As much as I’d wanted to be the one to kick down the door and beat him to a bloody fucking pulp, I couldn’t take the chance and called nine-one-one, praying for a miracle.
“Austin?”
The soft scratch of her voice calling my name slid across the bed and around my heart, squeezing until I feared it would burst. Releasing the death grip on my hair, I looked up into Raelynn’s stunning brown eyes, grateful for the chance to see them again.
When I stormed into her apartment, finding her limp body being loaded on a stretcher, time stood still, filling it up with every memory and every dream I’d never get to experience with her again. Starting with the first time she met my gaze across the room at a crowded frat house.
“You weren’t here earlier,” she murmured, sleep clinging to her words. She blinked, her soft lips pulling down into a pout. Raelynn could pretend pout like a pro, but this one tugged at the corners of her eyes.
As if my absence truly hurt her.
As if I hadn’t been the world’s biggest asshole and kicked her out of my life.
Maybe she had amnesia, and they forgot to tell me.
I didn’t know, but I didn’t want to remind her what a dick I’d been. Knowing I didn’t deserve it, I latched onto her sincerity and offered an apologetic smile.
“I’m sorry I wasn’t here. I had to meet with the police.”
When I’d finally made it to Rae’s apartment, the police had already broken down the door and apprehended Bodie. Which was probably good because I’d been ready to pummel him since the first day I met him. The entire drive, I imagined—in extensive detail—all the ways I wanted to beat him to a bloody fucking pulp. Then I walked in, taking in the decorations shattered on the floor, the blood spilled on the carpet, and her unconscious body, and nothing I imagined came close to how I wanted to torture him to the point of begging for death just to revive him and do it again.
Blinding rage slid down my spine, shrinking my sight to nothing but him, and I charged. It took three officers almost as big as me to hold me back, and I still kept trying to get to him. He looked like shit, sitting there crying in his wrinkled and tattered suit. I wanted to rip him limb from limb. I wanted to break every single bone in his body slowly. It wasn’t until the paramedic asked me if I knew any information about Rae that I finally stopped my fight.
“I’m her husband.”
The woman blinked, looking to Bodie and then back to me, probably imagining some soap opera drama, before asking if I wanted to ride to the hospital with my wife.
“Yes,” I answered without a second of hesitation. Before I followed them out, I turned back to Bodie. “So help me, God, if you even think of her ever again, I’ll find a way to send you to the worst hell hole of a prison, and then I’ll find the biggest motherfucker there and have him kick your ass every goddamn day until you wished you were dead. Understood?”
I hadn’t waited for an answer from the sniveling cunt. Rae needed me. She’d needed me before, and I hadn’t been there because of my pride. I wasn’t going to not be there now.
A soft hand on mine brought me back to the present. I stared as her slim, delicate fingers curled over my rough, larger ones, wondering if I imagined it. I expected her to thank me for being there but then ask me to leave. I deserved for her to repeat my words back to me from that morning, telling me to get out. I’d planned on begging her to forgive me, and yet, she clung to my hand like she needed me.
“I was here when they brought you in, too, before they called me away.”
“They told me. I’m just glad you’re here now,” she confessed.
How the hell had I ever thought I could never see her again? How the hell had I even considered a life without her friendship? How the hell had I gotten so lucky that she’d be glad I was there with her after everything I said? How the hell had I been graced with this second chance to make it right?
I looked her over, reminding myself she was okay—or as okay as she could be with fractured ribs, a concussion, and more than a few bumps and bruises. The dark split on her lip was the only mark she wore of this nightmare. I hated it. I hated looking at it. But then it ceased to exist when her lips tipped into the most beautiful smile that tugged and pulled at my heart until it hurt.