Brutally Beautiful

Chapter 10

Someone shot the jukebox.

With a gun.

A gun.

Oh fuck. Oh fuck. I squeezed my eyes shut tight. This isn’t happening again. This can’t be happening AGAIN! Violent anger crashed in waves over me so powerfully that I couldn’t see straight. I grabbed for Lainey blindly. I needed her behind me, away from the danger. I wasn’t letting anyone hurt what was mine.

Mine?

That’s what I thought, wasn’t it? It was what I told her, wasn’t it? When we got out of the closet, I grabbed her and called her mine like a Neanderthal.

I’d have to revisit this moment after the shitstorm passes. I needed to hide Lainey under me and protect her from being hit. But, she was crawling away. Fuck, she was CRAWLING AWAY FROM ME! Crawling towards the gunman’s voice, towards Dylan standing with his hands raised at the far end of the bar, just crawling, slinking right into the danger on hands and knees. Panic gurgled, boiled frantically in the back of my throat. Then she stopped at the safe as I yanked on her leg, trying to place her body under mine. Shield her.

The gunman was talking again and my gag reflex started playing with me…2 exits. 5 windows. 4 customers. 1 waitress. 1 brother. 1 Lainey. 1 shooter. How many guns…Deputies at tables…The walls were closing in around me. I have to get Lainey and Dylan out of here alive.

Two more gunshots rang out, slicing through the coiled fear of the room, and then my brother fell. Dylan just dropped to the ground, collapsing as if he’d fainted.

What the…?

Confusion muddled my brain. Did he faint? He fainted, right? Please, God, just let him have fainted, let him just be a pussy and have fainted. I crawled on my hands and knees for my brother. I tried to drag Lainey with me, yanked on her pant leg hard, but she fucking stood up. I felt the sob in my throat before it escaped my lips. I did not want to watch her die. I needed to get that gun away from her and kill whoever it was on the other side of the bar, before they shot Lainey, but she moved so quickly, she was out of my reach in a second.

With a noticed familiarity, Lainey clicked the magazine holding all the bullets into the gun, securing the fact it was fully loaded. How the hell did she know how to do THAT? Calmly, taking off the safety as she stood, she aimed it at the shooter. “Put. The. Gun. Down,” the calmness in her voice had a razor-sharp edge. Oh, God no. Don’t shoot Lainey.

One gunshot rang out in front of her and she didn’t even flinch. Shoving the gun in the back of her pants, I could hear Bobby and George’s voices calling out for backup and securing the building. Backing away, I crawled over to my brother, but I couldn’t see him. All I saw was blood.

People ran around us, yelling and screaming, yet all I saw was the dark red blood that spread and seeped across the thin material of his shirt. Dylan was shot, and he was dying.

With a calmness that stopped my jittering heart, Lainey kneeled down and talked to Dylan. Her voice was steady and authoritative, yet I barely heard the words. I had no understanding of anything but my little brother had been shot, bleeding and in pain. She was suddenly wrapping him in some sort of bandage that suctioned down over the bullet holes while she spoke to him in even, gentle whispers.

“Kade,” she said to me in that same methodic voice, laying her hand on my face. “Go get one of those men and have them help me put Dylan in my car.”

I stood and stumbled. “But the ambulance…”

She grabbed my face in both her hands, the rusty smell of blood choked my airways. “Do it now. He doesn’t have twenty extra minutes to wait.” She spoke the words with a quiet calm brutality.

I grabbed George, the biggest and youngest one, and dragged him over as Lainey had Bobby calling the hospital straight and telling them that we’d be there in less than twenty minutes and then had a brief conversation that included a bunch of medical terms that no fucking waitress should know.

Carefully, George and I carried Dylan out and stopped in front of a freaking Porsche; engine running. Lainey was in front of us opening doors and jumped right into the driver’s seat, banging the hood of the car for me to get Dylan in.

We gently laid him in the backseat. Bree climbed in after him, and I was shoved in by George and yanked by Lainey at the same time. I wasn’t even right side up in the front passenger seat and she was already shifting the car into drive and slamming on the gas pedal.

She pulled out of the lot as if she knew what the fuck she was doing. She didn’t stop accelerating as her eyes glanced over to mine. “Kade, seatbelt. And keep your eyes to the right for traffic. I’m not stopping unless I have to and I need directions once we hit town.”

Her eyes snapped to the rearview mirror and with a soft voice continued to speak with Dylan, “I’m going to get you to the hospital fast. How are you feeling, buddy?”

“Fucking hurts,” he coughed. His voice crept into my chest like cold dead hands on my heart, squeezing it tight.

