Wicked Need (The Wicked Horse Series Book 3) (23 page)

A dull, cramping
sensation starts in the center of my chest and squeezes tighter as I
absorb her words…
take in the solemnity of her gaze upon me. God, she’s fucked in
the head and I can’t imagine being so lost and unaware of your
own potential.

“Cat,” I
say as I ignore my beer and turn fully to her. My hands go to her
knees but before I can say anything further, my phone
rings in my back pocket, and it startles me for a moment. I would
normally ignore it because this is a fucking serious issue we need to
discuss, but I asked Pish to call me if someone dropped the will off
after I left. I give a squeeze to her knees and a hold a finger up.
“Just
a minute.”

I fish in the back
pocket of my jeans and pull the phone out, looking at the number.
It’s
not from Westward Ink, but it’s not one I recognize either. I
have a moment of indecision if I should answer or ignore, but then
choose to connect the call in case it’s perhaps one of the
other artists at the shop calling me on a cell phone I don’t
have programmed in my contacts. I don’t know all of them well
enough to call them friends.

“Hello,”
I say into phone after bringing it to my ear.

“Is this Rand
Bishop?” A young woman… definitely not someone from the
shop.

“It is.”

“This is Amy
Felgar, a patient care rep at St. John’s Medical Center. Tarryn
Stoker is apparently being admitted and her nurse asked me to call
you.”

My stomach drops so
hard and fast that I feel nauseated. “Is
she okay?”

She doesn’t
answer right away, and I can hear some clacking on a computer. “I’m
sorry, I don’t have much info in the system. They might not
have it all entered, but it does say she’s being scheduled for
surgery.”

No clue what my face
looks like, but I feel Cat’s
hand on my thigh with the weight of warm assurance. I look at her,
and she returns a worried stare. “I’m on my way.”

Hanging up, I put
the phone back in my pocket and stand up from the stool. “Tarryn’s
had some sort of accident. Getting ready to go into surgery. She
asked them to call me so it must be pretty serious.”

“Yeah…
okay,” Cat says immediately as I open my wallet up and take
some money out. I lay it on the bar so she can pay for the tab. Her
eyes glance to the money, and then flick back to me. “I’ll
bring your food home. Call me once you know something.”

“I will,”
I murmur as I lean in to brush my lips against her temple. “And
I’m sorry… this was bad timing. We’ll continue the
talk when I get back to the apartment.”

“It’s
fine,” she reassures me with an understanding smile. “I
hope she’s okay.”

“Me too.”
I absolutely hate leaving Cat right now, especially on the heels of
her revealing the terribly low opinion she has of herself. She needs
affirmation of her strengths, not to have me abandon her. But shit…
it’s not like I can’t not go to the hospital. If anything
happened to Tarryn and I didn’t go, I’d never forgive
myself for being so callous.

So I have to go.

Another kiss, this
time on Cat’s
lips, and I leave the Snake River Brewery.

The drive to St.
John’s
takes no more than fifteen minutes as it sits only about ten blocks
east and I manage to catch almost every green light. It’s a
small medical facility but given the amount of ski injuries in this
area, they’ve got an excellent trauma unit.

It takes no time at
all to park and make my way back to the surgical suite that the front
receptionist directs me to. A nurse greets me at the door and leads
me back to a curtained room where I find Tarryn. My eyes quickly roam
over her, taking in pale skin but no other outward signs of injury
other than an elevated leg wrapped in a temporary splint and
bandages.

“What
happened?” I ask as I walk up to the side of the bed opposite
the IV pole that she’s hooked to.

“Stupid
really,” she says as she reaches a hand toward mine. I take it
and give a supportive squeeze. “I was stepping off the
sidewalk, crossing right there at Cache and Pearl, and I just stepped
down wrong. Ankle buckled and snapped.”

“You’re
kidding?” I say in disbelief that something so simple could
cause a break that needs surgery. Rotten fucking luck.

“I knew I
could count on you to come,” she says as she looks up at me
with an adoring smile as the nurse walks into the cubicle room and
hangs something else up on the IV stand.

