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“Hannah . . .” Mason murmurs, flipping on the light by the back door.
In this light, everything lacks its usual cheeriness. The man is alive, but he’s going to be in a world of pain when he comes down from whatever he’s on. His face is a bloody, beaten mess. Hisclothes are tattered, though I suspect they were like that when he arrived.
He looks like he’s on the brink of death. Sweat dots his brow, mixing with the blood in his thinning hair. His eyes are sunken and his teeth are yellowed and broken. I don’t know how much is Mason, but it’s clear the man is very, very sick.
It’s not until Mason drops down on his haunches in front of me that I realize I’m shaking like a leaf.
“Come here.” Mason’s voice is rough and strained, whether from the fight or something else, I don’t know.
He gently helps me sit up and then tugs me into his chest. I can’t look away from the man, though, whining in a puddle of his own urine on my kitchen floor.
“Little doe. Look at me.” It’s not a question. It’s a command. Gently, he lifts my chin to inspect my neck, his nostrils flaring at whatever he sees. I wince from the soreness, my eyes locking with his dark and stormy gray ones as shivers rack through me from head to toe. He searches my face, but he looks away before I can understand that look in his eyes.
Protectiveness? Possessiveness? Murderous?
All three?
“You’ve got to help me . . .” the man whimpers from behind Mason, seemingly not even on this planet anymore.
Instinctively, Mason’s grip on my waist tightens when he peers back to the man.
“What’s your name?”
“Help . . . Me . . .” he wheezes in response and Mason shakes his head. “They left me here.”
“Who?”
“Them . . . them, them, them, them . . .” He repeats the word over and over rocking back and forth on the ground. “It hurts so bad.”
“Going to hurt a lot more in a bit, don’t you worry.”
I jump, scrambling back into the kitchen island and Mason’s grip on my waist tightens, steadying me. The dark fed I saw at the shop a couple weeks ago is here, standing at the back door and staring down at the man on my floor with a look of quiet anger and disgust.
“You just had to let him piss himself, didn’t you?”
Mason’s jaw ticks, but he doesn’t respond. Instead, he slips his arms under me and stands, hoisting me up like a toddler being carted to bed. He carries me away from the man and the handsome FBI agent and into the living room before carefully depositing me on the couch. He reaches behind me, his shoulders tense and his face unreadable before he covers me up with a bright pink afghan from the back of the couch.
“I’ll be right back,” he says quietly, and before he straightens, he wipes a thumb gently under my eye to collect a stray tear that escaped.
Is this Mason Carpenter . . . comforting me? Is this the soft side he claims he doesn’t have? Hidden away behind the harsh, handsome exterior that he shows to the rest of the world?
He gives me one last look before he heads to the kitchen. I watch him go, gingerly laying my head back on the couch.
“Ew.”
Savannah Carpenter, looking like she just stepped off a runway, stands in the back doorway, looking down at the man on the floor with the same look the agent had.
“I told you to wait in the car,” the dark fed says and she just shrugs.
“I got bored.”
He shakes his head, turning back to whoever he’s on the phone with. I get the feeling they do this a lot.
So the FBI agent and the princess of LA . . . are an item? That doesn’t seem fair. They’re too pretty to reproduce together. Their kids will be gods among men.
It’s then, her blue eyes ghost over me.
And . . . I forgot she hates my family.
