Page 99 of Hesi-Dating
"We'll get your car towed to a place that can fix the window. How about I give you a ride?" Seth offered. "You want to go home?"
I shifted my gaze from the second ambulance that housed Mitchell to Seth. "Bruno was wrong. It's not you who's dangerous. It's me. I'm the one who almost got you shot three times."
"But I didn't get hurt." He smiled from where he sat next to me on the bumper of the ambulance and bumped his shoulder with mine. "You don't need to be freaked out worrying about me."
"I can't help it. This feels like it'll never end." I rested my head on his shoulder. "I can try to help you guys open the case. I have some ideas for the password, but I don't know for sure."
"Maybe tomorrow." His arm wrapped around me to pull me into him. There we sat in silence as the lights and commotion carried on around us. The tow truck wasn't there yet. Traffic had to be backed up for miles at this point. News vehicles were parked on the closest overpass.
"Can I go home with you? I just…" I tried to sort out what I wanted. He made me feel at ease, which right now is what I needed. "I don't want to be alone."
He kissed my forehead. "Of course. Henry and I can keep you safe. You can stay as long as you want to."
ChapterForty-Three
SETH
Once I got Joley into the shower, I activated my perimeter alarms and viewed the cameras set up around my property. One consequence of the gang influence purge in my department was stepping up my home security. A consult with one of the FBI's security experts helped me choose the system and evaluate my property. And it let me watch the horses at night. I'd discovered a stray cat liked to terrorize Rainbow. I also had two coyotes that roamed the property.
Joley emerged in one of my T-shirts. I draped my too-large robe around her and helped her cinch it at the waist. The clothing dwarfed her but the warmth on her face told me she appreciated the care.
"Pick whatever you want to watch." I handed her the remote and waved her toward the sofa. "The Padres game started a half hour ago if you're interested."
I handed her a mug and tucked the robe around her. The bruises on her face made me crazy angry, but there wasn't much I could do now other than take care of her.
"What's this?" She sniffed the contents of the mug.
"Hot chocolate."
"Thank you." Her eyes glassed over like she was about to cry.
Please, don't cry.
"You don't need to do this." She blew across the top of the mug.
I settled in next to her and put my own mug on the side table to cool. How could I express all the complex feelings going on inside me? "You have to let me do this. I'm trying not to freak the fuck out that I almost lost you again. Tonight could've gone way south. Just like the incident with Nosh." I threw my head back against the sofa to stare up at my dad’s deer antler chandelier. "He had a gun to your head. If he'd…"
"He didn't. But…" She hit the mute button on the TV and put her mug down.
Uh, oh. Something serious was coming my way. I swallowed against the dryness in my throat.Please don't run again.
She took a deep breath and faced me. "I'm going to tell you what happened and why it was so complicated between Nosh and I."
"You don't need to tell me. He did bad shit, maybe even to you."
"That's the thing. He didn't do anything bad to me. He was always good to me when it mattered. He protected me. When I was barely a teenager, he and I were placed in the care of a single woman. Nosh's brother and younger sister were also in that home. It was a lot of kids for her, but she took all of us in out of generosity. She wasn't evil. She even tried hard to make it work until she got this boyfriend. He was a manipulator who made her do all kind of crazy shit. He'd get high and then he'd beat her. When she wasn't there his attention would turn to us. Nosh was about sixteen then. He kept the asshole's attention on him and off us younger ones. The guy did awful things to him." She stared at her hands as if trying to force herself to continue. "Awful, awful things. Too many days I'd hold Nosh in the dark of night while he cried."
"You don't have to do this." I wasn't sure if I could handle hearing this.
"I do. I've never told anyone this, but my new therapist suggested it's better to talk about the bad things than let them continue to fester." She took my hand and held it between both of hers. "Nosh would distract her boyfriend and let himself be the one to get raped. He tried to make the guy stay away from me and his little sister. Until that day when Nosh had something after school that kept him there late. I got home first and got cornered alone."
Now it was me gripping her hand tight.
She stared at our intertwined hands. "I think you got some of the story if you read the police report, but the truth is when Nosh walked in, he lost it. I think all those times that bastard hurt him and then seeing him hurt me pushed Nosh to the edge. Nosh shot him. Then, as our foster mom came in, he put the gun in my hand and made me shoot her. He pulled the trigger, not me. I just…I don't know that she deserved to die. She was as much a victim as we were. I understand she didn't do her job. She didn't protect us. Nosh blamed her." She drew in a shaky breath. "That was the turning point for him. He refused to let anyone else hurt him again to the point of an almost insane need to control everything around him. He also got more and more dulled to violence and death as the years passed."
"Did you try to get the foster program to place you somewhere else?"
"We tried. The person we had to report to didn't believe any of us. Nosh and I were screwups at that point. We were constantly in detention. I was failing a lot of classes because I couldn't read well. His younger brother, the one who later got killed protecting Amber at a convenience store robbery, was such a sweetheart, but he got wrapped up in the wrong group at school and got expelled twice. Nosh's little sister had a heart condition. She got proper medical care, but she died six months after the shooting. I think that hit Nosh harder than anything. We were a mess. Who believes bad kids when they complain?"