“How soon
before she goes back?” I ask the nurse.

“It won’t
be tonight. Probably first thing in the morning, around six or so,”
the nurse says briskly. “They want to make sure all the alcohol
is out of her system, and the X-rays show the break is fairly clean
and stable.”

“I was out
with Laney and Gayle for some cocktails,” Tarryn says with a
laugh. “You know how it goes.”

“Did that have
anything to do with why you fell?” I ask.

She shrugs and moves
a thumb over the top of my hand to stroke it. “I
don’t know. I doubt it. I really just stepped down wrong off
the curb.”

The nurse writes
something in her chart and then walks out of the curtained area. I
pull my hand from Tarryn’s
and try to ignore the hurt look on your face. “Why did you have
them call me?”

“Well, because
I’m having surgery. Who else would I call?” she responds
seriously, as if this was the most common sense thing in the world.
Despite the fact we’ve been broken up for four years.

“Oh, I don’t
know,” I say sarcastically. “How about your roommate and
best friend Laney? Or your next best friend Gayle? You know, the
girls who were with you when this happened and who you spend almost
every day with.”

Tarryn still doesn’t
get it. She waves an impatient hand at me. “Laney will be back.
She was going to go handle a few things first, pack me a bag and
stuff. She’ll be back later. But I knew you’d want to be
here too.”

Taking a deep breath
as the anger rises, I try to remember that she’s
lying in a hospital bed with a broken ankle and facing surgery. I try
to retain a measure of sympathy, but I still can’t help it when
I say, “Tarryn… I
don’t
want to be here. We are not together. There shouldn’t
be any expectation on your part that I would be here. Now, while I
care for you because of things we’ve shared in the past, we
don’t have anything past a casual friendship. And when you do
stuff like this, you’re making it harder on me to want to even
maintain that.”

She blinks at me
several times, eyes wide with surprise. As if this is the first time
she’s
heard this line from me. But it’s not. It’s just the
first time she’s heard it while lying in a hospital with a
broken ankle and facing surgery. The other time was when she got a
flat tire and called me to change it. Or when she got drunk on her
birthday and called me at midnight to come out and celebrate with
her. Or let’s not forget the time she found mouse droppings
under her sink and called me to come over and set traps.

“Tarryn,”
I say gently as I squat beside the bed and put my hand on her
shoulder. “It is over with us. Totally over, and I think to
make the boundaries clearer, I really need you to just stop reaching
out to me.”

“No
communication whatsoever?” she whispers after a hard swallow.

I don’t
want to hurt her, but I still say it anyway. “None. I’ll
stay here with you until Laney gets here, but then that’s it,
Tarryn.”

“I don’t
understand how you couldn’t want to continue our friendship,”
she says in a small voice.

“Because you
want more than that,” I tell her simply. “Despite you
just calling it a friendship, you want more.”

“And you
don’t?” she asks with her head tilted. “Not ever?”

How can she keep
such hope alive? Maybe because I still did stupid shit like change
her tire or set her mousetraps, although I didn’t
go celebrate her birthday with her. I was pissed she woke me up on a
work night. Still, I’m just as much at fault because I would
usually drop what I was doing to help her out when she called. I was
a sap that way. While I’d always make it clear to her I was
doing these things out of friendship, I can see why she’d have
continued hope. It’s because I was still always there for her.

But as I just told
her, that all has to stop.

“There’s
someone else,” I tell her softly, and I watch her face fall.
“And I really want it to work, so my focus and attention is
going to be there. One-hundred percent. In fact, it should be there
right now, and that’s why I’m leaving as soon as Laney
gets here.”

Her eyes mist up and
she closes them against the sting and my stare, but she gives me a
small nod of acknowledgment.

I hope it’s
also of acceptance, but only time will tell.

Now all I have to do
is wait for Laney to show up, so I can get back to Cat and we can
continue our conversation. It’s
time for her to start realizing the potential of what she has within,
as well as what we have between us.

