Claim & Protect Page 31

  “That’s enough.”

  Her mom bustled out in front of Trevor and Levi, then pulled the curtain closed behind them.

  Zeke hung his head a second, chuckled low and lifted his head to show a soft smile. “You know, I’d feel bad for him if I hadn’t watched him avoid serious relationships for so long. All I can do now is look at that hound dog expression of his and laugh.” With a last glance back toward the curtain, he perched on the edge of her gurney. To anyone walking in, they’d think he was a close friend settling in for an easy chat. They’d be wrong. The man who stared back at her now was all doctor, focused and gauging her every response. “Now, you told me how the pain is. How about you tell me how you’re really doing.”

  “I’m fine.” She took a slow, calming inhalation and smoothed her hand across her stomach like that might somehow unwind the knotted tension in her belly. “I just need to rest. I’ll be up and around before you know it.”

  He stared back at her, not giving an inch in his razor-sharp gaze. “I see abused women every day, Natalie. There’s a lot more to what happens in cases like yours than what’s on the surface. Wyatt might not have gotten more than a few hits in, but that doesn’t mean he didn’t strike deeper.”

  If he only knew. Though in her case it was less about the consuming self-doubt Wyatt had created over the years and more about the storm he’d ignited around Trevor.

  “Want you to promise me you’ll talk to someone,” Zeke said. “Trevor. Your mom. A counselor. Hell, Gabe would be more than happy to talk with you. She’s got demons she’s still fighting, but she’s a good listener.”

  Rehashing today was the last thing she wanted. If she had her way, she’d wipe it from her thoughts entirely and go back to that blissfully ignorant place she’d been twelve hours ago. Still, Zeke had a point. Stuffing questions and doubts never worked. The only way to face her issues was to push forward. Whatever that looked like. She nodded. “I promise.”

  “Good girl.” He patted her leg and stood.

  Before he’d reached the curtain, Natalie blurted, “Can I ask you a question?” The second the question came out, she wished she could reel it back in. Questions came with answers. Answers she didn’t necessarily want to hear.

  He waited, eyebrows lifted in silent encouragement.

  She swallowed as best she could and fisted the sheet across her lap. “Trevor told me he’d do anything to keep me safe.”

  One second and Zeke’s expression blanked.

  The ER’s already ridiculously low temperature seemed to drop another five degrees. “How far would he go?” she whispered.

  It felt like forever that he stared at her, so many thoughts moving behind his shrewd eyes it terrified her. “I think that’s a question you need to ask Trevor, but I will tell you this—whatever you ask him, you’ll get the absolute unvarnished truth.” He paused for just a moment, then added, “And whatever he’d do for you, every one of his brothers would back him up.”

  * * *

  Trevor stared out at Baylor’s parking lot, itching to get Natalie out of this place and at home in bed where he could take care of her. In the downtime while they’d waited through Natalie’s CT scan, he and Maureen had planned it all out. She’d head back to the apartment and pack up clothes and necessities for everyone while he carted Natalie and Levi back to the ranch. It was quiet there. Peaceful. Most importantly, Wyatt and what he’d done today couldn’t taint it.

  The comforting drone of his brothers, Viv, Gabe, and the moms drowned out all the other sounds around him, anchoring him the way they always had.

  Zeke’s voice cut across the room. “Yo, cowboy. How about you go help your woman get suited up so you can get her out of this place?”

  Trevor whipped around and crowded into Zeke’s space. “What was that about?”

  Not backing down an inch, Zeke planted both hands on his hips. “It was about me doing my job. I don’t tell you how to fly your birds, you don’t fuck with my protocol.”

  “Christ,” Jace’s mom, Ninette, muttered from the chair beside them. “There’s too damned much testosterone in this room.”

  Maureen snickered behind her hand while all the other women grinned with entertained amusement.

  The snarky remark did what Ninette had no doubt intended it to do, slicing through the tension and giving both men the presence of mind to take a step back.

  Trevor dipped his head and held out his hand. “I appreciate you seeing to Natalie.”

