I moved into a crouched position as I gathered all of the trash and looked at her. Her face was swollen, and her lip was still oozing blood, but fuck if she still didn’t look as beautiful as the first night I saw her. “Who was it?”
“No one,” she answered right away, which told me it was someone. Someone she knew.
Someone she’d taken this from before. And I wasn’t sure what angered me more, someone doing this to her, or her not telling me who it was. I should have expected her to keep it close to her chest, but fuck, I wished she’d let me in. I wished she’d let her walls down a tiny bit so I could peek inside. But she was locked up tight. What she wasn’t aware of was I was a patient man. I’d lie still while I was in the Marines for days at a time with my eye connected to a scope on a gun. I could wait her out too.
She stood, her legs wobbly, and I moved to help her. My hand gripped her wrist the same as it had the other day outside of Aleste’s dance studio. Her soft skin met the palm of my hand, and I was sure I heard a soft sigh escape her lips.
“Do you need me to call anyone?”
Her gaze met mine, the navy blue pulling me in and trying to tell me something I couldn’t quite decipher. “No.”
“No, you don’t want me to call? Or no, there isn’t anyone to call?”
Her throat bobbed as she swallowed. “The second one.” She wrapped her arm around her middle, and I stared down at her T-shirt, which was ripped in several places.
“Wait here.” I exited the room and ran up the back stairs to the apartment. I hadn’t used it for anything but storage, but I knew I had some T-shirts up here with the shop logo on them. I grabbed one out of the first box and stomped back down the stairs, just in time to see Elodie moving into the main part of the shop.
“You okay?” Lara asked from her station. Her attention was solely on Elodie, but she didn’t give anything away from the expression on her face. Lara was a stone wall, kind of how Elodie was.
“Yeah, I’m good,” Elodie responded and turned as she heard my footsteps approaching. I handed her the T-shirt, and she smiled gently at it and then at me. “Thank you, Asher.”
“No problem,” I croaked out. It was on the tip of my tongue to tell her I could help. I could call Ford, and he’d be here within the hour and take a statement from her. I could message Jax, and he’d be here to help her too. But it wasn’t my place to interfere—not yet anyway.
“Not just for this,” she said, holding up the T-shirt. “But for you know…” She tilted her head toward the front of the shop, and I knew what she was saying. She didn’t want to say the actual words, and I understood.
“Anytime.” I cringed and shook my head. “I didn’t mean anytime as in you would you know get hurt, but as in I’ll help anytime and—”
“I get you,” she interrupted, putting me out of my misery. “I better drive home and—”
“Are you crazy?” Lara asked, standing up and moving toward us. “You just got beaten the crap out of. You can’t drive.”
“I’ll be fine—”
“She’s right,” Jez inserted, looking up at us from where he was tattooing. “You can’t drive, hon. Never know what damage the douche caused.” His client was sitting in front of him, watching the entire conversation, and it made my skin crawl. These strangers shouldn’t get to see her like this, not after what she’d just been through.
“I’ll take you home,” I told her, not willing to take no for an answer. There was no way in hell I’d allow her to drive herself home in the state she was in. She may be able to make the decision of who she called and who she didn’t call, and whether she’d see a doctor or not. But this…this was for her own safety.
“I need my car,” Elodie whispered, turning around to face me fully. Her back was to everyone else in the shop now.
“I’ll get it to your place.” My fingers itched to touch her, to place my palm on the side of her face and tell her everything was going to be okay. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t touch her. I couldn’t promise that to her. I didn’t have the right, no matter how much I craved her.
“I can’t ask that of you, Asher.” She shuffled on her feet, looking vulnerable. All I wanted to do was scoop her into my arms and never let her go.
“You’re not asking me to, Elodie.” The way her name rolled off my tongue felt like fuckin’ heaven. “I’m offering, and you’re not going to refuse, right?”
She stared at me, her eyes shuttering closed after a couple of seconds as she nodded. “Okay then.” Her voice was small, smaller than I’d ever heard it. “I need my bag from my car first and—”
“It’s on the counter,” Lara said. “Figured you’d need it.”
“Thank you,” Elodie whispered and opened her eyes. I wasn’t sure whether she was saying it to Lara, or both of us, but I wanted to tell her she didn’t need to thank us for helping her. And it was at that exact moment I realized she wasn’t used to people helping her. There was so much to Elodie, so much I hadn’t even dreamed of, and I wanted to know it all. I wanted to find out what made her tick. I wanted to know what made her happy and what made her sad.
I wanted to know all of it—all of her.
I shook my head, dispelling the thoughts. Now wasn’t the time or place. And besides, she had a boyfriend—my head spun, my pulse thrummed faster, and I looked down at Elodie. Really looked at her. “It was him, wasn’t it?”
She blinked several times. “I…who?”
“The guy who picked you up yesterday.” I pointed at her face. “He did that to you.” She didn’t answer, so her silence was enough for me to know. It had been her boyfriend. Her boyfriend had touched her in a way he had no right to, and it didn’t take me long to figure it out. Aleste had said he wasn’t good for her, but I hadn’t thought she’d meant like this.