Rule (37 page)

She was screaming my name,
demanding to know what happened and I heard her dialing 911 on the phone but
between the shock and pain I just shut down.  I blinked up at her through the
blood trailing down over my face and was aware dimly of a crowd coming out of
some of the other apartments but it was just too much and everything faded to
black.  I was pretty sure she caught me before I hit the ground but the next
time I was cognizant of anything I was strapped to a stretcher and getting
loaded into the back of an ambulance.  The lights from all the sirens were
making my head throb and the young paramedic was firing a million and one
questions at Ayden as she scrambled up into the back with me.  She immediately
grabbed my hand and squeezed and I noticed she was crying just as hard as I
was.

“Gabe?”  My throat was on fire,
talking made it feel like I was speaking through a forest of razor blades.

Ayden brushed away her tears with
shaking hands and I winced as the paramedic turned all his questions to me.

“The cops have him.  His dad showed
up as they were putting him in the back of the police car but the mace you used
on him was hard to miss so he couldn’t really deny he was in our apartment. 
How did he get in through the security gate?”

I flinched as the paramedic prodded
at my shoulder.  He turned sympathetic eyes to me.  “You’re going to have to
get it reset.  It’s dislocated and I think the cut on your forehead is going to
be deep enough that it’s going to need to be glued or sewed shut.  Sorry.”

I wanted to tell him it was okay
because I was alive and at least Gabe hadn’t gotten away with the ultimate
violation but talking hurt too much so when asked about needing a sexual
assault exam I shook my head no and squeezed Ayden’s had as she started crying
again.

“My mom.”  The words were broken
and not just because of my throat.  “She gave him the code because he told her
we were getting back together.”

Ayden let loose with a string of
swear words that would have made Rule proud and we spent the rest of the short
ride just clinging to one another.  The next two hours was a blur of doctors
and police officers.  After the first fifteen minutes it was clear I wasn’t
going to keep up my end of the conversation with my vocal cords being as abused
up as they wore so I had to resort to writing everything down for everyone. 
Gabe was in lock up at least for the night and there wasn’t anything his dad
could do to get him out.  The detective that took my statement let me know
there was a good chance his family would post his bail in the morning so he
would be out but there was now a mandatory restraining order in place and there
wasn’t a thing his dad could do about it.  Not that it mattered, they were
keeping me at least a night in the hospital to see how bad the damage to my
throat really was and I needed super strong pain killers to dull the migraine I
was battling on top of the pain of having my shoulder placed back in the
socket.

My mom and Jack showed up sometime
near dawn and my dad came as well.  I told Ayden I didn’t want to see any of
them which of course caused a huge scene but when my mom started screaming that
it was probably one of the thugs I had met while I was dating Rule Ayden
totally lost her cool and informed all of them that if it hadn’t been for my
mother giving Gabe the code to the security door of the apartment this would
have never happened it shut everyone right up.  My dad forced his way in using
his medical connections anyway and I spent a solid hour ignoring him and
glaring at him while he apologized profusely over and over again.  When he went
to kiss my cheek I turned my head away and made sure he could see the absolute
disgust in my eyes.  Part of Gabe’s obsession had to do with all the things
these people encompassed and I just couldn’t abide having it around me right
now.  They all left after a nurse threatened to call security if they didn’t
stop disturbing me.

Ayden pulled up a chair and propped
her feet on the edge of the bed and we both fell into a fitful sleep as morning
rolled around.  I would only doze on and off needing more pain meds as my
shoulder started to ache and various other parts of me that had been abused
made themselves known.  Ayden vanished somewhere around noon which was fine
because it was another round of doctors and detectives.  Gabe’s dad had managed
to get him out on bail but there was no arguing how bad he had hurt me and the
police were looking at charging him with attempted murder.  They made me tell
my story over and over again and I never wavered from the brutal facts.  Gabe
was sick, he needed help, but more than that he needed to be somewhere where he
wasn’t able to do this to someone else.  Feeling entitled enough to own another
person despite their feelings in the matter was beyond mentally unstable.

