His promise put me at ease but just a little.
Chapter Twenty-four
Unstable:
*likely to change; not stable. *prone to psychiatric problems or sudden changes of mood.
~Olivia~
Waking up to screaming and a harsh slap throws my mind back into my nightmare with Jerry. My hands instantly fly up to protect my head, but one of them stops short because I am in handcuffs. NO, no, no, no, no.
“Look what you made me do, Liv! Stop making me angry and I won’t have to hurt you. Now I have to wait a few days to introduce you to Mom or she will question the bruises on your neck.”
The last thing I remember is running for the bathroom only to have John catch me and choke the life right out of me. He climbs into the back seat and un-cuffs me from the seat. I don’t even remember him handcuffing me again. Oh, that’s right, I must have been unconscious. The first thing I see when I sit up is a big red barn, like the kind you see in movies. John grabs me by my hair and pulls me from the car but I can’t get my feet under me quick enough so I fall to my knees.
“Get up! We have to hurry before they know I’m home.”
He releases my hair so he can grab my upper arm and drags me through the big red doors. Stalls for horses are to the right, but they are empty. To the left is a stairway that leads to a second floor. As I stumble up the stairs, I hear a woman call his name, so I stop moving. Maybe she knows he has lost his mind and would be willing to help me.
“Get up there, Liv! Now I have to deal with my mom.”
He jerks me through the door at the top and drags me to the bed, then attaches the other end of the cuffs to the headboard. I will not survive this again. “Please, John, please don’t do this.” Like his brother Jerry, he swings too fast for me to avoid the fist I see coming right before it connects with the side of my head. Please, God, not again.
~Savage~
I am driving like a bat out of hell while trying to listen in on the phone with Jax. He is hiding in the closet of John’s barn apartment and it has just become too damn silent. I know Jax can’t respond to me or tell me what is going on, but the silence is killing me. I whisper, “Five minutes,” and he knows that is my E.T.A. That abusive, steroid asshole better be unconscious or dead by the time I get there. I heard her begging and then nothing. He has probably knocked her out, so his parents don’t hear her scream for help.
“Come in on the north side and stay in the woods. Move in on foot to the backside of the red barn and I will hand her off to you from the back door. He just left the loft to go talk with his mother and she is going to try to distract him until we can get Livvy out of danger and arrest him.”
“Why the hell is it so silent, Jax? What did he do?”
“We’ll discuss this after we have her out of here, okay, Mate”
“Dammit! Jax, if you don’t kill him, I will.”
“Listen, Sav. This kid isn’t playing with a full deck. He is supposed to be taking serious meds and hasn’t been. I say kid because without his meds he has the mentality of someone ten years younger than his age. His parents want to get him into treatment and are willing to make sure he stays there. Let’s just get Olivia out of danger and we’ll stay behind and deal with this situation. Snake is waiting for you at the plane and is going to fly you two back to Boston; we will bring your cars home.”
As I pull to the edge of the woods, my heart is racing a hundred miles an hour. I have sped halfway across the U.S. to get her back but the silence of the last five minutes was more torture that the last eighteen hours. Nothing could have prepared me for seeing Jax carry Livvy out the back door of the barn, limp and lifeless. I burst from the tree line not even caring about being stealth or quiet. I can already see the bruise forming on the side of her face and my urge to kill something slams inside my head.
“Mate, I can see by the look on your face that you are about to go off half-cocked. I’m telling you we have the guy surrounded, so he is going nowhere except to permanent residency inside a psyche ward. Take Livvy home. She needs to be somewhere safe and familiar when she wakes up.”
Laying her down on the passenger seat with her head close to the steering wheel, allows me to place her head on my lap when I get in. She still has not awoken by the time we get to Lexington and I’m tempted to take her to a clinic there, but I don’t want her to wake in a hospital again. Snake helps me to maneuver her into the plane and place her in the bed at the back of the private jet that Derek owns. I do pretty well for myself financially, but Derek is beyond wealthy. Some guys have all the luck but being his friend and part-time employee has its perks.
I grab an ice pack for her face and lie down beside her for the flight home, hoping she will wake up soon and diminish some of my stress. Two hours into our flight she finally starts to stir. I turn her face toward me, so I will be the first thing she sees when she opens her eyes. “What do you see, Beautiful Girl?”
“I see you, my beautiful
