Chapter Three
Lilly
She paused, trying to figure out what it was. Her phone! Lilly dropped the bag and darted into the bedroom. Someone was calling her from a private number. She didn’t dare answer it. The call went to missed, and she waited for a voicemail. Instead she got a text.
Dee: Lilly? Are you okay? It’s me calling. My mate is outside your door knocking. Can you answer it?
Lilly: Knocking? They’re breaking down the door! Why are they doing that?
Dee: You didn’t answer! My mate was worried you were already in trouble.
The oddity of her friend’s word choice didn’t register. There was a final cracking of wood and she heard the door fall inward with a thud. Whoever it was had quite literally removed the door from the frame, instead of kicking it in.
She crept to the top of the stairs and peered downward, terrified of what she might see. The first man through the door was dressed in a plaid shirt and dark blue jeans, with tan working boots that looked new, though they’d clearly seen use. He came to a halt and looked up right at her without hesitation.
“Are you Lilly?” he asked.
Lilly nodded, nervously. He was one of the biggest men she’d ever seen in her life. His sheer size left her off-balance for a moment, fighting to recover. Damien was possibly around his height, but he was just big. This man was pure muscle, and it showed. He repeated his question.
“What?” It was all she could muster.
“My name is Palin. This is Torran. Sandy said you needed help, that your situation was bad.”
The giant bald man stepped slightly to the side to reveal another hulking male, but Lilly’s brain was already moving on. She recognized the name Palin. It was unique, and to her knowledge she’d never mentioned the name of Sandy’s man to Damien after she’d gone out to see her old friend two months ago. That was just before she’d told Damien about their child. Just before everything had changed.
She made a snap decision. “Okay, let me grab my bags.”
“You’re safe now,” the other man said suddenly, stepping forward. “You won’t come to any harm with us. Take your time.”
“Thanks, but I’d just as rather get the hell out of here as fast as possible.” She ran to the closet, grabbing the big duffel before retrieving her smaller bag from the dryer. “Okay, I’m ready.”
“Palin. We have company.”
Lilly froze, already halfway down the stairs when the second man spoke up. “What?”
“Motorcycles entering the complex. Several of them.” She couldn’t see his face because he was looking back out the door.
“Oh no. That’s Damien and his gang. They’re coming. Quick, you need to go! I’ll tell him something. I’ll…” She looked at the broken door in horror, trying to come up with an explanation.
“Lilly, we need to go. Now. Come on!” Palin held out his hand. “We don’t to have to fight them. We can do this peacefully.”
But she couldn’t move. Visions of Damien coming storming in flickered through her mind. There was no doubt about who he would take his anger out on. That person was standing on the stairs, unmoving.
“You two go. I’ll tell him that a rival gang broke it down, but fled when they heard him coming. Here, take my bags.” She tossed them at the two big men, glad she’d packed clothes Damien wouldn’t know were missing. It looked like she was going to need that.
“We’re not leaving without you.” The other man entered the room, looking at her strangely, but with urgency on his face.
His extremely handsome face. It was kind of blocky, squareish, what you might expect from a boxer perhaps, but covered in a fine layer of short stubble. The lighter-colored beard didn’t quite match the hair on his face, which was more brown, while the beard had a somewhat reddish tinge to it. All of that surrounded two eyes that exuded calm, even in the midst of a developing situation.
Just staring into his features and the lack of panic in them helped to calm Lilly. Enough that she could regain her focus.
“You have to. It’s the only way.”
“No it’s not,” the big man said, shaking his head just hard enough to bounce the close-cropped hair on his head. “Is there a back door?”
“Well sure, but…Hey!” Before she could finish speaking the man had moved forward, sweeping her off her feet in a movement that would have been romantic as hell in any other setting.
He walked toward the back of the house, leaving Palin to snatch up her bags and follow after him.
“What’s your name?” she asked as he used his foot to slide open the rear door. “I usually know the names of men I allow to carry me across a threshold.”