  “Like you need to thank me.” Zeke took his hand and shook it. “Anything for family.”

  Jace pushed from his seat. “Amen to that.” He clapped Trevor on the back. “Go get Natalie suited up. Me and Viv are following you out to your place so we can take stock and do a grocery run if you need one.”

  No one had to ask him twice. With a quick glance to Maureen to make sure she was good watching Levi for a minute, he strode back to the trauma room where Natalie waited. Careful in case she’d already started getting dressed, he slid back the curtains just enough to ease through and yanked them back in place.

  No surprise, Natalie was already dressed in the jeans and T-shirt she’d worn to The Den that afternoon. Only her pretty feet were still bare, though she seemed intent on rectifying that problem in short order. “I see you’re ready to get the hell out of Dodge.”

  She looked up and his heart seized. If the bruises on her cheek and jaw weren’t bad enough, the frustration and absolute fear on her face boded for a shit storm.

  “What’s wrong?” he said.

  Bracing both feet on the floor and her hands on her thighs, she swallowed as though a terrible sentence sat on her lips. “I need to ask you a question.”

  He held his place by the curtain, too afraid to move for fear he’d knock whatever fragile balance hung between them off-kilter. “Anything.”

  She squeezed her thighs hard enough to make her knuckles turn white, and her voice dropped to a near whisper. “Do you haul illegal substances on your planes?”

  Mother fucker.

  Of all the questions he’d expected, that had been the last one. Despite the thickening gravity around him, he braced and gave her the truth. “Yes.”

  As fast as the word had left his lips, a hard mask slipped across her face. She nodded. “I think you should go. I’ll ask Mom to take me and Levi home.”

  Cold pierced him, the same gnawing winter desolation he’d felt the day he found his mom and dad dead that day after school lancing through this soul. “That’s it? You’re not going to ask what kind or what for?”

  “I already know.” Her face pinched with bitter pain. “You’re the one who supplied the bootleg stuff to Wyatt, aren’t you? You set him up.”

  The cold morphed to blazing fire, billowing up so fast and furious it burned his lungs. “Yeah, I set him up, and yes, I hauled the injectables, but I don’t run the roofies or the ecstasy they found in his place. Those were extras to make sure your slimebag ex couldn’t wiggle out with a slap on the wrist.”

  Her jaw fell slack and her eyes watered. “I didn’t want to believe it.”

  “Well, believe it. I told you I’d protect you and I did. Not the way I wanted, but in a way that you could use.”

  “But Trevor, those drugs...they’re not safe.”

  A haggard, ironic laugh huffed up his throat. “Not safe? I ran luxury shit that the government has no business banning in the first place if people are stupid enough to buy it. And the real truth? The real reason I do the runs has nothing to do with the injectables. I do it to bring in drugs for terminally ill people who are out of options and don’t have time to wait for a stamp from the FDA. And for the record, I don’t make a dime off those sales. Everything I profit I give to the families of those who are sick.”

  He paced closer, the inside of his throat throbbing as though h
e’d swallowed double-edged razors for lunch. “I’ve done four runs. Four, Nat. Not a whole damned operation. That’s four lives I’ve helped save, so if you want me to be sorry, I’m fucking not. Less so now that your husband’s got a record you can use to get him out of your life permanently.”

  Her head snapped back and her eyes widened.

  God, she really thought he was like Wyatt. Dared to lump him in with a man who’d caused her physical and emotional harm where all he’d done was try to protect her. Hell, she hadn’t even asked for details before she’d all but given him a dismissal.

  He waited for her to do or say something. Change her mind or at least ask a fucking question. Instead she just sat there, staring at him like he was a stranger. He backed up a step. Then another. “You made a bad call with Wyatt. I get you questioning your judgment now because of it, but this time your bad call wasn’t being with me. It was lumping me in with that piece of shit.” He fisted his hand in the curtain and fought the need to rip it off its tracks. He raked his gaze over her, the woman he’d opened himself to. Trusted to take him like he was. “I appreciate you giving me the benefit of the doubt before you tossed me out with the trash.”

