Page 84 of Top Shelf

“It’s okay,” I tell her, unsure if she can actually hear me or understand my words. “You’re safe now. I’ve got you. Do we know who she is?” I ask, directing the question to Silas. The two of us search the ground around her for a handbag or purse, but see nothing.

“Who are you?” I murmur, taking in the delicate features of her face. I note the finer details: the cut on her lip, her chipped and cracked nails, the scrape across her collarbone. She looks like she fought her attacker. Like she gave him everything she had…and it still wasn’t enough.

“Do we call someone?” I ask, hating how unsure I am. I’m always the one with the answers. The one who takes charge. But in this situation? I haven’t a fucking clue. I want to pull her intomy arms and take her back to our hotel room and keep her safe. I want to track down whatever piece of shit thought it was okay to assault a vulnerable woman. I want to scream and rage at how dark and twisted and entirely fucked up this world can be. At the injustice of a girl going out for a night and ending up raped, beaten, and left for dead up against the side of an abandoned house. “Or take her to the hospital?”

The question is barely past my lips before Lucian storms up with all the energy of a bull in a china shop. On instinct, I lean over her, protecting her from his rage. Lucian is unpredictable at the best of times, and right now he is as far from himself as I have ever witnessed.

“Lucian—”

“No,” he snarls, head whipping up to glare at me in the dark. “Fuck that. We aren’t taking her to some hospital. We take her with us,” he declares, shoulders set in a way that says he’s made the decision and he’s not fucking changing it.

“What if she’s got injuries we can’t see?” I argue. “The hospital can do tests. They’ll call the police.”

He scoffs, leaning forward to lift her eyelid. She groans softly, but that’s the only response we get.

“See that?” he hisses. “Her pupils are blown. Hazy. She was probably roofied, which means she won’t remember shit to tell the police.”

“What about DNA?” I argue. Silas nods his head in agreement with me.

“Ifthere is any DNA,” Lucian argues, making it sound like that’s a big fuckingif, “it’ll still be there in the morning, once the drugs have worn off and she can make the decisionfor herself. Fuck knows, the last thing she needs right now is more men making decisions for her, without her consent.”

Well, shit. Can’t exactly argue with that one.

Silas doesn’t seem to have a suitable comeback either.

Either sensing our acquiescence or deciding he doesn’t give a fuck, Lucian shrugs out of his Henley, pulling it over the girl’s still, cold frame, before scooping her into his arms.

“Fine,” I lament. “We’ll take her back to the hotel and get her warm. Get her somewhere private. Then figure out the rest.”

The girl’s head lolls against Lucian’s bare chest as he moves to stand. She doesn’t even stir as he carries her like she weighs nothing. As though whatever fire had been burning inside her has gone quiet now, buried under exhaustion and blood and fear.

Silas drapes his hoodie over her too, tucking it around her arms to ensure she is kept warm, and I grab her discarded heel before following the others back toward the street. Silas leads the way; meanwhile, I fall into step behind them, checking over our shoulders every few steps as though I expect her attacker to jump out of a bush at any moment.

We make it back to the hotel without further incident, and Lucian eases her onto the bed in the room he has to himself because he refuses to share with anyone else, and the one time Coach forced him to…well, that rookie quit the team the next morning, so that says it all. She stirs, barely, as Silas pulls a blanket over her. Lucian disappears into the bathroom and comes back with a warm washcloth, pressing it to the dried blood on her temple.

We take shifts looking after her that night.

I take the first one, sitting in a chair in the corner of the room that gives me the perfect view of her sleeping face. Her breathing is soft, uneven. Her braid half-unraveled, and her face pale.

But she’s alive.

While I stare at her, I think of my mother’s world. How they dress wounds in rhetoric. How they spin pain into politics andpackage suffering so it fits a prettier narrative. How they make girls like her disappear into silence, all while smiling for the cameras.

But this girl?—

She didn’t disappear.

She clawed her way through the dark, and we were the ones who found her.

I don’t know her name. Don’t know anything about her, except that something in merose upthe second I saw her. Something cold and sharp and ready to burn the whole fucking world if it meant keeping her safe.

Something in meknew.

She doesn’t have anyone looking out for her.

She certainly didn’t tonight. Maybe not ever.

So she has us now.