Lainey pressed her foot down on the gas harder and asked, “Bree, how was that cough?”

“Clear,” Bree answered back through a garbled sob.

Flipping the dome lights on, she asked, “Skin color.”

“Perfect,” Bree sighed.

“Awesome. You’re doing great, Dylan. I’m going to drive with the lights on so Bree can watch you for any signs of stress, because she’s a big scaredy-cat when it comes to hospitals and such, and I think she’s a little in love with you so, I just want to make her feel better.”

“Yeah, mate,” he said. She was just keeping him talking. She was keeping him breathing. She was saving his life. She was saving my brother’s life.

The dial on the speedometer hit 150 miles per hour, and kept going while my hands gripped the seat. How fucking fast does this little car go? The surge of adrenaline pumping through my veins helped me focus on Lainey’s voice during the whole drive, grounding me.

“You know, Dylan, there’s an ancient Chinese saying that goes, ‘You can live with a man for forty years. You could share his house, his meals, and talk with him every day about his every secret. Then tie him up, and hold him over a volcano's edge, one that’s about to erupt. And on that day, you will finally meet the man.’ You’re one hell of a strong man, Dylan Grayson.” She glanced over to me quickly, “And so is your brother.”

“Feels like I’m…feels like I’m in the volcano. Burns.”

“We’re almost there, Dylan, and as soon as we get there, you’ll get something for the pain okay?”

The first glimpse of light from the old gas station’s neon sign took my breath away. It couldn’t have taken Lainey more than eight minutes to get to the town’s border. “Slow down up near that diner that we ate at. You’re going to make a left and the hospital is about a mile up that road,” I said, trying to match the calm tone of Lainey’s voice. “Dylan, do you remember when Old Lady Bitlermeyer drove straight through the old gas station’s sign and she wouldn’t let me help her out?”

“Yeah, mate. She….said you were….the angel of death, coming to take her soul,” Dylan wheezed. Not even listening to his answers, I just kept him talking, just as Lainey did, until the bright lights of the hospital came into view. I couldn’t believe she’d gotten him there alive. The surge of hope in my chest burned a thick knot of fire so hot I had trouble breathing.

As soon as Lainey stepped foot out of the car, she grabbed the first guy in a white coat, told them who we were, and started sprouting off words that I would be definitely questioning later. An entire trauma team rushed through the pressure plate doors rolling a gurney and slammed it up against the hood of the Porsche with a loud crunch. When they pulled my brother out of the car, his face was pale and he was soaked with sweat. Lainey ran to him. “Two gunshot wounds…Possible right subclavian artery, loss of blood stunted by pressure and trauma tourniquet. Possible lung damage…Shortness of breath and wheezing, not coughing up blood yet and still able to speak. There are two trauma tourniquets around both wounds.”

Strapped down to the gurney, Dylan was whisked away, with Lainey and Bree on both sides of the nurses, running through the sliding doors of the ER. Slowly following behind, the bright white florescent lights made my eye sockets ache and my temples throb. I watched as they wheeled Dylan into a hallway and out of my sight.

The sliding doors closed behind me and the room seemed to blur and wobble. Black spots crowded the corners of my sight and the floor slipped up to meet me. Iciness seeped under my skin, spreading like an infectious virus throughout my body. Please God, don’t let him die. Please don’t take him away from me.

Lainey’s beautiful face was the next thing I saw. Her hands were cool on my skin, bringing my eyes back into focus and her soft smooth lips against mine brought my thoughts back from the chaos of my hell. Pulling me into a seat, she put her trembling hands into mine and then she did something that nobody in this world had ever fucking done to me. She laid her silky head against my chest, as if I were some sort of comfort to her.

Her fucking head was on my chest and she was taking comfort in me.

Laying her head right over my heart.

All I could do was to stare down at her in wonder. Then I wrapped my arms around her so tightly that I feared I might suffocate her. We stayed there like that for hours. I could barely breathe the whole time, because I was overwhelmed with the flood of a thousand emotions that I had hidden myself from for over a decade. They all came rushing in, thickening in my throat, burning in my chest and quietly streaming from my eyes. I didn’t care who or what Lainey was, I just wanted her completely. Never in my sick life did I ever give a bit of hope about finding a person who was compatible, who could find comfort in someone as fucking twisted as me.

Silence ate away at the hours as hope devoured my fears.

Together, with Lainey holding me up, we waited for word on Dylan.

Bree sat across from us, lost to some unnamed place, eyes saturated with tears.

