Find Me in Manhattan (Finding #3) (8 page)

“We need to talk.” Jameson’s angry tone caused my body to recoil and prepare to fight back. You know that fight or flight reflex they taught you about in high school biology? It was real, and I wasn’t letting him hurt me again.

I tried to pull my arm loose with no avail. His hand gripped me tighter, forcing me to beg for its release. “Please let me go, Jameson. I’ll talk to you, but please take your hands off me,” I cried.

“Not a chance. You’ll see what you get when you ignore me.”

He started to drag me back to the alley, and I dug my heels in and tried to stand my ground. He was too strong, though. The heel of my right pump broke, and I struggled more to keep up with his unrelenting pace. My body had no choice but to follow or be dragged to the ground. I was frightened but still trying to come up with a way to avoid the alley. I had nothing. He wasn’t going to calm down, and there was no way for me to escape him. I couldn’t outrun him, and there was no one around to hear my cries.

We were almost to the alley when I heard, “Let her go!”

I turned my head to see a guardian angel coming to my rescue. Sergeant Pearson was blazing mad as he approached Jameson. Rising to his full height, he came right up to us and got in Jameson’s face. “Take your hands off her, or I’ll make sure you won’t be able to put your hands on anything ever again.”

“Who the hell are you?” Jameson growled angrily.

“A friend of Sarah’s,” the soldier clarified as he maneuvered closer to where Jameson now had me pinned against a brick wall with his forearm to my neck, and his body pressed firmly against mine.

“Mind your own business. What I do with my girlfriend isn’t your problem.”

The situation escalated from there. Michael grabbed the collar of Jameson’s starched shirt, but Jameson only pressed me harder against the wall causing me to cry out when my head hit the bricks. Michael took the opportunity to punch Jameson’s flawless face with a right hook any MMA fighter would have feared. Jameson fell, taking me with him. Michael kept repeating, “Let her go,” right up until I could scoot away, scraping my legs on the pavement in the process. Jameson quickly recovered; he bounced back up to his feet like some kind of cat, but Michael stood in front of me and blocked a fuming Jameson from coming any closer. When Jameson realized he didn’t have a chance, he wiped his bloody nose and pointed at me. “This isn’t over, Sarah,” he warned then walked out and slid into a black hired car before it drove away.

It wasn’t until the taillights were out of sight that I felt like I could breathe again.

Michael turned around and glared at me. His tall frame standing over me was overtly alpha and intimidating, but it was his words that made me want to run away. “Is that who put those bruises on you?”

Damn.
He had seen them.

Michael

I knew I had to calm myself down. There I was standing over the poor girl seconds after her boyfriend had assaulted her. While I wanted to know more about what was going on so I could protect her, I knew I had to back off or she’d be running from me as well.

“I’m sorry.” I held my hand out to her, offering to help her up from the ground where she fell during the scuffle with that asshole.

Instead of taking my hand, she batted it away. “I can get up myself. I’m fine.”

She awkwardly picked herself up from the ground. It didn’t look easy in that fitted skirt. She did everything she could to keep her goods hidden from my view, which meant she had to roll over on her hands and knees. It was all I could do not to groan while imagining her in that position without the ass-hugging skirt.

Once standing, she took stock of herself while I tried to get myself back under control. She examined her skirt, frowning when she saw the rip in the side. I noticed her scraped legs. The palms of her hands looked even worse.

“We should take you to the hospital,” I told her as she continued to look for damage.

She looked up at me with disdain. “For some scrapes? Please. I’ve had much worse. I need some alcohol for my hands and a drink to forget the brouhaha that just happened.”

“The brouhaha? Is that what we’re calling it?” I asked with an almost laugh.

“What would you call it? A fight? Hardly. I’ve had worse with my brother. Jameson didn’t even try to swing at you. He had no problem hitting me in the face but kept his hands off you.” She froze suddenly as if she didn’t realize what she had said when she said it. Her wide eyes looked surprised as if it was someone else who said he had hit her. I could see where he grabbed her. The bruises were still there, but the son of a bitch hit her, too.

“He hit you?”

“I’m fine.” She waved me off like it was no big deal then looked around and realized we were still in the alley. “I need to go.”

“You need to go to the police.”

“I did. This is what happened after I involved the police and the university.” I didn’t know what to say to that. The police should have arrested the son of a bitch.

She started walking back out toward the street, and I had to move to catch up with her. “Wait, let me take you home.” I wasn’t sure how she would get on the back of my bike in that skirt, but something told me not to let this girl go home alone.

“I’m fine,” she insisted and hobbled on one heel to the curb.

I continued following her as she waved down a cab. “I know what women really mean when they say they’re fine. Let me take you home.”

She stopped and turned to face me. “Thank you, but no. I don’t need help. I’m a big girl, Sergeant Pearson. I’m not looking for a hero.”

She turned away from me for a moment
,
still trying to wave down a cab while I stood stock-still trying to figure this girl out. She was traumatized and needed help. I wasn’t trying to be a
hero
; I was trying to be a gentleman, and I couldn’t seem to stop. As if I had the motions ingrained in me, I found myself waving down her godforsaken cab.

The second the stupid yellow car stopped in front of me, I felt the anxiety rise in me. There was no way I’d be able to get in that car, but if I didn’t, I wouldn’t know sweet Sarah was safe. Breathing became difficult, and I felt the dark closing in on me. It wasn’t hot outside, but suddenly it felt like I was back in the desert trapped in the truck. Any moment and I’d be out of commission, stuck in a memory. Thinking fast, I said, “Let’s go get a drink,” probably louder than necessary. She looked up at me with a confused expression on her pretty face. “I just want to make sure you get home okay. I don’t think that’s so much to ask.”
Smooth, Michael. Really smooth.

