Page 70 of No First Kisses

I have a cut under my eye, and when I gently touch it, I feel the swelling and the blood already starting to seep out of it. Out of the corner of my eye, I see the phone on the ground and I glance down to my wrist where I never take off my smartwatch. Since I got too pregnant to go up and down the stairs, the damn watch makes it easy to check my phone when I lose it.

Of course the battery is dead.

Fuck.

Shuffling until he can’t see my hands, I use the ground to leverage myself so that I can get up before he gets smart and decides to kick me in the stomach.

“Your name is Ortega Grimes.” I groan pathetically, wiping the leftover vomit from the corner of my mouth, when a sharp pain hits my lower back and almost sends me back to my knees. “You murdered Logan’s little sister. I want you to leave. Now.” There is a gun in a fingerprint-locked safe in the side table. If I can just get to it…

“You’re not smart, bitch.” Ortega grabs me by the hair and drags me back when I step away, trying to get to the gun. “You’re just like all the rest. Underestimating me because you don’t know what’s good for you.”

His fingers dig into my hair, locking around the braid I’m mentally cursing. My hands instinctively go to his, and I try to scratch my way free. But that is the first mistake I make.

That, and going back to Logan’s house for my clothes and cookies, instead of staying at Sam’s house like I planned.

I thought I was safe.

Not only did I have two of my dad’s club members, but Bax, too.

Back to the mistake I’m currently making.

My stomach isn’t protected.

The first hit isn’t with the gun hand, and it feels more like a teenage girl hitting me than anything else. His fist connects with my chin, barely moving my head back.

The second hit, though, is the one I should have been prepared for.

It is the one I don’t see coming.

He uses the gun, bringing it down directly on my temple at the same time that he shoves his fist into my ribs.

Pain, the likes of which I’ve never felt before, explodes through my face and eyes. My knees buckle, but he is still holding me by the hair, yanking my head up.

“Not yet, you don’t. You’re too fat for me to carry to the fuckin’ car, and we gotta go before your father smartens up and realizes it’s not me he’s following all over the state.” He snorts. “You’re all idiots.”

Razors sliding down my spine have me crying out, and bright colors start dancing everywhere in my vision, making it impossible to think past the pain.

“Oh,” I manage to get out weakly before he is yanking on me.

I can’t tell if it is a good thing or not, but I don’t pass out from the agony that he’s inflicted. Instead, I am conscious and awkwardly trying to bring gasping breaths into my lungs for every agonizing second that it takes for Ortega to drag me out the splintered door and down the steps of Logan’s house.

Past the bodies on the ground. Bodies. Not just one.

The bloody and beaten men whom I trusted with my life.

Porsche has a bullet hole in his forehead, and I know from the blood and the way his head is positioned in the grass that he is missing the back of his head.

If there was anything in my stomach to come back up, it would have.

As it is, I lurch back and bile spews out of my mouth, right next to Hammer’s missing face.

Only their cuts are untouched, but I can see the blood starting to pool around them.

Bax isn’t there.

Where the hell is Bax? I don’t see him on the porch, where the last gunshot came from. Turning my head wildly, I ignore the pain and torture of Ortega holding on to my body.

Hope.

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