The joke rang hollow with her as she was reminded of the ring on her finger. A ring that an entirely different man than the one she was leaving had put there. It had been only six months earlier, but it felt like a lifetime.
“Wait,” she said, struggling out of his grip before he could reply. “Stop.”
He came to a halt as she ran back to the house. “That is not the way out of here,” he called.
“I know that. I’m in trouble, not stupid. Don’t patronize me,” she snapped back, pausing at the entrance for a second. She could just hear the motorcycles coming to a halt out front, angry voices yelling about the door.
Lilly stepped back inside, pausing at the kitchen counter nearest the door. Fiddling with her left hand, she pulled the diamond engagement ring off her finger. Taking one long look at it, remembering all the good times she’d had and the man she’d agreed to marry, she set it down on the counter.
“Lilly?”
She stifled a gasp. Damien was inside the house! She hadn’t even heard him come up the front walkway. Tiptoeing backward, she slipped out the back door. Palin and Torran were waiting for her, Torran gesturing like mad for her to get a move on.
“The back door is open!”
Oh shit. She started running, intending to just blow past Torran, but he snatched her up on the move, holding her tight to his chest. Lilly started to tell him she could keep up just fine, but in reality she was already out of breath. Torran meanwhile was still accelerating. Their backyard wasn’t enclosed, and he took off into the nearby park as shouts sounded behind them.
“He’s coming!” she gasped, resting her arms on two very muscular-feeling shoulders to peer behind them.
Damien burst out from the shrubs that marked their property line, moving rather quickly for a man of his size.
“Do not worry,” Torran said calmly.
Lilly gasped. He wasn’t even breathing hard, nor was his voice strained. “You’re in really good shape,” she said, barely bouncing, held firm by two arms covered in corded muscle that worried at the seams of his shirt.
“Yes.”
There was a sharp crack from behind them, and something went whistling by her head. “What the fuck was that?”
“Bullets,” Torran said, shifting her so that her head was more covered by his shoulder.
Another crack followed, and she heard Torran grunt in something that might have been pain. “Are you okay?” she asked, horrified that Damien might have shot Torran.
“Yeah. I’m fine.” There was no disguising it; his voice was even more strained than before. “Just fine. Peachy. Dandy. Absolutely lovely.”
“Don’t you dare put your life on the line for me,” she snapped. “If you’re hurt you put me down and get out of here. I am not letting you sacrifice yourself for me. I don’t even know you.”
“Perfect, we have a deal then.”
“What?”
“I get you out of here, and in return you agree to get to know me.”
She frowned. “Are you asking me out on a date?”
“No,” he grunted as another bullet went whistling by, digging up some dirt in the ground just ahead of them. “I think the timing would be fairly bad to do that. I suspect we’re going to be living close to one another for the foreseeable future, however.”
Lilly looked at him, trying to figure out if he was crazy or not. He had to be, with what he was doing, yet Torran seemed entirely nonplussed by the entire situation. In fact…she looked a little closer. “Are you enjoying yourself?!”
The tug at his lips that she’d noticed grew stronger, until he most definitely was smiling. She knew, because it was the most beautiful look on a person she’d ever seen before. He had two rows of perfectly aligned white teeth and a killer twinkle in his eye. Before she could think it over Lilly found herself answering him.
“Okay,” she said almost dreamily, completely distracted by his smile. “It can’t hurt, can it?”
“I promise it won’t hurt.”
“Good. Otherwise I’m going to let him shoot you.” What the hell was she doing? Joking about him being shot? “Please don’t put me down!” she added as her words registered with her hormone-overloaded brain.
He was too good-looking. It might not hurt, but it was going to be trouble. Lilly could feel that she wasn’t free yet. In fact, she might have traded one sort of trouble for another. Maybe. Wait, no, what the hell was she thinking?! She barely knew Torran. Once the adrenaline from the night wore off, she would be able to think straight again.
“I won’t let him hurt you,” Torran said with a quiet ferocity that scared her. “I would sooner die.”
“Please don’t do that either. I doubt I could outrun him.”