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Trevor stared at Haven’s wraparound porch. With the harsh cold snap that had slipped into north Texas in the last twenty-four hours, the Adirondack chairs where his brothers sometimes milled until everyone showed up were empty. They were all inside though, one vehicle for every one of them crowding the circle drive and the driveway in front of the four-car garage.

  Ten minutes he’d sat here, his mood as bleak as the gray skies and whipping winds outside, but he couldn’t get out of the cab. Axel hadn’t been wrong when he’d teased Trevor about having something to bring up at today’s rally. He’d had plans. Huge ones he’d never thought he’d ever lay out for his brothers. Now he couldn’t figure out what to do.

  For over two days, he’d waited. Waited, wondered and relived the things he’d said to Natalie. He knew she was safe and getting back on her feet, a fact he’d confirmed with at least a few calls a day to Maureen. He’d also pestered Zeke into making daily house calls. Still, not a peep out of Natalie.

  Out of nowhere, memories of Frank and Bonnie flooded his mind. How often she’d told him she was proud of him. How she’d stood by him through the lean times on the ranch, and how she’d supported his decisions even when she openly disagreed with him at the start. That’s what Trevor had wanted. What he’d hoped he could have with Natalie.

  Sighing, he reached for the ignition, hesitated, and snagged his phone from the center console instead. He thumbed up Frank’s number from his favorites list and hit Dial.

  Three rings in, he’d just about accepted that his dad had his hands full and was about to hang up when Frank’s voice slid through the line. “‘Bout time you called me. Been waitin’ on a wish list for Levi so I can get my shopping done before I head up for Christmas.”

  Fuck, he’d forgotten about that. “Yeah...” He cleared his throat, not sure how the hell to broach everything that gone down the last few days and how their planned holiday plans were likely smashed to hell again. “I need to get with him. Kinda been sidetracked the last few days.”

  Silence hummed through the line.

  Frank broke it first. “You gonna tell me what’s eatin’ you, son? Or are we gonna dance around the topic until you get up the nerve?”

  Trevor huffed out a chuckle, but it came out about as tired as he felt. “I think what I had with Natalie is over.”

  In the background, Frank’s footsteps sounded on a hard surface, the hollow echo of it placing him no doubt on his raised front porch. “Something cause it to be over, or did one of you make that choice?”

  The same fury and gut-wrenching hurt he’d felt when Natalie had judged and sentenced him so quickly billowed up from the cage he’d tried to bury it in. “Something happened.”

  “Mmm hmmm.” No guidance. No questions. Just quiet acceptance.

  “I don’t remember you and Mom fighting,” Trevor said. “Not once.”

  At that, Frank barked out a harsh laugh. “Not sure you’re the same kid who lived in my house then, because we fought plenty. Especially when I had an inclination to dig in my heels and she had a point to prove.”

  They had? Because for the life of him, he didn’t remember it. Yeah, she’d shared her thoughts on things, even when it didn’t line up with Frank’s opinion, but she did it calm and never read him the riot act. “She might have debated with you, but at the heart of things she believed in you.”

  “At the heart of things, yeah. But that didn’t mean we didn’t hurl a few grenades at each other that took a while to mend. Your mom used to say the more you love, the deeper the pain when you fight.” He paused a minute and pulled in a deep breath full of reminiscence. “You love this girl?”

  Yeah, he did. Enough that walking out of that hospital and trusting his brothers to see her home had been the hardest thing he’d ever done. But if she didn’t want him, he’d be damned if he begged. “Not thinkin’ it matters now. Damage is already done.”

  “For you or for her?”

  The question caught him off guard. “Not sure I follow.”

  “Son, you’re a man with enough pride to fill up Texas and half a Mexico. I get that ’cause I struggle with it, too. But if there’s one part of life where pride’s got no place, it’s with the woman you love. So I’m askin’—who’s damaged? You or her?”

