Touching Scars (30 page)

Timber’s body was suddenly hauled off of Adam and thrown back. Beaver was standing over him, pinning him against the wall with his arm across his chest. Timber wasn’t giving up so easily.
His eyes were set on the body on the floor, and I knew if they didn’t get Adam out of here soon, Timber would make sure he never breathed again.

“Stop!” Beaver yelled in Timber’s face. “Jesus Christ, would you fucking stop? You’re going to kill him. What the hell is wrong with you?” He got his face right up in Timber’s, forcing him to look at him. “Enough! You’re done. I need you to get your shit together so you can go take care of our girl over there.”

Timber’s ferocious eyes shot to mine and then morphed into panic. Beaver let him go and Timber rushed to my side. He fell to the floor in front of me, gently picking me up and cradling me in his lap. I noticed the tears on his face, but I couldn’t say anything.

“Oh, God, no. Kat, baby? Are you alright? Oh, God, please be alright.” Looking around, he spied Mel in the doorway with her hand over her mouth. She was watching Beaver check Adam’s neck for a pulse.

“Mel, call 911 now!”

She turned and left. Timber continued to hold me to his chest, rocking me back and forth, whispering that I was okay.

“How is she?” Beaver asked, his usual joking mood gone.

“I don’t know. She’s mumbling something over and over, but I don’t understand what she’s saying.” I was speaking? I was barely cognizant of anything other than the drumming of Timber’s heart.

“Well, this piece of shit is still alive. We need to get him to a hospital.”

“Let him die.” The menacing tone in Timber’s voice caused me to stir.

“Shhh, baby.”

“Why on earth were you trying to strangle him to death?” Beaver asked.

“I walked in on him assaulting her.” He sucked in a sharp breath through his nose. “He fucking raped her in high school.”

“What?” Now Beaver was angry. “And you brought him to this bar, with her?”

Timber’s reply sounded defeated. “I didn’t know. I knew what she’d been through, but she never told me a name.” He looked at me, resting his forehead against mine. “God damn you Kat, you didn’t tell me a name. I could have saved you.”

Before anything else could be said, our small town police walked in to the already crowded bathroom. They began asking questions, and a stretcher was wheeled in. Adam was placed on it, his body was still limp. They whisked him away and quickly brought in another stretcher that they lifted me onto.

I started screaming Timber’s name because his warmth had disappeared. My darkness was creeping in. He immediately came to my side, and I clung to him. He was my safety. The paramedics made quick work of getting my vitals and attached an IV to my non-bruised arm. One of them said that they were administering a drug that was going to make me tired and I could relax enough so they could complete their exam.

I had no choice now. It was only a matter of seconds before my eyes closed and the darkness came for me anyway.

I
RODE
WITH
K
AT
IN
the back of the ambulance, never letting go of her hand. I’d earned a few scowls from the paramedic when she tried to remove Kat’s hand from mine so she could place one of those pulse things on her finger, but I refused to let her go. The paramedic would just have to work around me. I was looking down at my resting girl and I was trying to sort out how I’d missed the warning signs.

From the moment Kat had seen Adam, her reaction to him had been intense. She’d had a slight tremble in her small hands that hadn’t dissipated throughout the night. She’d barely spoken a word to me, which I’d chalked up to her being angry with me for not warning her. She’d dropped an entire case of vodka on the floor, but it hadn’t fazed her. All of these things should have been red flags to me. And granted, I admit, it didn’t sit well at the time, but why hadn’t I questioned it more? If I had, we wouldn’t be riding in the back of this rig on the way to the hospital. In fact, I could guarantee we’d be headed to the cemetery so I could bury Adam in a shallow grave.

Just thinking about Adam made my blood boil. I was so angry for what I’d seen when I stormed into the bathroom. Kat against a wall looking like all spark had drained from her face, and my best friend getting off with her hands down his pants. My first reaction had been ‘what the fuck have I just walked in on’? But it didn’t take very long for the pieces to fall into place.