Cat

I pull my Mercedes
curbside in front of Jake and Lorelei’s
house, just on the other side of their small driveway. Rand will park
his Suburban on the adjacent side, with us leaving plenty of room for
their cars when they get home. The house is dark except for the porch
light and the driveway is currently empty.

I manage to juggle
the takeout containers—which are still quite hot since I had
them just package our food up to go rather than eat mine there—along
with my purse and keys as I get out of my car and hit the lock
button. The driveway is lit up by two sconce lights on either side of
the double car garage, but the side of the house is fairly dark as I
walk toward the stairway that will lead up to the apartment. I know
there’s
a motion sensor that will turn on a security light there as soon as I
reach the end of the driveway and veer off on the small path to the
side, so I have no hesitation as I walk toward the house.

Just as I step onto
the cement pavers that lead to the wooden staircase, two things hit
me at once.

The light isn’t
working because it doesn’t come on, and something is rushing at
me in the dark.

I don’t
have time to scream. Hell, I don’t even have time to comprehend
I should be fearful.

Instead, something
barrels into me, catching at my shoulder and driving me up underneath
the staircase and into the side of the house where I slam hard into
the wall. My purse and the food goes flying, as do the keys in my
hand.

Before I can even
take in a breath, which is difficult since it was just knocked out of
me, a large, sweaty hand clamps over my mouth, while a beefy arm
wraps around my chest. I immediately smell stale beer, cigarettes,
and what might possibly be hot dogs, along with the unmistakable
scent of motor oil.

I try to take in air
but the hand over my mouth is partially obstructing my nose, making
it difficult. I’m
seized with panic that I might suffocate and can’t control my
body as it starts to flail.

“You better
calm the fuck down, bitch,” the man snarls in my ear and his
mouth is so close, I can feel the brush of a beard against my skin
and the spittle that hits my cheek. To reiterate his point, the arm
falls away from my chest, only to come back moments later with a
switchblade held expertly in his hands. While I can’t see much,
he has me turned toward the street, so the glow from the garage
sconces causes the blade to glimmer. I can’t help the small
moan of terror that slips free.

Before I can even
try to think of something to save myself, he’s
spinning me fast, shoving me backward into the wall. My head slams
into it with a jarring thud that rattles me, but not enough I don’t
feel the press of the blade against the base of my throat. It’s
so dark that I can’t make out a damn thing other than the
outline of his form.

“Orders were
clear,” he mumbles, and it almost sounds slurred. “But no
reason I can’t have a little fun.”

Orders? Fun?

Before I can figure
it all out, his free hand comes to my blouse, paws at the opening at
the top of my chest and manages to get a few fingers lodged in so he
can rip it open. Buttons go flying as the white camisole I wear
underneath is revealed to the cool night air. It is then I realize
what the hell he means by fun.

My body starts to
react again, and my hands go to his wrist that holds the knife to my
throat as I scream, “No.”

Kicking a leg out, I
catch him in the shin, and he curses at me before pressing the blade
harder against me. I feel the skin open up, and it stings terribly.

“I will cut
your motherfucking throat wide open if you don’t quiet the fuck
up and hold still,” he yells at me, completely oblivious that
he’s making as much noise as I am right now. The alcohol fumes
coming off him and the way his words come out less than clear leads
me to believe he’s definitely drunk or close to it.

Drunk or not, he’s
incredibly strong and he’s cut into the bottom of my neck, so
my body goes absolutely still.

“That’s
better,” he praises, then his hand starts pawing at the bottom
of my camisole again, trying to inch his way up underneath of it. I
take in a deep breath through my nose, trying to think of a way to
fight back without getting my throat slit open.

Maybe a knee to his
nuts? Surely that will hurt him bad enough he won’t
be able to control the knife.

Another scream to
distract him?

His rough fingers
touch my stomach, and panic starts to seize me again. I can’t
help it. My hands try to push him away from me, thinking a sliced
throat would be better than experiencing the “fun” he
wants to have.

My body locks tight
and I try to figure out exactly where his crotch might be in the
gloom, intent to launch my kick, when light suddenly floods the
driveway and the side of the house, illuminating my attacker.