar, and I’ll be back.”

      I wasn’t going to ever really be okay again. I didn’t think anyone who had been through what I had in the last few months would, but I wasn’t scared of Rule. Almost being raped by a lunatic had given me a whole new perspective on what was missing from my life and what I was going to do differently from this point on. I wanted to fidget with my hair, but it was snaggled together with dried blood and who knew what else and it wasn’t like there was going to be any fixing my face. Rule was just going to have to face the horror show full-on and deal with it.

      I was messing around on my phone, returning texts from Cora and most of Rule’s boys, letting them know I was fine, when the door opened and he came in. I looked up and watched him, so I saw the initial anger that was stamped all across his handsome face quickly bleed into horror at the sight of me all battered and bruised. I saw his chest inflate and deflate as he sucked in an audible breath and moved to the end of the bed. We stared at each other in silence and I noticed absently that his hair was still normal, if unruly, as well as its natural dark brown color. I still hated it because it made him look like a stranger. His eyes looked wild and too big for his face; a full-blown blizzard was sweeping out of the cold depths. He was messing with his lip ring like he did when he was nervous and I realized if I didn’t say anything there was a good chance we would spend the rest of the afternoon watching each other warily.

      “You didn’t have to come. I’m fine, just a little banged up.”

      His big hands tightened on the end of the bed and I watched the snake head bend and flex with his aggravation.

      “I wanted СКАЧАТЬ