Rescue Me: A Bad Boy Military Romance (16 page)

“Stairs,” she says, taking off toward them.

“Watch out for wires!” I shout, following her into the basement.

“Hello!” she yells out into the space. The dog barks back in reply. I help her lift up fallen beams. Ella scrambles over toppled metal industrial shelves and nearly falls over in the process.

“Watch out here,” she says, pointing at the ground. “Broken glass jars of peach pie filling.” She pushes her hair back and plows forward. “I see someone!” she says, her voice cracking in her throat. She leans down and I’m at her side in a second. There’s a wrinkled arm sticking out from underneath a mattress. The dog, a brown and white mutt, keeps barking. “Look to see if there’s anyone else,” Ella says.

“Let me help you first,” I reply. “Lift on three.” We heave the mattress off and it’s my turn to gasp. There are three people under here, including a kid who doesn’t look much older than five. I feel tears stinging at my eyes and expect to see Ella dissolved into an absolute puddle of emotion behind me.

But she’s resolute. I hardly recognize her. She’s opening her kit and checking for pulses seemingly all at once. She looks up at me. “Luke! Go see if there’s anyone else and call 911 for me. Please.”

I nod and pull out my phone, dialing as I crawl through the rest of the barn, patting the dog, who has finally gone quiet, on the head. “I think that’s everybody,” I say. “The dog would still be barking otherwise.” The emergency service operator answers and I tell her the situation and our address.

The man, woman, and child have all woken up. The old woman is bleeding from her head and completely disoriented.

Ella gets to work. I’m in awe of her as she assures them and patches them up. “I’ll get them some water,” I say, running to my truck and pulling out a flat of plastic bottles I keep there. I hear sirens in the distance and run down the dirt driveway to wave them onto the property.

I keep seeing the little boy between his two grandparents, nearly lifeless. The image won’t leave my brain.

***

“That was some work you did back there,” I say to Ella a few hours later. We checked several other farms but everyone else seemed in fine shape.

She has dirt on her nose but it’s so adorable I can’t bring myself to wipe it off. Ella sighs and leans back in the seat. “I didn’t think I would be capable of doing what I just did. I didn’t know I could just keep it together like that. It was…it was so much like what I came back to the night of the prom. You know. All those years ago.” She stares out the window with tears in her eyes, and I take her hand in my own.

“You okay?”

She nods and bites her lip, exhaling the weight of emotion out of her body. “I think I am somehow.”

“You fixed it this time,” I say kindly, tentatively. I don’t want to set her off.

“Yeah. I guess I did.”

I clear my throat. “Enough of this emotion shit. Time to get drinks.”

We pull into the town bar where it seems everyone has gathered to blow off some steam. Tim waves us both over. We’re covered in dirt and mud but so is everyone else. “Round of beers over here.” Time glances at me. “And a Coke for Mr. Lightweight.”

I laugh and punch him on the arm. “Thanks, jackass.”

The drinks arrive and we all imbibe thirstily. “Chili fries,” Ella says to the waiter. “At least three orders.”

“Make it four,” I add. My stomach feels like it’s eating itself. “How was your day?”

Tim shrugs. “You know. Just like any other. Aside from digging cars out of mud and chopping up tree branches.” He flexes his muscles. “All chainsaw work today.”

“I’m jealous. We mostly just drove around and I played assistant to Miss Lifesaver over here.” I drape my arm over Ella’s shoulders and she sighs pleasantly, blushing at my words.

“It was nothing, honestly. Just answering the call of duty, that’s it,” she says, shrugging.

“I heard you dug out a whole family. Saved their lives,” Tim says. “I would have thought the Marine sitting next to you would have sprung into action today more than he did.”

I flash back to the little boy and feel like the room is spinning around me. “Bathroom,” I reply. I run into the dingy space with old license plates lining the walls and splash my face with water from the cracked porcelain sink. My heart feels like it’s going to beat out of my chest. I’m having a panic attack. I haven’t had one of these in a while. I smell smoke and sweat and desert heat. I feel the sun on my skin. I hear Jarvis laughing next to me.

And then I hear the explosions. I grab my leg and realize I’m on the grimy floor of the bathroom. The door opens. It’s Tim. He reaches down to lift me up.

