Page 159 of Crushing Clover

“Her underwear,” Lucky croaked, holding them up, then balling them in his fist.

Rush swore.

They…they were upset?

I blinked and inhaled the night air, trying to clear my head. My brain felt scrambled.

“I should have guessed. I should have known. Treacherous fucking bastard.” Saint sounded weird. Off. “I’m sorry I took my eyes off you for a second. I never thought he’d go behind our backs. I expected gloating—that we’d owe him more money. Not this.” He was trying to pull me to him, but I was still trying to escape his grip.

Lucky crushed into the back of me, trapping me between them.

“You sent me away,” I shouted against the crisp linen of Saint’s shirt. “You let him sell me! I thought you gave a shit.”

“Shh, baby.” Saint was clutching me to him, his fist buried in the fabric of my dress and trapped there by Lucky’s body. “We didn’t send you away. Of course we give a shit.” He was shaking—I’d thought it was me, but it was him, too.

“We love you,” Rush said against my hair. I hadn’t realized he was hemming in my other side. Trapped between the three of them, I felt tiny. “Even if Saint doesn’t know how to say it.”

Saint lifted me in his arms, and they brought me to the truck.

“The guy—” I whispered, worried.

“He’s dead,” Rush replied. “He won’t be doing that to anyone again.”

“Dead?”

“I don’t know if it was you or us, but it won’t be the first body Warren has had to deal with.”

Then there was only shaking. It felt like I was going to come apart from the inside—that I might shiver into dust. My teeth chattered, and even being wrapped in Saint’s suit jacket and carried against his warm body couldn’t make it stop.

They bundled me into the truck, and put me on Rush’s lap, where he held me huddled against his hard, warm chest. I’d thought we were going back to the house, but when I opened my eyes again, Saint was parked in front of a hospital.

“I don’t think you can leave the truck here,” I mumbled, shaking so hard my words were probably hard to decipher.

“They can tow it. I don’t give a fuck.” Saint strode ahead of us, shooing people out of our way like a rock star with a particular hatred for paparazzi.

“How did you get me back?” I demanded. “Did Warren force you to take another loan?”

“Don’t you worry about that shit.” The grim tension around Saint’s eyes as he glanced back at me made him look even moreformidable. “You had to know we were coming for you,” he said, his tone disapproving.

“I wasn’t thinking straight.”

He grunted, mollified.

*

By the time we pulled into the driveway at home much later, I ran for the door. They followed close behind, unlocking it and ushering me inside. I took the stairs to Lucky’s room two at a time and went into the bathroom. I stripped out of my filthy, destroyed dress and threw it in the garbage, then got into the shower to scrub at myself under the hottest water I could bear.

When I was done, Lucky was standing in the doorway, like my bodyguard.

“You okay?” His entire bearing was sweet and troubled. Worried.

“I will be.” I swallowed and tore my gaze from his when I felt my lip trembling. If I let myself fall apart, I might never get the pieces back together. I kept reminding myself that what had happened wasn’t as bad as what had happened to me at the resort, but it had left me shaken anyway, tangled as it was with the short-lived belief that the guys had abandoned me.

“If you want to talk…”

I shook my head. “Thanks, but I’d rather not.”

It was too fresh, too raw, to let any of it out of my head yet.

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