Page 169 of Cook

“Cook, please,” I begged. “I need you. And I think you need me too.” I didn’t know exactly how to explain it, but then words bubbled out of me. “You and I should leave this behind. We’ve been hurt, and we can’t stay here. Not in the MC and not with the others. Not at the Ridge. You don’t talk about it, but I know what your father did. I know what happened in that house. I could see it in you and Vivi. Too close to what happened to me, and they’re all around me now. Tommy, Sloan, Signora, Massimo, and all their people. I think I see the guys that raped me—nameless and faceless—everywhere I go. They know me, and they will come after me again. We can’t stay here, Cook. Please tell me that you’ll come with. I need you to come with me. They only go away when I’m with you!”

Tears rolled down my cheeks as the words ran dry, and I gulped in a shaky breath.

He said nothing. Did nothing. The machine beeped with his pulse.

If Cook couldn’t listen to me, then I would have to turn to someone else. Someone I had long given up on and someone I never said a word to since Mom made me pray at night before bed or before a meal. If God couldn’t help me when I was abducted and raped and tortured, why would He help me now?

“Can You hear me?” I asked, tilting my chin up toward the ceiling. “Can You help me with Cook? Can You make him understand? We need to go. We can’t stay here. Please. I’ll do whatever You want. I’ll give whatever You want.”

Hadn’t I been doing that my whole life? Giving. I had been a puppet to however a man wanted me. And Cook had been the first person I could really call mine.

“Please, God,” I begged. “If Cook lives, I’ll find a way to get him away from danger and everything else. But I need your help.”

Beep.

The only answer to my begging, even as it quickened.Beep, beep, beep, beep, beeeeeeeep.It continued on, and I flinched away.

Suddenly, the hospital room door burst open, and people flooded inside. I jumped up as people pushed me aside to get to Cook, grabbing at the tubes and wires holding him to the bed and machines. Cook was flat on the bed, even though the machines screamed in alarm.

“What’s happening?” I asked.

“You need to leave,” ordered a nurse.

The doctors and nurses swarmed around Cook like bees, flattening the bed and removing the pillow from behind his neck. They ripped the wires and tubes from his body.

“What’s happening?” I repeated, but me and my voice were lost to all the growing chaos.

“Get his shirt off,” someone ordered as another person undid Cook’s hospital gown, revealing his muscles and tattoos and the bandage. Red blood started to stain the once-white bandage and the bedding.

“Cook!” I tried to move toward him, but someone pushed me back.

“Get her out of here!” ordered someone else.

“Clear!”

Paddles had been placed to Cook’s body, and whatever happened, it jolted him from the bed for a split second, like a ghost leaving a grave. His body seized. Then they placed the paddles back on his chest.

“Clear!”

Cook seized again, and I screamed, clawing toward him. What the fuck were they doing to him? How was this helping him?

Someone yelled, “Get her out of here!” but it wasn’t a doctor or nurse that had me in their arms. Celt whipped me around like I was a doll, dragging me out of Cook’s hospital room as a hospital worker said, “Call the OR.”

“Cook!” I kicked again at Celt.

Cook couldn’t die. He couldn’t leave me. I needed him.

I loved him.

Celt tugged me through the doors and deposited me into the waiting arms of Mel and Roni as they rolled Daddy away on the stretcher.

Chapter 29

Maddie

My knuckles were white, fingernailsdigging into my palms. I put more pressure on my hands, no longer feeling any pain. I barely felt anything at all as time slipped by. The bright fluorescent lights flickered overhead, and I no longer knew if it was day or night. I barely knew who was sitting beside me or talking to me, trying to force food or water past my lips. My stomach did a flip, and I was about to vomit again.

“You really should eat,” someone said in a motherly tone.

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