Recalled (35 page)
He was.
I lost it. I freaking lost it right there.
I jerked my body up, throwing aside his coat, pushing it away from me. I didn’t want the comfort of it. How could someone comfort me one moment, then kill me the next?
I would rather just have what happened in the diner. At least that was clearer. This was just… This was… It was messed up.
“What are you, an assassin?”
“Calm down, Piper. You’re going to hurt your throat,” he said in a perfectly reasonable tone.
I laughed. It hurt. “What do you care?”
I shoved at his shoulder and the car jerked, but he quickly righted it. He didn’t respond. He just drove, staring out the window with his jaw set.
“So if all you wanted was to kill me, why not just do it? Why bother getting to know me? Why bother with all of… of…
this
?” I motioned between us and he glanced at me and lifted a brow.
Something inside of me shriveled with that kind of mocking look.
It said
This?
You’re a silly girl with a silly one-sided crush. If you thought there was something between us then it was all in your head.
I wanted to die right then. I felt like such a fool.
I slapped him across his face, wiping that smug look right off it.
“Piper…” he growled, down shifting the car.
My hand stung, but I didn’t care, and then I gasped as another realization hit me.
“All those accidents… all those times… that was you wasn’t it? That was you all along, trying to kill me!”
His jaw clenched again and he refused to look me in the eye, and I knew. I knew I was right. All those times I thought we were getting closer, all those times we spent together that I thought meant something really hadn’t.
The things I replayed in my head when I lay in bed at night hadn’t been romantic. They were attempted murder.
Why had I never seen a vision of this? Of all things, why couldn’t I have seen this?
“Kill me now,” I said low, the words sounding as raw as my throat felt.
This earned me a glance.
“If you want me dead so bad, kill me now.”
I saw his hand flex on the gearshift. I could taste the temptation in the tiny space between us. He really wanted to kill me…
I punched him in the shoulder, taking us both off guard. I didn’t stop hitting him. I kept at it, punching, hurling my fists as hard as I could, landing blows wherever allowed.
“Piper, stop it!” he said, turning, grabbing both my wrists and squeezing. He was breathing hard and his chest was rising and falling rapidly. The temperature in the car was intense from my anger and the fact we never turned down the heat. But as soon as he grabbed me and our eyes collided, everything around us kind of slowed down…
In his eyes I saw a flash of regret and a flash of determination. I didn’t know which was stronger and I never got the chance to ask.
Because the minute he took his hands off the steering wheel to grab me, he lost control of the car.
It fishtailed, spinning us in circles until we slammed against a dense patch of frozen trees, bouncing off and hurtling farther away from the road, only to crash into another patch of trees. When the car finally came to a halt, a large mass of snow fell from the tree we’d just rammed and fell onto the hood, breaking the already cracked windshield. Glass rained down upon us and then everything fell still.
“Realization -
The act of realizing or the condition of being realized.”
Dex
I blinked open my eyes, aware of stinging pain in my face and hands. Memories of Piper hitting me and of the pain in her eyes came over me. If those weren’t hard enough, I was assaulted with even more memories of my car going out of control, the panic of not being able to do anything as we hurtled toward the trees and of the realization we were going to die.
Those memories were like a bucket of cold water to my fog and I was instantly alert, sitting up and turning toward Piper.
I never thought anything would be worse than the feeling of being recalled.
There was.
Seeing Charming over her with blood on his face and a wild look in his eyes had been shattering. I felt horrified and broken apart looking down at Piper—seeing her bruises, hearing her gasp for air.
How had things come to this? How did my basic life on the streets, my daily struggle to survive turn into this?
In the seat next to me, she was bleeding and battered and her still form unleashed a panicked frenzy within me. This was the closest I’d ever come to actually killing her and all I could think about was what I could do to make sure she didn’t die.
It was then I realized with absolute clarity that I wasn’t going to kill this girl.
I couldn’t.
I reached across the seat and grasped her gently. Her head rolled backward revealing deep purple rings around her neck and various shallow, bleeding cuts in her face. No, I wasn’t going to kill her, but the idea of killing Charming was very, very appealing.
“Piper,” I said, my voice shaky and weak. “Piper, please wake up.”
There was no sound, no response, and a desperate sound ripped out of me as I released her and climbed through the destroyed car, cutting myself on jagged pieces of broken glass to get closer to her. I was practically in her seat when I lowered my ear to her chest to listen for her heart beat.
It was there and her chest rose and fell with air.
