Wild Kisses (Wildwood 2)

“He’s in the back,” Zane told the other deputies. “Put on gloves. He’s bloody. You should probably call a medic.”

“Shit,” Avery said under her breath, and she pulled free from Delaney to rush to the driver’s side of the van, ignoring the deputies as they moved toward Zane’s car. She put her hands on the door and looked through the window. “Trace?”

He put the car into park, turned off the engine—everything in super slow motion—then looked at her through the glass. And a chill traveled the entire length of her spine. His eyes were dark and guarded. His face smudged and dirty.

She pulled open the door, already choking on his name. “Trace?” The light came on, and all the shadows turned red. His face, his chest, his arms—he had blood smears and drips and splatters everywhere. “Oh my God. What . . . ? How . . . ?”

“I’m okay,” he said, his voice low, gaze cast down and away as he climbed from the truck with the pained movement of an eighty-year-old. “What the fuck is everyone doing here?”

Sirens grew closer, and as soon as Trace moved from the truck, she saw the blood remaining on the driver’s seat and gasped. He turned and followed her gaze, which gave her a look at the mess of blood on his back. Sickness roiled low in her gut. One that was dark and confusing and deeply troubling. “Oh God, Trace.”

The emergency vehicles turned up the driveway.

“Who the fuck called them?” Trace muttered, then yelled at his brother. “Goddammit, Zane, get everyone out of here. This isn’t a fucking circus.”

“No, you need them,” Avery told him. “Delaney, send the ambulance over here first.”

“No.” His dark, almost feral bark shocked her quiet. He kept his eyes down. “The last thing you need is everyone watching me get patched up from a fight with the convict I hired and who tried to steal your equipment.” His voice was low and harsh in a way that pierced her chest with a cold streak. “I’ve caused enough trouble for you for one fucking lifetime. I’m fine. Everything is superficial. I’ll go to the ER after I talk to the cops and check the equipment. Right now I’m going to put a shirt on and wash my face so I don’t look like a fucking animal.”

Avery just stood there, stunned silent as he walked past and quickly disappeared into the café. She pulled in a stuttering breath, her chest as tight as if she’d been physically hit. Her gaze focused on the seat again, and she swallowed hard. The thought of him hitting the ground with his bare skin . . . of how he’d gotten the bruises forming around his eye and cheekbone, the cuts on his lips, nose, chin, cheek.

Avery started to shake. Tears flooded her eyes. He’d just been in bed with her forty-five minutes ago. Safe and happy and so gentle . . . Her mind spiraled and tangled. Her thoughts jumped around. Things started to disconnect. Nothing made sense.

“Hey.” Delaney’s soft voice slipped into her thoughts. “You okay?”

Avery shook her head and gestured to the seat. “What?” Then to the café where he’d disappeared. “He . . .” Her brain chugged, chugged, chugged, but the gears wouldn’t turn. She pushed both hands into her hair and choked out, “I don’t know what’s happening.”

Ethan passed, squeezing Delaney’s shoulder and murmuring, “I’m gonna check the equipment.”

Avery crossed her arms tight and followed. She held her breath as Ethan fought with the doors. Finally saying, “They opened fine earlier.”

“The equipment probably just shifted.”

Avery’s stomach dropped.

Fifty feet away, two cops flanked JT and pulled him from the back of Zane’s SUV. The sight of him made Avery pull in a sharp breath. His face looked even worse than Trace’s. One eye bloody and swollen shut, lips cut and puffy, cuts everywhere, blood everywhere. Trace may not have given JT that black eye and that cut lip in the picture she’d seen, but he most definitely had given him everything that was fresh tonight. And the amount of damage stunned her.

Trace had done that.

Her Trace had done that. With his own hands.

She shook her head, overwhelmed by the severity. By the sheer brutality.

Avery tightened her arms, suddenly so cold. Feeling so small. So weak. So fragile—emotionally and physically. The way she used to feel around her father.

The cops sat JT on a gurney, and the EMTs started working on him.

“You take that one.” Trace’s voice startled Avery, and she turned her head back so fast, she lost her balance and stumbled a little.

Delaney grabbed her arm to steady her and gave her a concerned stare. “Avery?”

“Just lost my balance,” she muttered.

“Trace,” Austin said, coming around the end of the truck. “We’re going to need a statement.”

“Yeah, just a minute.”

He helped Ethan unblock the doors, and each man pulled one door open, exposing all her gorgeous equipment, equipment that she’d painstakingly chosen, paid her last dollar for, and needed installed immediately to open the café on time, thrown in the back of the truck like a mishmash of garage sale leftovers.