Take Me with You (Take Me #2)(31)
Author: K.A. Linde

Fuck.

When I found it, I realized I was in much better shape than my motorcycle. I was lucky that I’d been thrown off the bike before falling down the hill onto a pile of built-up snow from the last snowfall. My bike was not as lucky. It had skidded twenty feet past me, crashed into the guardrail, rolled down the hill, and wrapped itself around a tree.

She was completely totaled.

Undrivable.

Potentially not even salvageable.

As sad as I was, I was equally thankful that nothing that bad had happened to me, that I wasn’t as mangled as the bike, that I wasn’t dead.

The thought shook me to my core. I could have died tonight.

Sherry patted my shoulder. “I think it’s best to leave it here. You can come back for it in the morning. No one else is going to take it in that condition.”

I blinked. What the fuck was I going to do? Where the fuck was I supposed to go?

“We can take you home if you’d like,” Joe offered. “Where do you live?”

I looked between them. My mouth had fallen open, and I quickly recovered. “Thank you. That’s…I appreciate it. I live in Princeton. Downtown.”

“It’s about an hour drive, but we can get you home safe. Get into the truck, and tell us what you were doing out here, driving around on a motorcycle in this weather.”

I didn’t know what to say.

Because I was an idiot?

Because I’d thought a spark of adrenaline and a dose of danger would cure the real heartache?

Because I’d never realized I wasn’t invincible until that moment my bike tilted and I slid off the road?

So, I shrugged and climbed inside before giving them the address to my place.

“Thank you again,” I repeated. “I don’t know how I can ever repay you.”

Sherry turned around in her seat and smiled at me. “No need to repay us. We were happy to find you alive.”

“Me, too.”

As they turned the truck around and drove back toward Princeton, I peeled my ruined jacket off my body. I hissed at the pain that shot up my left arm. There was a gash about four inches long. The skin had been scraped back, bleeding a thin trickle of red down my arm, and dirt and debris had collected in the wound. I used my jacket to stanch the bleeding, and I tried to ignore the pain as I pressed down on the injury.

Everything else hurt, and I was faint and dizzy. When had I last eaten anything? I couldn’t remember. I closed my eyes to try to fight back the pain, but my body slid toward slumber.

I woke up to the feel of someone lightly shaking me. I must have passed out in the back of the truck.

“I’m awake,” I grumbled.

“Maybe we should take him to the hospital,” the woman said. “He’s so banged up. What if there’s internal bleeding?”

“I’m not forcing him to go, Sherry. Let’s get him inside and make sure he’s all right. If he’s too banged up once you can look at him, then we’ll take him.”

“I don’t like it.”

Somehow, I made it out of the truck and inside my house. After Sherry checked me out, she conceded. I needed a shower, some Tylenol—which she located in the cabinet—and a lot of rest. We exchanged numbers, and she promised to call to check on me, and I promised to go to the hospital if anything got worse.

When they left, I peeled my shirt over my head and stared in horror at myself in the mirror. It wasn’t just my arm. The skin was broken all the way down my chest, ribs, and hip. My ribs were already turning a wonderful shade of purple, and I wondered if I had fractured something. It hurt to breathe, but I didn’t know if it was because it was tender or from something worse.

After I showered and wrapped up my arm, I came to an abrupt stop in the doorway to the bathroom. My phone. Where the fuck was my phone?

I patted down the jeans and jacket I had worn, but I found nothing. Shit. I must have lost it on the road.

I needed to call Ari. I needed to tell her what had happened. I should have asked for Sherry’s phone, but I’d been so out of it up until I took that shower that I couldn’t think in coherent sentences. With the shower and pain medicine working its magic, my thoughts came through with sharp clarity.

Ari.

She was what mattered.

She was all that mattered.

I threw on another pair of jeans and a T-shirt, and I grabbed a black jacket from the hook. At the last second, I remembered I had bought her a birthday present. I seized that, too, and then darted for my truck.

This probably wasn’t the smartest thing I’d ever done, but neither was taking a joyride in shitty conditions and crashing my motorcycle. If I had survived that, I could survive driving to the League…but I couldn’t survive without Ari.

A cheer went up from the front of the League and gradually grew. I turned around to figure out what was going on, and then I saw him.

Grant.

He was here.

Our eyes locked across the room, and I wasn’t sure what I saw reflected back in his eyes. Desperation, fear, hope—it was a strange combination, one I certainly hadn’t expected after the last time we had parted.

Ignoring all the people around him, Grant practically bounded across the room until he was directly in front of me. The room fell silent at his approach. My pulse thrummed in my throat, and I swallowed hard. I tilted my chin up to meet him with determination in my face. I was not going to break down. I had no clue what he was going to do, but I could handle it.

Then, his hands were cupping my cheeks so tenderly that it was as if he thought I might break in half. Without a word, his mouth dropped down on mine, and the kiss was as light as a feather. It was a question, a soft and delicate question, one he had never asked before—permission.

When I didn’t pull away from him, he received his answer. The kiss deepened, and he coaxed all the anger out of me. He drew it out as if sucking venom from an open wound. He kissed me so heatedly and lovingly that not even a drop remained. All that was left was a bottomless well of emotions of how much I loved and missed him.

When I came back into the moment, I heard the catcalls and yells from the people around us. It was then I remembered that we were in a crowded room, surrounded by people for my birthday, and Grant had kissed the breath out of me. I flushed from head to toe at the attention, but he wouldn’t let me pull away.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I shouldn’t have blown up on you. I shouldn’t have done anything. You’re all that matters.”

I stared up at him in confusion. “Who are you, and what have you done with Grant McDermott?”