  “She lumped me in with that prick of an ex-husband of hers. Automatically assumed I’d acted without honor or reason.”

  “She have all the facts when she made that call?”

  He tightened his grip on the steering wheel and shifted uncomfortably in the leather seat. “No, but she didn’t ask, either.”

  “You give ’em to her?”

  “After she’d told me to take a hike, yeah.”

  “And then what?”

  The look on her face when he’d shared the details behind his hauls flashed crystal clear in his head. How she’d flinched and got eyes as big as a harvest moon when he’d told her about the terminal patients. How her lips had trembled before he’d stalked out to the waiting room. He swallowed. Hard. “I hurt her.”

  Damn, but he was an idiot. Wounded in his own right, but not so much it excused flaying the woman he loved with a sharp tongue and uncensored words. Christ, after what he’d said, no wonder she hadn’t called.

  As if he’d sensed the direction of Trevor’s thoughts, his dad laid out his guidance with the same black and white frankness he always did. “Then if you love her, I suggest you start fixin’ the damage.”

  “How?”

  “Trevor Raines, you don’t need my answer on that. You already know it. You just need to pull your head out of your ass long enough to get shit done.”

  Whatever it takes.

  He might not have ever heard the phrase before he stepped on Frank and Bonnie Raines’s property, but he’d heard it plenty after. Had heard it echoed just as much in the years he’d been with Jace and Axel. He killed the engine and popped his door, urgency and purpose reigniting his drive with the finesse of a battering ram. “I gotta go.”

  Frank’s knowing chuckle rumbled through the phone line. “I imagine you do. You call me and let me know how it goes. I like that girl and was looking forward to getting my hooks into Levi over Christmas. No fun bein’ my age without a kid to spoil.”

  “You’re still coming up,” he said, striding through the kitchen. “I might have to kidnap the lot of them and tie Natalie to a chair to keep her here, but our Christmas in January is still happening at my place.”

  He hung up and jogged down the basement stairs. His brothers’ random chatter died off the second he hit the room. Every one of them were already in place with drinks ranging from bottle
d beers and Scotch to sweet iced tea placed in front of them.

  Axel spun in his big barrel studio chair and stretched his legs out in front of him, crossing one boot-shod foot over the other. It wasn’t often he ditched his sophisticated clothes for jeans and a T-shirt, but today’s getup said he’d be spending time tonight in territory better spent blending in. “‘Bout bloody time ya got here.”

  “Had something I had to deal with.” Like figuring out he was a knuckle-dragging Neanderthal. He scooted his ladder-back chair up to the table, wishing like hell he’d grabbed a beer on the way in. As nervous as he was, his tongue and courage could both use a little lubrication.

  Jace leaned into the table and crossed his arms in front of him. “All right. Who’s up first?”

  “I’m claiming Nat,” Trevor blurted before he could overthink it.

  Jace tried to fight a smile, but lost the battle and ducked his head.

  Zeke flat-out laughed, and Axel cursed.

  Danny, Beckett, and Knox cast a combination of scoffs and scowls across the table.

  “Pay up, fuckers,” Zeke said. “I told you he’d cave in under a week.”

  Every damned one of them grumbled and reached for their back pockets.

  Trevor couldn’t believe it. The stacks of cash getting tossed toward Zeke beside him said it was real, but his head still couldn’t wrap around the concept. “You bet on me?”

  “Fuck, yeah.” Danny slid a crisp hundred-dollar bill across the table.

  Knox unfolded an unbelievably crinkled piece of paper and held it out for Trevor. “You cavin’ was never a doubt, but the timing was debatable. No harm in a little good-natured wager, right?”

  Trevor snatched the paper just as Zeke lifted his hand palm out. “I gotta confess, though. I might have had a tiny inside track. Or should I say a honkin’ three-karat inside track. Gabe said the rock you bought her was a work of art.”

  Jace leaned back in his chair the same way he would settling in behind a big screen for a football kickoff. “I take it this means you patched things up?”