“You okay, buddy? I was just joking back there.”

I shake my head and swallow hard. “I’m just tired, that’s all.” I push past him and he grabs my arm.

“You sure?”

“Seriously, I’m fine,” I say as pain shoots through my leg and I see the little kid laying in the desert sand ten yards away from me. I shake the image out of my head. “Let’s go eat, I’m starving.” We walk back into the noisy bar. The table is empty and I feel a rush of fear that has no place here. “Where’s Ella?” I ask Tim.

He shrugs. “Dunno. Probably ordering a milkshake or something.” He sits down but I can’t. Something is telling me to keep looking, listening, waiting.

I glance at the bar. She’s not there. I run into a guy standing up from the table and see it’s Michael Evans. “Watch it, asshole.”

“You fucking watch it,” I spit back at him, trying to see over his head. I think I hear someone yelling outside.

Michael shoves me and I lose all sense of time, space, and reason. My ears are ringing and I see blood. The tension and trauma of today comes bubbling out of me and connects squarely with Michael’s jaw. He screams out in pain but I shove him out of the way.

The bar’s gone quiet now and I can hear what’s happening outside. I have one mission.

Ella. Get to her.

Now.

I push open the door into the humid night air and head toward the yelling. “…told you to stop calling me and you show up here? No. You need to leave.” She screams again. “Let go of me!”

I run around to the side alleyway and see a guy has pinned Ella to the wall. He has gelled back hair and a polo shirt. I don’t even think before I grab him by the back of his fancy shirt and throw him onto the dusty ground.

“Hey!” he yells at me. But I see no fear in his eyes.

I’m far from done. I pick him up again and hold him against the wall, ramming my fist into his face again and again and again.

I can hear Ella yelling somewhere in the distance but I don’t stop. Michael Evans was just the beginning. Michael triggered me. Michael was a warmup for whoever this asshole is.

I won’t stop until blood is flowing over my hands.

Then I feel warm fingers on the back of my neck. “Luke. Please. You’re going to kill him,” she yells.

I’m brought back to reality, to this preppy asshole in my hands whose face is no longer recognizable. It’s covered in blood, his baby blue polo spattered with dark red liquid. I let go of him and he drops to the ground, groaning.

“Who is this guy?” I ask Ella.

She’s crying again. “My ex-boyfriend.” She looks scared.

I turn around and crouch, getting eye level with the scum staring up at me. “You leave her the fuck alone or next time she won’t be here to stop me from fucking killing you. You hear me? I see you in this town again and I’m putting a knife to your throat and fucking slitting it.”

The guy does something I never expected anyone to do after I’ve beaten the shit out of him.

He smiles.

Then he opens his mouth to slur two words. “Yes,
sir
.” They are biting and sarcastic, laced with not one bit of apology nor fear.

I grab Ella and walk back toward the bar. She’s shaking under my arm. “You’ve got a patient to attend to inside,” I grumble.

She looks at me curiously.

“Michael Evans.”

An hour later, Michael’s bruised jaw on ice, we’re back in my truck.

“How did you know?” Ella asks me.

“How did I know what?”

“How did you know to come after me? Did someone tell you I was outside?”

I shake my head. “I always pay attention to when I feel a certain way. Never failed me. Only time I didn’t listen?” I slam my fist into my leg, wincing. “This happened.”

“Well, thanks,” she says quietly. “But I had things under control. He doesn’t scare me,” she says, sticking her jaw out defensively.

I pull the truck over and put it in park. “Ella, look at me. He
should
scare you. What’d he do? Come all the way out here from California to come harass you?”

She nods.

“That’s not fucking normal, Ella. Look at me. Promise me you’ll be careful. Next time you see him, if you see him, you run to someone in public and you call me. And you stay there until I show up. You got it?”

“He won’t bother me again. You made sure of that, I think,” she replies.

I look out the window at the moon lighting up the ground around us. I don’t want to scare her, but I’m not so sure about that.

I put the truck in drive and make my way back towards my house, but it’s not long before we’re arguing.

“I just want to sleep in my
own bed
,” she says from the passenger seat, her arms crossed over her chest indignantly.

“Then I’m sleeping next to you,” I say.