The way she’d been all night. The blank stare in her hazel eyes. The dried tear streaks on her cheeks and the split lip. I’d finally realized that he was the one. I’d felt like a charging lion after that. He had seen me and the shit eating grin on his face was enough to make me see red. I’d felt absolutely crazy.

I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t make sure that I’d killed him with my bare hands. He’d tried to fight me back, and he’d gotten a good crack in. But it had only served to empower me. The pain was still radiating through my jaw but it didn’t matter.

I was so pissed that Beaver had pulled me off him. Adam’s body had been going limp in my hands. I knew he’d passed out, but that wasn’t enough. I didn’t want to hear air dragging into his lungs. He needed to be gone. He was the worst kind of human on the planet. What had helped me snap out of my murderous rage was Beaver reminding me of Kat. She’d been lying in a heap on the floor. Her arms were splayed out by her sides, cheek resting on the cold tile. I’d never seen anybody lay in such an awkward angle. Panic had risen in my throat that Adam had killed her, but when I’d gotten to her, she was still breathing. Relief swept through me and now I had something else to focus my attention on.

Arriving at the hospital, the doctor asked why she was sedated. The paramedic explained that she would need a rape kit done, and she had been hysterical, fighting them when they tried to remove her from me. I think I also heard one of them say that I had been difficult too. I scowled. They could go fuck themselves if they thought I would be anywhere but by her side.

A uniformed police officer approached. He looked at me and said, “Mr. Nelson, I need to have a word with you.”

“Not right now. Didn’t Beaver tell you everything you needed to know?” Being hostile towards him probably wasn’t in my best interest, but I was beyond being reasoned with.

“As a matter of fact, he didn’t tell us much of anything. He wasn’t in the room during most of your attack on Mr. Hale.” The cop’s tone made it sound like it was an unprovoked thing. “So what I need from you is a statement telling me everything that happened from the time you and Mr. Hale stepped into the bar until the point of you being removed from him.”

I felt the all too familiar simmering in my blood. I didn’t like this cop’s tone with me. I was not about to be blamed for kicking the ass of a guy that was assaulting my girl. I was protecting her, saving her from a lifetime of nightmares. If Adam had succeeded in molesting her, I don’t know where we’d be. She would never come back from that one. Hell, I didn’t know if she was going to come back to me even now.

I started my side of the story from the beginning. I told him how I had gone to dinner with Adam, how he was my long time friend from high school, and how we’d gone to the bar for a drink. I gave him all of the gory details of walking in on that fucker using her to get off. I had to stop talking after that part and told him that I didn’t remember much of anything else. If I kept talking, I would be held responsible for going and finding him and finishing what I’d started. I’d been running on pure adrenaline when I’d attacked him, and it was still coursing through my veins. I had no shame or remorse when the cop asked if that was all.

He looked up from his notepad, where he’d been scribbling down everything I’d said as quickly as he could. “Is that all you can tell me about tonight?” He looked at me with a raised brow.

“No. I want that bastard gone. I heard one of the nurses say that he is in ICU and he’s expected to make a full recovery. I don’t want him in this hospital. I want him removed.”

“Mr. Nelson, I can’t do that. We don’t have that kind of authority, and even if we did, we’d have to transfer him to Houston. It’s too far for someone in his condition to travel.”

“I don’t really give a shit if he
dies
on the way there and chokes on his own blood. I don’t want him so close to her. He almost raped her!” I was beyond close to completely losing it. How did they not understand that Adam even being on the same planet right now was still too close to Kat?

The cop shifted on his feet. His stance became rigid, as if preparing to wrestle with me. “I understand that you are upset, but I’m going to need you to settle down, or I’ll be forced to remove you.”

My eyes narrowed into slits, silently provoking him to touch me and see how far he could get me out of this room and away from Kat. I’d dare the entire hospital staff to take me on right now. I was raging with fury.

