Lift You Up (Rivers Brothers 1)

I grabbed the wall, yanking my weak body outward, finding one of my captors on the floor, unconscious, but seemingly breathing. Kingston was standing over the other, a gun in his hand, pointing, finger on the trigger.

He was about to kill someone.

Over me.

Because of me.

And that, well, that couldn't happen.

That was too much.

How could we come back from that?

Despite the splitting in my skull at even the idea of doing so, I sucked in a breath and screamed.

"King!"

His head jerked, eyes searching, finding, landing on me.

I wasn't imagining it when his shoulders lost some of their tension.

Or as the man in front of him started to reach for the gun.

My heart seized, knowing Kingston's focus was on me, not him.

Then again, I really should have known better than to doubt Kingston.

His arm pulled away just in time as the opposite leg pulled back, kicked out.

There was a sickening crack as his shoe met flesh right between eyes. It took all of a second for the other man's body to crumple to the ground, unconscious.

Maybe I should have felt some empathy. A better person likely would.

But all I could think was that it was just.

It wasn't that far from what they had done to me.

Kingston watched the body for all of two seconds before charging across the massive room, dropping down so hard on his knees in front of me that I was sure he damaged them. But he didn't even wince.

The gun clattered to the floor beside me as both his hands rose, framing my face.

His dark eyes were bright, intense, taking everything in.

"It's bad, huh?" I asked, watching as the tension came back to his shoulders.

"What? This? Barely more than a paper cut," he lied through his teeth. I wondered for a second if he had practice at it, if that was what he used to tell his siblings when they had fallen and gotten hurt and he had needed to soothe them until he could find someone else more experienced, more capable to handle fixing it up.

"Liar," I accused. "I'm pretty sure my brain must be spilling out it hurts so bad."

His beautiful eyes sank at that as his hands slipped from my face, going up my sides to just under my arms, pulling as he started to stand.

"Okay. Maybe that needs to be looked at then. Now," he added, getting to his feet, holding me up just as footsteps clattered into the room with us.

His brothers, surely.

The Mallicks, too, without a doubt.

"King," Charlie's voice called, tense, worried. "Careful. Something is wrong with her leg."

"Your leg?" King asked, hauling me up and off the floor entirely, floating in the air like I weighed little more than a toy doll. I'd never been lifted up before. Even with pain and relief coursing through me, I had a second of appreciation for the action, a desire to experience it again when I didn't feel so crummy.

"My ankle," I clarified to the worry on his face. "I fell running away. And, I think I heard a crack? It's okay. It's numb now."

"In this case, sweetheart," he told me, carefully maneuvering me so that I was in his arms, the good side of my face to his chest, my bad leg closest to his arm so he could carefully maneuver me. "I don't think numb is a good thing."

"Says the person who didn't throw up from the pain before crawling across an entire basement and up the stairs," I told him with a wobbly smile, attempting levity, and failing spectacularly judging by the way his face simply fell. "I'm fine," I told him, taking a deep breath.

"Who's the liar now?" he shot back, leaning down to press a gentle kiss to my forehead. "Come on, let's get you out of here."

"What's going to happen to them?" I asked as we got closer.

"That's for Charlie to decide. My part is done. I got you. That was all that ever mattered."

I wanted to ask why it was Charlie's decision, but now that I was safe, all I could do was close my eyes, sink into the exhaustion overtaking me.NINESaveaThe next time I was fully aware, I was half sitting up in a hospital bed.

There had been awareness before then.

Kingston pulling me to his chest again, holding me close until he lowered me onto a bed in an emergency room.

There had been voices, prodding, questions about my head, about my memory, worries about a concussion.

Then I had been wheeled down a long hallway, my eyes closed against the harsh, aching overhead light, though some of the pain was subsiding thanks to a set of pills I had been given, taking them without asking what they were for.

I was lifted onto a cold table, had a lead vest laid over my chest and lady bits, then pictures snapped of my insides.