I let out a shuddering breath and climbed back into my seat. I opened the door, having to kick at it to get it to cooperate, and then I all but fell out into the snow. I reached into the waistband of my jeans and pulled out the gun. It was heavy and lethal in my hand. With a loud, frustrated cry, I launched it into the darkness, out into the snow-covered landscape. I felt sick inside and I knew it wasn’t because my body still wanted me to do the job.
The war between this body and my soul was over.
My soul won.
And with that victory, feelings I’d held back, feelings I hadn’t understood or wanted to feel flooded me. I was so ashamed of everything I’d done.
I reached into my jeans and pulled out my cell.
“Hobbs,” I rasped when my butler answered on the first ring. “I’ve been in an accident… Piper… she’s unconscious. Please help us.”
I rattled off our location, then dropped the phone in the snow, completely ignoring his questions and demands. I knew he would come.
I couldn’t get Piper out of her side because it was smashed into a tree. So, I climbed back in my side and found my leather jacket to wrap around her. Every muscle in my body quivered and protested as I lifted her out. A couple times I had to stop with her in my arms and take a few breaths. I did what I could to make sure she wasn’t injured more, but I knew she got a few more scrapes as I tried to wiggle her out.
Once free of the twisted metal, I carried her to the road where I dropped, still holding her in my arms, to wait.
I looked down at her in the dark and more feelings rushed to the surface. I wouldn’t kill her. I was never going to. All of the times I’d “attempted” to do so were never a success because I hadn’t really been trying. If I were, she’d be dead.
And I didn’t want her to die.
Even if it meant I’d be recalled.
“Safe -
Free from danger or injury; unhurt. Secure from danger, harm, or evil.”
Piper
I heard the beeping, I felt the gentle pressure of a blanket over my body, and I knew finally I was somewhere safe. I didn’t open my eyes because I wasn’t ready yet. When I opened them, I’d have to see. I’d have to see everything I’d been blind to for so long.
All this time I’d been falling. Falling for a man who wanted me dead. I thought of him fondly while he thought of ways to erase me from this earth. Had I let my obsession with the man who died for me get in the way of everything else? Did I yearn for him so badly that I didn’t care what I had to do to get answers?
My brain lost these thoughts as a feeling of pain came over me. My body was so tired. I’d fought to stay alive and I was… but for how much longer?
I heard a soft noise beside me and then felt a presence that had probably been there all along. Was it Frankie? No. Frankie would be demanding that I open my eyes. She’d be yelling at me for scaring her this way.
This presence was heavy and silent, laced with regret. Was he here, then? Was he waiting to kill me in my sleep?
Perhaps if I was going to die, doing so peacefully would be best. I tried to die while fighting and that hadn’t gotten me anywhere.
Something cold touched my skin and then was drawn away. I lay there without one ounce of energy to open my eyes. As I began to fall asleep, I heard a heavy sigh and something warm wrapped around my fingers.
Dex.
I thought about reaching for the call button. I thought about getting some help. But I never got that far. Because as soon as the thought entered my mind, Dex began to talk.
He began to confess.
“Confess -
To disclose (something damaging or inconvenient to oneself); admit.”
Dex
If she dies, it’s going to be my fault.
The thought mixed with the sound of beeping monitors—the two blending together into a constant rhythm that hummed through me as I hunched close to the hospital bed.
The doctors said she wasn’t going to die. They said she’d be okay, and the beeping of the monitors was proof she was still alive.
It was also a reminder that in a short time I most likely would be dead.
I shivered a bit, wondering why the hospital room was so cold, and I reached over to pull the blankets closer around her.
She was pale. Her cheeks lacked that pink glow that I’d come to associate with her. Because she looked so white, the bruises on her neck stood out even more and so did the many cuts on her face from the shattered windshield. In many ways she looked like a creation of Frankenstein—all pieced together with many different colors.
Even still, she would be Frankenstein’s most beautiful creation.
I found the edge of the blanket and pushed my hand under it, my fingers seeking her hand, and when I found it, my skin felt like ice against her warmth so instead of wrapping my fingers around hers I settled for resting mine beside them.
I felt heavy and confused. I knew exactly how we got here, but the reasoning behind my actions no longer made sense. What made me think death was more important than life? What made me think it was okay to kill for money, clothes, and my own preservation? When I died—when I pushed her out of the way of that bus—I hadn’t been thinking I would gain from my actions. I hadn’t been thinking anything other than this girl couldn’t die.