Rough Ride (Chaos #5)(3)

“Squeeze once, it was Bounty, Rosie,” Snap said.

I wasn’t going to squeeze. It was easier to speak.

“Yeah,” I pushed out.

“’Kay, babe, ’kay,” he crooned, thankfully his fingers leaving mine, but they went back to my hair. “We got it now. You’re good. Gonna take care of you.”

No they weren’t.

He wasn’t.

No one was going to take care of me.

But me.

Not anymore.

They were supposed to do that before.

And now I was on a cement floor, beat to hell.

But I was going to be.

Good that was.

Yes, I was going to be.

Finally.

And it was going to be me that made me that too.

I turned my face into Snap’s cut as an indication he shouldn’t stroke my hair anymore, as a way to tell him to get the heck away from me, to leave me to the ambulance, to leave me alone, to get out of my hair, out of there, out of my life.

But the fabric snagged my swollen nose and a whimper slid from me.

“Baby,” he whispered, feeling close, seemingly all around me, “just hang tight. Don’t move. Help will be here soon.”

Help would be there soon.

I’d be in an ambulance.

Then I’d be in a hospital.

While there, I’d talk to the police.

Eventually, I’d go home and live in fear of what my boyfriend’s motorcycle club would do to me after I pressed charges against them for beating the crap out of me.

What could be worse than this?

I didn’t know.

I didn’t want to find out.

But there was a good possibility I would.

I couldn’t think of that.

So instead I thought about the fact that I actually couldn’t go home. I had to move out of the home I shared with Beck, but I could only do that after I figured out where the hell I’d go.

It was too much. The pain. The humiliation. The nausea that was beginning to edge in. The thoughts crashing through my brain, fighting for supremacy. The tear slid out of my eye, soaking into the lining of Snap’s cut.

The next slid over the bridge of my nose on the same trajectory.

I felt something of him brush my shoulder.

His chest, I guessed, because then I felt his forehead pressed lightly against the side of my head and I heard his lips at my ear, that deep voice of his low and solemn, promising, “Got you now, baby. I got you. Nothing will ever hurt you again. Nothing, Rosie. Won’t let it. Nothing, baby. Not a thing.”

Another tear slid over the bridge of my nose.

And I heard the sirens.



*



Snapper




“Stand down, brother,” Hop said at his ear.

Snapper had Speck up against the wall, their noses so close, the tips were brushing, Snap’s hand around his throat, squeezing…squeezing. He had three brothers working him, trying to pull him off, but he had his weight aimed just right, straining against it, and he wasn’t budging.

Speck stared into his eyes, not moving.

“Snap, man, everybody gets you,” Rush said coaxingly. “Speck definitely gets you. Step off, man.” Pause then, a jerk of his arm around Snap’s chest, “Step off, brother.”

“You were on her,” Snapper clipped.

Speck just stared into his eyes, his face so red it was turning blue.

“You were supposed to look out for her,” Snap carried on.

“He knows, Snap, look at him. Step off,” Joker ordered.

Snapper kept squeezing.

Speck kept letting him.

“Brother, he fell down. He knows it. We’ll deal with that later. We got two priorities here. Rosalie. And a reckoning for Bounty.”

At Tack’s voice, their leader, the president of the Chaos Motorcycle Club, Snap pushed off of Speck, letting him go, and shrugged off Hop, Joker, and Rush’s holds.

The second he felt them start to move away, he went back in, slamming his fist into the wall by Speck’s head, feeling his knuckles split and Joker’s arm coming around him to put him in a chokehold.

But Speck didn’t even flinch.

Before he could try to make a move to plant his feet in order to throw Joke over his shoulder to get out of that hold, High had come in, caught Speck by the back of the neck and yanked him from the wall and away from Snapper’s reach.

“Take your hands off me,” Snapper bit at Joker.

Joker hesitated a second, felt Snap maneuvering his legs to break his hold, but when High had Speck well out of reach, he let go.

Joke stayed close, as did Hop and Rush, and Snapper’s eyes didn’t move from Speck.

“She was workin’ that shit for us,” he told Speck, and the whole room, something they knew. “We promised we had her back and you were on. You were supposed to have her back.”

“He knows that. We all know that,” Boz confirmed. “We’re all feelin’ this.”

Snap turned on Boz. “Yeah? You got one guess who’s feelin’ it the most right now.”

Boz winced.

“Yeah,” Snap gritted. “And you didn’t even see her, man. Beat to shit. She didn’t have her waitress apron on and seein’ her hair, I wouldn’t have fuckin’ recognized her.”