Ayden came back in with yogurt and
some granola looking sheepish.  “I called Cora to let her know what was going
on.  I didn’t even think about the fact that she would freak out while she was
at work.”

I went completely still and turned
wide eyes to my friend.

“Apparently Rule through a major
hissy fit when he heard what happened and needless to say he’ll be here in like
five minutes.  Sorry, but I figured you should know.  I guess I can ask the
hospital staff to keep him out if you want, though I have a feeling stopping
him when he gets all worked up might be a chore and that’s another ex you might
be sending to the slammer for the night.”

I wasn’t sure how I felt about him
coming here.  On the one hand all I had wanted for the last month was to see
him, to have him acknowledge me, but on the other it shouldn’t take a vicious
and violent wake up call to make that happen.  I sighed and rocked my head back
and forth, she was right anyway, keeping him out if he had made his mind up to
storm the castle was going to more of a hassle than I needed right now.

“It’s fine I can handle him.”  My
voice was still raw and scratchy but at least it hurt marginally less to use it
now.

“You don’t look like you’re in any
kind of shape to handle anything.”  She wasn’t wrong.  My arm was in a sling, I
had a three inch gash glued shut and wrapped in a white bandage on my forehead
matching the set up on my hand, my lip was split open and crusted with blood, I
had a wicked ring of black and blue bruises circling the pale skin of my throat
and to top it all off I was sporting a dandy set of black eyes from being
shoved face first into both the door and the floor.

“It’ll be fine.  He can come see
that I’m alright then go about his day which is all I’m sure he wants to do.”

She gave me a skeptical look and
patted my feet where they were stacked up under the itchy hospital blanket. 
“Alright then if you swear you’re going to be okay then I’m going to run and
find someplace that has coffee that doesn’t taste like tar and I’ll be back.”

I wasn’t going to ever really be
okay again, I didn’t think anyone that had been through what I had in the last
few months would, but I wasn’t scared of Rule and almost being raped by a
lunatic had given me a whole new perspective on what was missing from my life
and what I was going to do differently from this point on.  I wanted to fidget
with my hair, but it was snaggled together with dried blood and who knew what
else and it wasn’t like  there was going to be any fixing my face.  Rule was
just going to have to face the horror show full on and deal with it.

I was messing around on my phone,
returning texts from Cora and surprisingly most of Rule’s boys, letting them
know I was fine when the door opened and he came in.  I looked up and watched
him so I saw the initial anger that was stamped all across his handsome face
quickly bleed into horror at the sight of me all battered and bruised.  I saw
his chest inflate and deflate as he sucked in an audible breath and moved to
the end of the bed.  We stared at each other in silence and I noticed absently
that his hair was still normal and unruly as well as it’s natural dark brown
color. I still hated it because it made him look like a stranger.  His eyes
looked wild and too big for his face; a full blown blizzard was sweeping out of
the cold depths.  He was messing with his lip ring like he did when he was
nervous and I realized if I didn’t say anything there was a good chance we
would spend the rest of the afternoon watching each other warily. 

“You didn’t have to come.  I’m fine
just a little banged up.”

His big hands tightened on the end
of the bed and I watched as the snake head bend and flexed with his
aggravation.

“I wanted to see for myself that you
were alright.  You could have called to let me know you were hurt.”

I refused to look away from him and
he seemed infuriated each time his gaze landed on another part of me that was
broken.  “Well considering you haven’t spoken to me in almost a month it didn’t
seem very logical to let you know what was going on.”

His mouth tightened.  “You’re
right.  I should have been there.  You shouldn’t have been alone.”

I sighed and clenched my hands in
the blanket.  “You’re right, you should’ve been there but not because Gabe is
crazy and not because I needed protecting from him, you should have been there
because you cared about me as much as I care about you but that isn’t the
case.  No one is to blame for this mess but Gabe, he’s sick and broken and
chances are even if someone had been with me he still would have gone all
stalker crazy so it is what it is.  I don’t hold anyone accountable but him,
besides my body is already on the mend it’s my heart that still feels like it
went through a food processer.”