Right then her phone went off in her hand. She looked down at it and frowned before saying, “Okay.”

“Okay?”

“Yeah, but I want to go home and change. I have a rip in my skirt, and I want to clean these scrapes. You never know what kind of infection I could get from these streets.”

“In or out, lady?” the cab driver yelled.

“Out,” I said and slammed the door. Sarah’s eyebrows were raised and arms were crossed when I turned around. “What? He was boorish.”

She laughed. “Sure.” She took her unbroken shoe off and slammed it against the ground before ripping the heel off. She slid it back on her foot then she started walking away.

“Where are you going?”

“The subway. I’m not spending ten minutes waving down a cab when I could be on my way home.”

I thanked the transportation gods and gratefully followed her the five blocks and down the stairs to the dirty subway. I spent the whole five blocks wondering what to say to her. We knew each other’s secrets at this point, so it was difficult to come up with something to say without bombarding her with questions about the asshole who hurt her.

“You don’t know what to say to me, do you?” she asked once we sat in a practically empty subway car.

Startled by her audacity, I couldn’t help but let out a little laugh. “No, I honestly don’t have a clue.”

“I figured.” She shrugged while staring straight ahead. “You want to ask about the guy, but you know I don’t want to talk about it. More so, it would be inappropriate for me to discuss my personal life with a study participant, but you aren’t just a study participant now, are you, Sergeant?”

“I told you to call me Michael,” was the only thing I could think to say.

“Yeah, Michael,” she uttered quietly.

“Sweet Sarah,” I responded.

“I’m far from sweet. You should meet my best friend. She’s like sugar. I’m the one who…” She stopped talking and seemed to lose herself in her head.

“You’re the one who what?”

“Let’s just say I’m not sweet and leave it at that,” she smirked.

I found myself laughing out loud this time. The noise was so unfamiliar, I wasn’t sure it was me. Nothing about Sarah was typical. I didn’t know what to expect from her from one minute to the next. She was different…special. She was dangerous.

“How serious are you with that guy?”

“I’m always serious until they screw up or something gets in the way.”

“Explain.”

“All right. Distance, cheater, going nowhere, violent. You?”

“Boring, boring, and you guessed it, more boring.”

She tilted her head back and laughed, giving me a glimpse of the carefree, happy Sarah. “Sounds like you found some winners.”

“You know it.”

“I’m sure they were all beautiful.”

“Beautiful, no. Hot, yes.”

She looked over at me with equal parts question and amusement. “What’s the difference?”

“I don’t know. I guess in my excessively male brain a beautiful girl is more than just looks. A hot girl doesn’t really have anything else going for her.” There was no need to sugarcoat it. She’d read my file. She knew my secrets. “She’s the kind of girl you take to bed, not the one you care about.”

She nodded. “I see.”

I couldn’t tell if she was offended or what, but she was quiet for a moment then said, “Which am I? Or do I fit into either of those categories?”

She was brazen. I liked how confident she was. It didn’t really seem like my answer would bother her either way. The strangest thing was that part of me wanted to tell her, but I couldn’t afford to open myself up in that way. So, I ignored her question. “I’m surprised you asked.”

“Why? Do I seem timid and shy to you, Michael?” This was the first time she’d called me by my name instead of my rank without me prompting her. I liked how my name sounded with her slight twang. I found her accent alluring, like everything else about her.

“No.” I grinned. “Shy is probably the last word I’d use to describe you.”

“All right then, which am I?”

“In my book?”

“Yes. I don’t see anyone else distinguishing between beautiful and hot.” She waved around the train car. There was a man on the other side of the car with a long beard rocking back and forth and a tired-looking Hispanic woman in scrubs a couple of seats down holding a giant purse in her lap.

Once I realized that she wasn’t going to let it go, I let my eyes meet hers and told her what I honestly thought. “You’re beautiful, Sarah. You’re the kind of girl who guys fall for, not the kind they fuck.”

She held my gaze, and for a moment, I felt like she could see into me. She didn’t flinch at my language or smile at my assessment. Instead, she stared, remaining frozen for a moment, and then she started laughing, full on hysterical giggles. “No offense,” she said through the laughter, “but I don’t think you know what you’re talking about.”

“Think what you want, Sarah, but you’re nothing like those girls.” And she wasn’t. She was missing the desperation of the other women I had met. She was less snake-like and more like a sweet bunny that might have some hidden claws. She was different in the best possible way.

I thought I would never be disappointed in ending conversation, but when we reached her stop and this one was cut short, I felt like I had lost something. She silently led me from the train the few blocks to her apartment, making me wonder how often she walked this path alone.

“Here we are,” she said causing me to look up at an old brick building. She led me through a door that was missing a doorman and any sort of security that a small child couldn’t get around. There was no protection here for Sarah. I continued to follow her up the stairs to an apartment on the second floor. Inside was bright and colorful, but I was too preoccupied with the lack of security protecting her from the outside to care.

“I’m going to change,” she said and pointed to a door at the end of a short hall. “Would you like somethin’ to drink?” she asked without adding the -g on the end of something. That accent was going to be the death of me.

When I shook my head, she stepped toward her door and said, “Make yourself at home?” It sounded like a question, making me think she realized this place was not the best space for her or maybe she felt strange for having a “study participant,” as she called me, in her apartment.

“Wear jeans,” I told her.

Her wariness showed all over her face. “Why?”

“Wear jeans,” I said again a little more insistently without an explanation. I wanted her on the back of my bike with her legs wrapped around me, and the only way I could think of making that happen was for her to be in tight jeans instead of one of those hot little skirts.