Beast: Learning to Breathe (Devil's Blaze MC #5)

My mind and my thoughts are way too chaotic. I need time to myself. That's all. Charlie is always inviting me over. I'll crash here tonight and try to get control of myself. This relationship…or whatever is happening between Michael and myself, I think maybe it's too much. The last thing I need is to open myself up to another man. Although deep down I know that Michael isn’t any other man, despite how much he hurt me back there. My track record with men, as short as it is, is horrible.

I have too much going on, and the renewed threat from Blade and his club, is all I have time to worry about. Maggie needs to be my top priority. I should be packing up and getting as far away from Blade and the rest of his club, as quickly as possible. I should not be dreaming of Michael and…

God, we haven't even had sex, but he's still all I can think of. Every time he touches me, I lose complete control. I don't understand why I'm not afraid of him, why he seems to calm me and make me feel safe when all other men scare the hell out of me. It defies explanation, I only know I want more of him. Which is bad. I can't have him. I can't let him get close to me—if for no other purpose than the fact that him being close to me is bad for him and me. For some reason, I feel like Michael is the motivation behind Blade coming to the diner. Blade never liked it when someone else got near what he deemed as his property. He told me that himself those weeks when he was…teaching me a lesson. I thought I proved him wrong. I got away. I got free…maybe I was just fooling myself.

Charlie's seems empty. Maybe she's asleep? I should probably leave, but I really can't face Michael right now.

I walk to the front door and knock. There's no answer. I try to look inside through the glass panel on the door, but there’s no sign of her. All signs are pointing to her being gone. Her truck isn’t here, but her car is in the driveway and that’s the one she drives most of the time. Besides, Charlie's always home and when she's not…she drives her car. She hates driving the truck because it’s standard shift. She also never lets anyone else drive. She's always going on how people drive like maniacs and she doesn't trust anyone behind the wheel but herself.

It might be nothing, but something feels off. I have to fight through the urge to run and get the hell out of here. Charlie could have fallen or she might be sick. I wish I had brought my cellphone. Being in something other than sleep shorts and a gray t-shirt and flip flops might have been smarter too. I walk around the back of the house. I had to feed her cat once when she went out of town to visit her sister, and she kept one of those keys-hid-in-a-fake-rock things. I nearly shout ‘eureka’ when I find it. Sure enough, the key is tucked inside.

I carefully unlock the door. I’m starting to second guess myself, but my head is filled with visions of Charlie burning up with a fever like I had been, or she could have fallen down her stairs and broke her leg. Heck she has high blood pressure and could have easily had a heart attack.

“Charlie?” I call out, and I do it quietly. Which is stupid, because if she were upstairs or the back part of the hallway, she’d never hear me. “Charlie,” I call out a little louder.

“Hayden, what are you doing here?” I hear behind me, and I can’t stop the small scream from escaping. I turn around, my hand pressed against my chest and look up at Pastor Sturgill.

“I’m looking for Charlie. What are you doing here?” I cry, my heart still hammering against my chest.

“You haven’t heard,” he says.

“Heard what?”

“Charlie’s in the hospital. There was an accident.”

“Oh God! Is she okay? When did it happen? Why didn’t someone call me?” I bombard him with questions, one right after another. My body starts shaking and tears are falling before he even answers one. The tears only fall harder when he finally answers.

“She’s in a coma, Hayden. It doesn’t look good.”

“I have to go to her. I have to go to the hospital,” I tell him, nodding my head yes, in answer to my own statements. “I can’t believe this,” I tell him still crying and trying to take breath into my lungs at the same time. “Will she be okay? Please tell me she’s going to be okay,” I beg him. Charlie’s the only person I have in the world. I can’t imagine a world in it without her.

“It doesn’t look good, Hayden,” he says and that’s all it takes for me to completely fall apart. He holds onto my shoulders, awkwardly, trying to reassure me.

“What the fuck is going on?” Michael growls from the door, and I don’t even question my actions as I turn to him and practically leap the three steps to him. His arms enclose around me and I hold him close, letting my tears take over.

Michael will fix it. He’ll take care of everything, I think stupidly. Logically I know there are things even Michael can’t do, but in my heart, I know if anyone can…it’s him.





69





Beast





I knew where Hayden would go. She doesn’t have many friends. It was either Charlie’s or that other waitress. What I didn’t expect was to walk in and find the preacher holding onto Hayden’s arms. For a second, jealousy had me ready to tear his throat out with my bare hands. Then she throws herself into my arms and something clicks into place, I wrap her up, holding her to me and when her tears register, I’m ready to kill again.

“Why is she crying?” I growl at the preacher, wrapping my hand in her hair, needing to feel it’s texture, needing to know she’s close. “What did you do?” I question him, and my voice drops down with that, sounding like the animal I’ve been called. The one that lurks underneath, raw and hurting…bleeding and waiting for revenge.

“Charlie was in an accident!” Hayden cries, her voice muffled and broken from her crying.

I look over at the preacher who is watching the two of us closely. Good. Let the asshole look. Let him understand. She’s mine, and he better keep his fucking hands off of her. Shit. What am I talking about? She can’t be mine and even if she was, he doesn’t think of her like a man would a woman he wants. I can tell that, just by the way he interacts with her. Fuck. I’m losing it.

“What happened?” I ask the asshole while trying my best to quiet Hayden. Before I can question myself however, I take my jacket off and pull it over her shoulders, knowing it’s big enough that it will fall below the bottom of her shorts and cover more of her up. He might not look at her like a man looks at a woman, but he’s only fucking human, and he doesn’t need to see what he’s missing. Hayden accepts my jacket over her easily and curls into me still crying softly.

“Someone ran her off the road last night. She went over a cliff. She was thrown out of the car, but she’s in a coma. The doctor says there’s some swelling and bleeding on her brain…” he breaks off at Hayden’s anguished cry, before finishing lamely, “it doesn’t look good.”

“What are you doing here?” I ask him, not liking the fact that he was here alone with Hayden. Why would he be here if he knew Charlie was in the hospital?