Nicole Edwards - Zane

“She’s showing all of the signs of PTSD,” Greyson said quietly.

V did look up then. Zane released her but kept his hand on her leg. “I’m not the one who suffered the attack,” V replied, clearly not understanding just how much she had been affected by the attack.

“V,” Kaleb said as he leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees, “you need to talk to someone about this. What you saw that day is tearing you up inside.”

“No!” V exclaimed adamantly, pulling away from Zane completely. “It’s Jake. He’s stalking me. He’s breaking into my house and leaving notes! He’s... terrorizing me.”

“And he’s also throwing bricks through your goddamn window, V!” Zane barked, losing his shit. He was so fucking tired of seeing how Jake Sanders had affected every damn person he cared about. V was suffering probably more than he ever had because the mental strain was so much different than the physical pain. He’d healed.

Sure, the anger was still a black cloud that loomed dangerously overhead, and clearly it was beginning to spread to his brothers.

The fear in V’s eyes made Zane realize what he’d just done. He’d worked hard to keep what happened from her, yet he was the one who went and told her.

“That’s what you and Kaleb were doing? You had my window replaced?” V asked, sounding oddly calm.

Zane nodded.

“Why the fuck didn’t you tell me?” Ok, not so calm anymore.

This was getting completely out of hand.

“Grey,” Zane addressed the EMT, also Sawyer’s best friend, “she’s not going to go to the hospital.” That was more than apparent. Zane totally agreed that she needed to see a doctor, but tonight wasn’t the time to discuss it.

“I don’t think she should stay here alone,” Greyson added.

“She’ll be staying with me.” Zane wasn’t about to leave her here, and they were much safer at his house, thanks to the fact that his brothers all lived on the ranch.

“Are you sure you don’t want to go to the hospital?” Greyson asked V one last time. When she shook her head, telling him the same thing she’d told him earlier, Greyson simply nodded and left the room.

“Get some of your things,” Zane instructed her, trying to rein in some of his frustration. He was angry at so many things right at that moment – V for being stubborn, Jake Sanders for being a prick, Sheriff Endsley for not doing his job. But mostly, Zane was mad at himself. He’d brought this all on them. He’d been the one who couldn’t keep his temper in check when Jake was mouthing off. He was the one that Jake was retaliating against, yet everyone he cared about seemed to be in the middle of it.

When V didn’t move, Zane glanced over at Kaleb, waiting for his brother to give them some privacy. Kaleb nodded his head, then stood from his seat on the other side of V. He, as well as everyone else, disappeared out the front door, leaving them completely alone in the house.

“Go get some of your things,” he repeated, looking over at her now.

“I don’t want to go with you.” V’s words stunned him for a minute.

“We’ll be better off at my house where my brothers are close by.”

“No, Zane. I don’t want you here, and I don’t want to go with you.”

His anger flashed bright and incandescent. So that was the way she was going to play it. Zane was too damned tired to play her games right now. “You’re not staying here by yourself.”

“I’m going to go stay with my mother for a while.”

“What do you mean ‘for a while’?” Zane stared back at her, noting the determination in her light brown eyes. She was breaking up with him. He could feel it in his bones.

“I don’t know.”

Zane stood from his seat, too pissed off to say anything more. He didn’t have it in him to argue with her. Once V made up her mind, it would take more energy than he had to change it. Nodding his head in understanding, Zane walked right out the front door and didn’t look back.

♀♂

V packed her suitcase. Two actually. She would be going to Vegas next week with Zoey, and she wasn’t about to come back home before then. She’d go stay with her mother for a little while. Maybe without her here, Jake wouldn’t be so hell bent on hurting Zane.

Dragging both suitcases into the living room, V nearly came out of her skin when she saw Beau standing in the doorway.

“You scared the shit out of me,” she told him, remembering she hadn’t locked the front door after Zane left. Beau had still been on the front porch with the twins, and she wasn’t sure whether they’d need to come back in. Apparently he did.

“You’re really leaving?” Beau didn’t sound or look happy with his thick arms crossed over his even bigger chest, a scowl on his face. For all intents and purposes, Beau was a giant teddy bear. He didn’t seem so soft and cuddly at the moment. In fact, he looked a little pissed.