She shakes her head. “You scared the shit out of Jason. He won’t be coming back for me. I know that,” she insists. “You don’t fit in my bed and I need my space.”

“Fine,” I say, chewing on the inside of my cheek, still angry from earlier. “But you have your phone on with the ringer. If I call you and you don’t pick up in five seconds, I’m calling the sheriff and I’m coming over here with my gun.”

Ella glances at me. “You have a gun?”

I wipe my mouth with my hand. “You think I don’t have a gun? I’m an ex-Marine Texas boy.”

“I don’t like the thought of you having a gun,” she says. “I really, really don’t like that. I hate guns.”

I shrug. “It’s not really up for a vote.”

“Just like you joining the military apparently wasn’t up for a vote?” she spits at me.

I scoff. “Yeah, I reckon it was kinda like you deciding to not tell me about our daughter.”

Our acid words fill the air of the truck. I pull to a stop in front of her house. She opens the door. “Goodnight, Luke.”

I roll down the window as she slams the door shut. “Ella, wait!”

But she’s already halfway to her house. “I don’t want to talk to you right now, Luke Davis. Go away.”

I roll the window up and pull away from her house.

But I don’t go home.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

ELLA

The next day, I wake up late, the full sun pouring through the tiny window in my loft. I fell asleep in my dirty clothes. I smell so bad I make myself cough as I stand up.

I take a long, hot shower and wrap myself up in a towel. My body is aching from the stress of the previous day, and I can’t help but think about the parting words Luke and I had for each other.

And then there’s Jason.

As much as I tried to play it off in front of Luke, I was scared. I still am scared. I’ve never had a guy act the way he’s acting. I’m drying my hair in the mirror when I hear a noise in my kitchen.

My stomach drops through my feet. I reach for my phone when I realize with a start that I left it upstairs, doing exactly what Luke told me not to. My heart is thudding as I try to think. I start to turn the hair dryer off but think better of it. I leave it blaring on the counter and open the drawers looking for anything I can use as a weapon.

I pull out a pointy eyeliner brush and hope for the best. I’m sure I can jab the hard end of it into an eyeball if I have to. I open the door quietly and peek out. I hear more shuffling noises over the sound of the hairdryer.

It’s now or never. I turn around the corner and scream at the top of my lungs, hoping it’ll give me the upper hand. I lunge toward the man standing two feet from me, barely looking at who’s in front of me.

He grabs my arm without even turning around, my wrist paralyzed in mid-air.

“Your technique needs some work, but points for style,” Luke says in his drawl. He finishes mixing cream into a coffee mug and hands it to me with a smirk. “See? This is why I didn’t want you sleeping alone.”

I glance at the front door. “Did I leave that unlocked last night?” I go back in my mind. I was pissed off and exhausted. It is totally possible that I forgot to. My routine was messed up. This is how people end up leaving their toddlers in hot cars. You forget one step in your usual way of going about things, and
bam
. Tragedy.

Luke laughs. “I have a key.”

My eyes go wide and I stomp one of my bare feet. “How dare you!”

“It wasn’t on purpose. I still had it from the renovation I did. Feel free to change the locks.” He leans against the counter with a tired grin.

“Wait…did you sleep outside last night?”

He shrugs. “Wasn’t so much sleeping going on, but yeah. I sat out on your porch.” He suppresses a yawn. “I’m not that tired, though.”

I roll my eyes and pull him over to the sofa. “Sit,” I say. “I’m making you breakfast and then I’m driving you home. You shouldn’t be operating heavy machinery after a twenty-four-hour period of no sleep.”

“Longer,” he says.

“What?” I ask him over the sound of me pulling down frying pans.

“I said it’s longer than that. Night before last we spent most of the night tangled up in each other. Or did you already forget?”

I flash him a sultry look. “How could I forget that?”

I turn around to crack eggs into the pan when I feel his hands around my waist through my towel. He kisses me behind my ear and I’m covered in goosebumps. I nearly drop the egg. “You have to be hungry,” I say to him.

“Mm, something like that,” he replies, reaching up to my breasts to undo the knot of towel there. It falls to the floor and I’m naked in my own kitchen. “Two steps to the right,” he says. I obey him, my heart pounding, my mouth dry. Other places on me aren’t so dry. I don’t know how a single touch from him can do this to me, but it does.