“Yeah? Not so sure you want to put your hands on me right now.”

He seemed to be gauging me to figure out if I was serious. He chose a different approach. Sighing, he said, “Listen. I don’t understand what you’re going through right now, but I do know Kat. She watched my kid last year when my wife went into labor and we had nobody else. I want her to be okay along with everybody else in this town. Hell, I can’t say that if I’d seen him doing what you said he was doing, that I wouldn’t have taken a few swings too. But your aggressive attitude towards me and all of the doctors and nurses isn’t helping anybody. Just please, go take a walk. Find a seat and breathe, grab a coffee, or whatever it is you need to do to get your head on straight.
She’s going to need you when she wakes up and the way you are right now is only going to frighten her.”

He was right. As much as I hated it, he was right. I turned away and dragged a hand through my hair. A nurse came up beside me and grabbed the hand that was hanging by my side. She was a short, young, blonde woman. Despite taking hold of my hand, she looked up at me with shy, uncertain eyes.

“You’re bleeding. I have a wash station over here in the corner. Can I clean you up to make sure your knuckles are okay?” Her voice was so soft compared to the gruffness of the cop. I looked from her, to Kat, then back to her again.

“She’s okay for right now. We’re just observing her, but she’s not going to wake up anytime soon. And you’ll still be able to see her from over here.”

Finally, someone who understood I wasn’t going far from my girl. “Alright.”

She tugged on my arm and commenced rinsing all the dried blood from my knuckles. A few of them had split open and she told me she needed to bandage them, but I refused, saying I was fine. I think I scared her because she didn’t say another word after that. After a few minutes of holding my hands under water, and her gently scrubbing with some anti-bacterial soap, I was back to standing by Kat’s bedside. The police officer had left the room, probably assuming that his little talk calmed me down. I wasn’t calm. No, in fact, I was far from it. Looking down at her, she was peaceful. All I could see was that bastard pinning her to the wall and the bruises forming on her face.

There was a little nudge on the back of my knees that caused me to spin around. I was facing the short nurse again, and she had pushed a chair up to Kat’s bed so I could sit. I relaxed a little at her kind gesture.

“Thank you,” I said to her.

“You’re welcome. I’ll just be down the hall if you need anything. Press that button there if she wakes up.” She pointed to a little red plus sign on the bed rail. I nodded and she left.

Picking up Kat’s hand, I rested my forehead on her smooth porcelain skin. So delicate and fragile, and yet she’d been abused like a disposable object. She wasn’t a fucking object, she was my girl. I loved her so much that it made my heart ache. I couldn’t stop the feelings rolling through me.

I’d failed her
again
. All this time, it had been my friend that had done this to her, and she’d never told me it was him, probably to protect me. I laid her hand down before I crushed it in my palm. I was so angry. My hands fisted my hair and I yanked viciously on the strands. “Why didn’t you tell me, Kat?” I barely whispered.

“Because you would have internalized it and made it your problem,” a soft voice spoke.

I let go of my hair and looked at her beautiful face. Her lip had dried blood crusted where it had split, and her cheek was starting to turn a purplish shade. Christ, I could kill him for hitting her. Reining in my frustration, I willed myself to relax.

Sighing, I picked her hand back up, opening her palm and placing it on the side of my face. “You’re awake. What can I get for you? Are you thirsty?”

She tipped her head. “A glass of water would be nice.”

Getting up, I filled a blue plastic cup in the sink and came back to her. She tried to push herself into a sitting position but winced. I jumped into action.

“Here, let me help.”

I slid my arm behind her back and pressed the button to raise the back of the bed. “There you go.” I carefully leaned her back on the cushion. She took the cup and drank it down quickly, ending it on a cough. Her eyes squeezed shut. Shit, did he hurt her elsewhere and I haven’t seen those bruises? “Where else are you hurt?”