“Shaw,” he tried to interject
something but I held up my good hand and looked him right in the eye.  “I’m
tired of my love not being good enough.  I thought when this started with you I
would be okay with whatever it was you were willing to give, thought I could
love you enough for the both of us since I had been suffocating in it for so
long, but I realize now that I deserve more.”  I blinked back tears that snuck
up on me.  “I deserve it all because I’m willing to give it all.  I would have
worked through the darkness with you, Rule.  What I won’t do is watch you walk
away from me every time something happens that has the potential to hurt you. 
I’m sorry I never talked to you about Remy but I told you all time and time
again we weren’t a couple, you had the undeniable proof on my birthday, you
should be mad at him for keeping it a secret, not me.  You were right all
along; we don’t trust each other enough to ever have had a chance at making
this work.  I think I wanted it too much and you didn’t want it enough.”

I was surprised to see moisture in
his eyes when I was done talking.  The only time I had ever seen Rule cry was
at Remy’s funeral.  He reached out a hand like he was going to lay it on my leg
but retracted it before he ever made contact.

“Shaw what if I did love you?”  His
voice was just a hint above a whisper.  “Seeing you like this it makes me want
to murder Davenport with my bare hands, but it makes something deep inside me
hurt.  I’ve missed you these last few weeks but I was also furious with you, I
just couldn’t get the two to ever line up.”

I gave my head a sad little shake
and let the tears gathered in my eyes fall.  “What isn’t enough.  I’ve spent my
entire life trying to live up to unreachable expectations, you were the only
thing I ever wanted for myself and once I got you, you felt like you had to
entirely change who you were in order to be with me, I refuse to put the same
kind of expectations I always struggled with on someone else, even if I didn’t
ask that of them.  Parts of us are great together, Rule but other parts of us
just don’t work.  All this,” I waved my good hand over my reclining form. 
“Will knit itself back together.  It’ll be fine and we’ll just go back to
whatever it was we were doing before.”  I made sure that he understood I was
talking about everything from the gash on my head to my abused heart.  I would
get over him, there just wasn’t another option.

“You’ve always been in my life
Shaw.  We should’ve been able to make this work.”  I wanted to shrug but I only
had one working shoulder so that wasn’t an option.  Instead I swiped at my
tears with the back of a hand and offered him up a shaky smile.

“There are a lot of things that
maybe should have gone one way and didn’t.  I know most people thought you and
I being together was a long shot anyway so we should just be grateful for what
we had.”

“I feel like I’m letting you down,
letting everyone down and for once it’s bothering the hell out of me.  I just
don’t know how to work around what’s going on up here.”  He tapped his temple
with a finger.

I was crying in earnest now and it
was on the tip of my tongue to tell him that if he could just love me, just
learn to let me love him the way he deserved, the way I desperately wanted to
then it would all be fine but that wasn’t the case.  we needed to believe in
each other, needed to trust that we were enough without trying to be other
people in order to be together and that just wasn’t happening so I closed my
eyes and for once was the one to shut him out and fall into the dark.

“Some things just aren’t meant to
be.  I’m getting tired can you send a nurse in on your way out.  I think the
pain killers are starting to wear off.”

“Shaw, I’m so sorry.”

“Me too Rule, really I am too.”  Because
I had spent a lifetime in love with him and as much as I wanted to be strong
and pretend I was going to put it all behind me, letting go of what I felt for
him was going to be the hardest thing I ever did.  We stared at each other for
a long, sad minute then he turned on his boot and left.  When Ayden came back
in the room I was crying inconsolably and she had to crawl up on the bed to wrap
her arms around me.  I cried longer than I ever had before, I cried until there
was nothing left inside me to cry out and when I was all done I let my best
friend hold me as I fell apart.  The nurse Rule sent in came in with a pain
killer but when she saw the state I was in she turned right back around and
came back with a sedative.