“I don’t think you need worry about that,” Torran said, slowing.
Lilly looked around, slowly recognizing the features as belonging to a street three neighborhoods over. “How the hell did we get here so fast?”
Damien was nowhere to be seen, and beside them Palin slowed as well, still holding onto both of her bags.
“Thank you,” she said from where Torran held her tightly to his warm body, the heat pouring from him warding off the cold she should be feeling right about then. “I owe you both so much.”
Palin shook his head. “You owe us nothing. This was the right thing to do. Plain and simple.”
“What he said,” Torran rumbled, his chest vibrating as he spoke, the velvety tone of his bass voice sounding like heaven in her ears. How did he do that?
“You can put me down now if you’d like,” she told him as they stopped, the two huge men looking unsure of themselves for the first time since they’d barged into her home.
It’s not my home. It’s Damien’s home. It’s never been my home. Not even when I first moved in with him. That should have been the first sign. I should have noticed something was up then, but I didn’t.
She’d been too in love, so she’d thought. Infatuated was more like it. How could she have been in love with him and not noticed the signs that indicated something darker lurking under the surface?
Torran didn’t release her, and truthfully, she didn’t want to get down. Being in his arms felt safe and secure, something she hadn’t known in weeks, if not months. Lilly wanted to treasure that for as long as she could. After the turn her life had taken, she knew going forward that nothing could be counted on to be what it should. Her trust hadn’t been broken—it had been abused and shattered, much like her body. So finding a feeling of comfort and peace, even if it was in the arms of a relative stranger, was something she intended on basking within.
“Palin,” Torran said, speaking as if they both knew something she didn’t. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”
“Yes.” The bald man grimaced, looking like he wanted to spit. “We were in such a rush…”
“Crap.”
Lilly’s neck was getting sore from looking back and forth as they went on like this, seemingly upset over something only they knew. “Guys, what’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” Torran assured her, giving a gentle squeeze of his massive biceps.
She carefully did not run a hand over them to see if they felt as hard as they looked. It was then she realized he’d carried her this entire way, and still didn’t seem strained in the slightest. She wasn’t a small woman in any way except height. By all rights his arms should be shaking by now. How was he doing this?
Steroids seemed the obvious answer, but it didn’t fit with what little she knew of him. Perhaps a question best left for when she had to get to know him after they were safe. Speaking of which…
“How are we getting out of here?” she asked. “Damien will get his motorcycle gang to start combing the neighborhoods. They will find us.”
“Yeah,” Palin said uncomfortably. “We didn’t bring a car.”
“How did you get here?” she asked. “Uber?”
“Uh. Yeah. Yeah, an Uber.” Palin looked away as he spoke, not willing to meet her eyes.
Weirdo. “So call another one?”
Palin grimaced. “Can’t. No phone on me.”
Lilly thought about asking what the phone-shaped bulge in his pocket was, but suddenly she wasn’t sure she wanted an answer. Especially if it wasn’t actually a phone. “We can use mine,” she said when Torran didn’t volunteer his.
“Okay. Let’s do it.”
She reluctantly squirmed out of Torran’s arms, but stayed close to him while she pulled up her phone and punched in the destination Palin gave her. “Uh, guys, I don’t know if I have the money to afford this. That’s a hell of an expensive ride.” Lilly hadn’t realized they were going straight back to Sandy’s.
“Don’t worry about the cost,” Torran said, his voice comforting in her ear, reminding her that he was still there, still protecting her while she was vulnerable. “We will take care of that. Just call it, and let us get out of here without things getting worse.”
Lilly frowned at her phone. How was it not already worse? Damien had shot at them. At her. She started to shake.
An arm thick with muscle and warmth wrapped around her, and without asking Torran lifted her back into his arms. “Where do we go?” he asked calmly.
“Over there,” she said, pointing to the nearest street corner.
Torran’s long strides carried them there with ease. Lilly kept her eyes on the phone, but she couldn’t stop her brain from wandering and asking questions.
Like who the hell had she just been rescued by?