We sat frozen, like empty glass jars, on the cracked leather benches of the hospital waiting room, ready to fall and shatter into sharp shards across the floor. The voices of the deputies drifted past my ears as they asked questions that I swore Lainey was not giving straight answers to. Somehow, filled Styrofoam cups of coffee appeared like magic in my hands. Bree began pacing after two hours and Lainey was the only person who could speak the scientific language those asinine doctors spoke each time they came out with updates.

I sat, unmoving; way past the hour when my coffee turned cold until a smooth outstretched hand touched my chin and lifted my head to meet with pale green eyes. “Dylan is doing well. He’s in recovery right now. He’s going to be fine.” Her fingers squeezed my chin, almost painfully, “Do you hear me, Kade? He’s fine.” Her eyes filled with thick fat tears that fell from long lashes, and her lips smiled wide.

She saved my brother’s life. Dylan is not dead.

I crushed her body against mine and sighed in relief, breathing her in. She trembled slightly in my arms and repeated her words softly, “He’s fine.”

We stayed throughout the early morning hours and the next day, until Dylan was able to have visitors and despite all of the tubes and machines, he made horrible jokes about seeing the light and getting kicked out of heaven before he could even step in. Seeing him laugh so soon after being shot was euphoric, like a kid at Christmas. The surgeons kept explaining to us how lucky he had been that the bullet in his chest hadn’t pierced a lung and that the bandages Lainey used on his arm saved it from being amputated. They couldn’t stop saying how Lainey saved his life, and she just nodded and smiled softly like it wasn’t a big deal and sat in the corner of the room quietly.

I watched her battle her eyelids to stay open; the war was a fierce one that she almost lost a number of times. Exhaustion settled over her features, and I offered to drive her car back to the trailer so she could wash up and change. She had been sitting in the emergency room covered in my brother’s blood. She had to get my brother’s blood off her. I couldn’t stand seeing her with so much blood all over her; I wanted to wash it off her myself, find her beautiful smooth skin beneath.

She didn’t fight me on it, just stood up, kissed a sleeping Dylan on the forehead, spread a blanket over Bree who was fast asleep next to his hospital bed, and trudged out of the room. As soon as her ass was in the passenger seat, she passed out cold; I even had to buckle her in.

The drive back was silent; my thoughts though, were anything but. Nothing made sense to me. Why hadn’t she freaked out? How was she so calm? And how did she spread that calmness to me? How did she do everything she did? Why did she have those bandages? Did she have to take a CPR class because she was a waitress? Shit, I wasn’t stupid, I knew there was seriously more to it, I just wasn’t ready to admit anything yet, but a waitress she was not. And whose Porsche was this?

I woke her softly as soon as I pulled into her driveway, but when she opened her eyes and looked past me, I knew something was wrong. Her eyes were full of tears and I snapped my head in the direction she’d been staring.

The door to her trailer was torn off the hinges, broken in two and thrown against the stairs, like a child’s toy that had been long forgotten. Vile, demoralizing words had been painted in neon spray paint across the front of the tiny white trailer. Bitch. Cunt. You’re going to die.

With no regard for her safety, Lainey was out of the car and rushed through the ransacked trailer. “Lainey, stop, it’s too fucking dangerous!” I called after her.

She ran in anyway and I fumbled like a madman out of the car after her. Instantly, she had my brother’s gun in her hands, and stepped through the open doorway, surveying the room, as you’d see a police officer do on a crime show.

Windows were shattered, broken in, as if someone had taken a baseball bat to them, and glistening shards of glass littered the rocky ground. Running up the wooden steps, I stopped just inside the threshold of the doorway and watched Lainey sink to her knees, surrounded by the mess of debris that used to be her cozy little home. “Clear,” she yelled out loud in a haunted voice, but I had a strange feeling she wasn’t really talking to me.

Dirt and mud caked the furniture that was all bashed and battered across the floor. Piles of what smelled like fucking shit towered over her tabletop and across her walls written in thick red ketchup, or some sort of morbid looking sauce, were the words: Peek-A-Boo-Samantha-I see you. Deep beneath all of it was some rancid smell of decay. I gathered my arms around her kneeling form, as if in prayer, and lifted her off the repulsive floor. Cradling her in my arms, I carried her to the bedroom and sat her on the bed. “Pack a bag for yourself and Bree. Take anything that’s important, I’m calling the police.”

“NO!”

“Are you fucking serious right now? Look at your trailer!”

“I can’t…get the police involved.”

Sitting on her bed, I pulled her into my arms and held her, let the world fix its-fucking-self, my brain shut to autopilot and I brought her closer, nestling her against my chest. I’ll just take her home with me, protect her.