“Just for a little while,” she explained, knowing it wasn’t going to do any good.

“Why?”

V should’ve expected the question, but it pissed her off all the same. It was none of his business why she was leaving.

“As a point, I do my best not to get involved,” Beau began, “but I’m going to say this one time. Don’t crush him, V. You can’t even begin to understand what you’ve got in a man like Zane. He’s loyal, honest, and when he loves, it’s forever. He’s found that with you. I’ve never seen him look at another woman the way he does you. Take time to think about what you need to think about, but make sure you know what you’re doing. If you push him away, he won’t come back.”

V’s heart felt like it’d been stabbed with an Exacto knife and was deflating rapidly. She could only stare at the big man in her entry way. The same man she’d been intimate with a time or two in recent months. The same one who she’d come to care about because he was there for her while Zane was in the hospital. The same man who obviously had more feelings for Zane than anyone else would probably ever know. Beau Bennett was a good man. As good a man as Zane.

V nodded her agreement, afraid that if she so much as inhaled deeply, she’d break down. She couldn’t afford to break down. There was too much to think about. And she fully intended to think. Later. Much, much later.

“I’m going to follow you until just outside of town. I want you to call me when you get to your mother’s.” Beau took a step closer, then pulled her up against him in a hug so fierce, it threatened her resolve in an instant.

“He loves you, V. I’ve never seen him love someone that way before.”

The tears began streaming down her face, but V held back the sobs. She wrapped her arms around Beau’s trim waist and buried her face in his chest for just a minute. When she managed to dry up the water works, she took a step back and reached for her suitcases. Before she could get them, Beau hefted them both in one hand and carried them out the front door.

V hurried through the rest of the house, shutting off the lights and grabbing her purse and her keys. Just when she thought she’d have to face the terror of her front porch alone, Beau was back, taking the keys from her hand and helping her the rest of the way to the car, locking up behind them.

When V noticed the headlights of Beau’s truck disappear from view just a few miles outside of Coyote Ridge, she reached for her cell phone and dialed her mother’s number.

“Can I stay with you for a few days?” V listened to the welcoming sound of her mother’s voice, grateful when she said she’d be thrilled to have V there for as long as she needed to be there. With that, V hung up the phone and drove.

♂♀

 Vegas was exactly as Zane expected it to be: loud, flashy and crammed with people.

After checking in at the hotel, Zane and the rest of the crew, except for Kaleb and Gage who were waiting for Zoey and V to land, left their luggage in their room and spontaneously went in search of food. That idea was effortlessly squashed as soon as they noticed the more than plentiful bars that dotted Las Vegas Boulevard. Within minutes, they were inside Diablo’s Cantina, listening to some kind of loud, screaming music and laughing about the trip in.

It didn’t take long before they were flocked by a group of women who looked barely old enough to drink, but more than eager to party it up in Las Vegas with their small group. Zane glanced around, laughing at his brothers who were eating up the attention as though they didn’t spend most days inundated with strange women. Travis, Sawyer, Greyson, Brendon, Braydon, Aaron, CJ, Jaxson, and Blake didn’t seem to mind the attention at all.

Zane, Beau, and Ethan were managing to keep their distance, although he wasn’t sure who Ethan was staying away from. He had a feeling his brother had absolutely no interest in the women, although he did seem to show quite a bit for Blake. Not that he was going to ask. No, Zane was quite satisfied with the idea of getting drunk for the next two days and staying that way.

Surprisingly enough, Zoey and V took a separate flight from the rest of them, and that meant Zane hadn’t seen V for almost an entire week. He hadn’t talked to her or texted her either. She hadn’t reached out to him at all, and the thought still hurt like an anvil sitting on his chest. He was doing his best to pretend he wasn’t affected by the easy way she’d shunned him, turning her back on him at a time when he thought she might actually need him.

He’d been wrong.

Somehow Zane managed to keep himself busy though. When Travis returned from Dallas, he did as he promised himself he would, meeting with both Travis and Sawyer to lay out a plan for the new clubs in the resort. They agreed to work with Sierra Sellers on the design, and they put a rough drawing together of the layout for both of them. That’s what he spent most of his time doing.