you and I do. I need you.”
People were starting to stare at me, to stop whatever they were doing and just gawk. I didn’t know how I could stop them, or if I wanted them to. As long as they were looking at me, nobody was going to barge down here and take me back up to that room.
“I’m outside, I’m waiting for you outside,” Ryder announced. That was the most wonderful news I had ever heard. Ever.
With numb feet and shaking knees I walked out the lobby door of the hotel and into the frigid fall air. The end of October was bitingly cold, signaling a snowfall soon and the presence of a looming winter. I was convulsing with shivers but I was certain those would have been happening with or without the cold air.
Ryder leapt from his Bronco that he had pulled front and center of the covered driveway. A valet was yelling at him to move his junky POS from in front of the Hilton Hotel, but Ryder ignored him.
Instead he sprinted to me, and opened his arms before I was even close enough to fall into them. I threw my arms around his neck and buried my face against his throat.
“I’m taking you home,” he demanded and then picked me up like a child. One hand supported my back, the other slipped under my knees and he walked directly to his car. He deposited me in the front seat and then buckled me in before taking my face in both of his hands. “I knew this was bad news. I just couldn’t…. I wanted to be here if something went wrong.” He reasoned for his being already present in the parking lot.
“Something did go wrong,” I admitted in a croaky, harsh voice as if it wasn’t obvious. “But I’m glad you’re here.”
Ryder pulled my face down and gave me a sweet kiss on the forehead before closing my door. When he turned around Blake and Taylor were just walking out the sliding doors of the hotel. They noticed me immediately in the passengers’ seat of Ryder’s car and pointed at me. Ryder noticed them too unfortunately and I watched his body physically react to Taylor. It was like I could feel his stare fall on Taylor’s outstretched hand that was bloodied and scratched from when he tried to choke me. I might not have ever gotten a good punch in or hit him back, but scratching his hands turned out to be its own form of karma.
Ryder’s whole body tensed when he realized Taylor was the one that hurt me. It was like he followed that bloodied fingertip up the length of his arm and to his face and put the entire night together in his head. And then Ryder snapped.
He launched himself forward, onto Taylor and his fist connected with Taylor’s face like a branch breaking off a huge tree during a lightning storm. I heard the crunch of bones from even inside the car and then watched the splurt of blood soil Ryder’s face, hands and chest. My hand flew to my mouth and I gasped against the horror of the moment.
And then I just watched in trancelike fascination as Ryder cocked his arm back and delivered one punch after another. Ryder tackled Taylor with his initial hit and so with each subsequent one, Taylor’s skull bounced against the hard concrete. There was blood everywhere, flowing in thin crimson rivers.
And even though Ryder was the younger man, and maybe not even equally muscled he had the element of surprise on his side. And revenge. He was a man possessed by rage and retribution.
I couldn’t move. I couldn’t think. I just watched Ryder take out my pain on the man that inflicted it.
Blake tried his hardest to pull Ryder off, but it was like he was a machine with super human strength. Eventually the valet jumped in to help Blake and then the concierge. Someone called the police but by the time the ambulance and police cruisers pulled up six men had stepped in to restrain Ryder.
I stayed frozen in place while Ryder was handcuffed and then shoved into the back of a police car. His hand swollen, mangled and bloodied. But his face was calm, satisfied…. justified.
And I would be lying if I said I didn’t feel those same emotions coursing through me.
Taylor was loaded onto a stretcher and the ambulance left immediately with sirens blaring. I barely heard the sound though. After everything