After a few moments, she untangled herself from my arms and began rummaging through drawers, shoving clothes into a large duffel bag. “What hotels are near that hospital?”

“Come home with me,” I whispered.

“Shut up, Kade.”

“Fuck you, Lainey, or whoever the fuck you are. You think after all this shit that I’ll let you out of my sight? Fuck you.”

“This isn’t a game! Just shut up. Just shut the fuck up!” She slung the duffel bag over her shoulder, grabbed what looked like a computer bag from under her bed, and rushed for the door.

Before she could get past me, I kicked the door closed, and backed her up against a wall filled with craters of broken plaster. Slamming my hands on the walls on both sides of her head, I wedged her against the wall and my body, ensuring the fact that she wasn’t getting away. She could fucking shoot me for all I cared.

Grabbing hold of her face with a tight grip, I tried to make myself perfectly clear. “You are coming home with me.”

Without warning, a slap hit my face that stung like a bitch, “Don’t put me in a corner, Grayson, my fucking claws will come out.”

My fingers tightened around her chin, making her eyes narrow in challenge.

Her hand shot out for another slap, but I caught it in my fist, tangled her fingers with mine and pressed my forehead to hers. I felt her rage, it rolled off her in strong waves, and I took it, crushing my body against her and covering her mouth with mine. What traitorous vessels our bodies are to fold into each other with violence, melt into each other in danger and anger. Her lips opened to mine and I slipped in, never wanting to leave the heat of her breath, but I had to, I did, just long enough to say, “You. Are. Staying. With. Me.”

From one of her pockets the shrill electronic beeps of a cell phone screamed out. I pulled away from her, allowing her to take the call.

“Hey, Bree. Everything okay? Yeah, you were both sleeping and Kade drove me home.”

She listened to the reply, eyes fixed on mine. I took the bags and started walking to the door to put them in the car.

“That’s great. Yes. Yes. Okay.” She gave a small sigh. “Listen, we can’t stay at the trailer, someone broke into it…Yeah, it’s bad, looks like something out of Scarface…” She started to explain, and then closed herself in the small bathroom to finish the rest of the conversation without me hearing, but I was out of the trailer anyway, getting ready to take her out of there.

The drive to my house was silent. She spent the ride worrying her lip and twisting her fingers around the hem of her coat. We spoke no words to each other until she was standing in my living room, eyes wide, looking about ready to puke.

“May I sit?” she asked in a small voice. “My legs are trembling.”

“Yeah,” I croaked, barely able to get the word out.

Lainey sank to the floor in one fluid movement, like a cascading waterfall. Running to her, I pulled her up, and tugged her over for a better place to sit. I stared at her as she sat, eyes closed on the couch, hands trembling. My brother’s blood, caked all over her was revolting and contradictory to her smooth ivory skin. I traced a trail of crimson with my thumb, rubbing the smear from her cheek. Her eyes opened wide, taking in my closeness and my deeds. My fingers couldn’t help but linger against her face.

Lifting her in my arms, I carried her into my master bathroom and placed her on the chaise lounge chair. I ran the bath and dumped a shitload of bubbly soap inside. I distinctly noticed a sheen of sweat covering her forehead and I swallowed hard. “I have to get that blood off you. I can’t…I can’t look at you covered in blood.”

“I know,” she whispered.

“I want you to stay here with me. You’re not leaving my sight,” I snapped.

“I can’t get you involved in this, Kade. It’s not your fight.”

“You just can’t leave what’s happened here. My brother is in the fucking hospital so you can’t leave him, and you can’t take Bree away from him.”

“Bree has nothing to do with any of this, Kade. She could stay here with him. Hell, I want her too.”

“You can’t leave me.”

“Kade, please.”

“I’m not letting you leave me. You don’t want to either.”

“Can you stop doing that crap? Just get out of my head and stay out. There’s so much chaos in there, you might get hurt.”

I swept the hair away from her neck, tucking it behind her ear and the pulse in her throat came into view, pounding fast under her skin. “It’s because you’re screaming your thoughts at me. And just so you fucking know, you WILL tell me who Samantha Matthews is and why my brother almost lost his life for her,” I exploded.

That shut her up. Backing up, I walked out of the bathroom.

I shut the door quietly behind me, giving her the privacy that she deserved, even though all I wanted was to sink inside of her and forget about what happened in the last twenty-four hours. I left her there for my bitter curiosity too, I won’t lie, because now I had a name to search, Samantha Matthews from New York City.

I sat at my desk and powered up my laptop, just as small pellets of icy rain began their assault at my window.