Change Me (The Protector Series Book 2) Read online

  I squatted down to get a good grip on the door and hoped like hell that it wasn’t locked. Lucky for me, it was unlocked. The door raised about six inches off the ground before it got stuck. I gave it another effort and my hands slipped off the handle, causing me to fall back onto my rear. I let out a grunt and then chuckled at myself.

  “J? That you?” a raspy voice asked from inside the warehouse. I immediately got to my feet. I wobbled a bit and suddenly felt a little light-headed. I stood there for a moment, contemplating whether I should call for help or go inside alone. I wished I’d grabbed my pills before leaving the house.

  “Hello? Is anybody there?” the voice asked again.

  I got down on my knees and tried once more to lift the door. It opened a few more inches and then stopped. I lay down on my stomach and shimmied under the door and into the warehouse. It was pitch black in the building, and I’d left my cell phone with my books, so I couldn’t use it for light. I took tiny steps in the direction that made the pain in my arm and the floaty feeling in my head increase. I stubbed my toe on something and took a quick step back when that something groaned.

  I fell to my knees and blindly felt through the darkness in front of me.

  “What the hell are you doing?” the voice asked weakly.

  He was whispering now, but I was close enough to tell that the voice belonged to a male. My hands moved around blindly until I finally found his face and made my way down to his left arm. He sucked in a sharp breath when I grabbed it in both of my hands. His skin was wet with what I knew was blood and I wished I’d had some sort of light to help me inspect the damage. I knew I didn’t have any of my pills with me, but I had no choice but to take his pain away. I gritted my teeth as I closed my eyes and focused on the man’s breathing.

  Sweat ran down my back just as the stranger took a deep breath. His body was no longer trembling and he was no longer wincing when I applied pressure to his forearm.

  I, however, felt like I was weightless and weak. I released my grip on the man’s arm and let myself fall backward onto the concrete floor. I hit my head when I fell, but I didn’t feel it. I didn’t feel anything and I didn’t see anything. I could hear the man beside me mumbling, but I didn’t have enough energy to focus on what he was saying.

  A bright light started shining down on me, and I couldn’t keep my eyes open. I clamped them shut and attempted to move my arm over my eyes, but it was too heavy.

  “Shit, man, I’ve gotta get to a hospital. This is going to need stitches,” I heard a man say. My eyes were still closed, so I couldn’t see anything, but I could tell they were slowly starting to adjust to the light.

  “What are you waiting for? Let’s go!” the same voice said. I slowly opened my eyes, squinting against the bright light. Once they were fully opened I saw that the garage door had been opened and the sunlight shining in was what had been hurting my eyes. I groaned as I tried to move any part of my body. Everything felt so much heavier than usual.

  “Shit, she’s waking up! What do we do?”

  “Get out of here. Take my bike. I’ll handle this,” a different voice said. It was a deep, strong voice. A familiar voice. I heard the engine of what sounded like a motorcycle roar to life. Second later, Jasper’s face came into view. He was kneeling beside me as his face hovered over mine.

  “What are you doing here, Macie?” he asked as he shook his head.

  “I had to help him,” I said quietly. I tried to sit myself up but couldn’t even lift my head.

  “I’m going to help you sit up,” he said. It wasn’t a question. He slid one arm behind my neck and placed the other one on my stomach to steady me as he pulled me into the sitting position.

  “Are you hurt?” he asked.

  I shook my head slowly as I looked around the building we were in. It was filled with things. Expensive things. I counted ten TVs, even more laptops, and a handful of game consoles. I could only see half of it while I was sitting on the floor.

  “Where are we?” I asked, making eye contact with Jasper for the first time since he’d been there.

  “Er, in somebody’s warehouse. If you’re feeling okay, we should really get out of here.”

  I was exhausted, but the light-headedness was dissipating. Nothing was in its original package. The majority of it wasn't in any sort of package. I slowly stood up and took a step toward the other side of the warehouse so I could get a better view.

  “Uh, Macie, that’s not a good idea,” Jasper said as he grabbed my wrist and prevented me from going any further.

  “It’s stolen, isn’t it? Everything in here is stolen,” I said, keeping my back to him.

  “No. I don't know. How would I know that?”

  “What are you doing here, Jasper?” I sneered. He opened his mouth and then shut it. “Before you even think about lying to me, don’t. I heard you talking to the other guy. He’s clearly your friend, and the door was unlocked when I got here, so he must’ve unlocked it himself.”

  “I think you should go, Macie,” Jasper said sharply.

  I got angry. Really angry. I stomped out of the warehouse with my arms crossed.

  “I saved your friend’s life, in case you were wondering. He should be ready for another heist by morning,” I spat out before going to the front of the building to get my things.

  “Macie!” I heard Jasper call from behind me. I flipped him the bird over my shoulder and kept walking. I heard him chuckle as he jogged up beside me. “Will you hold up for a second?”

  When he grabbed my wrist again, I jerked away then took a hard step toward him putting my finger in his face. “You don’t get to touch me, Jasper. You don’t know me and I don’t like you. I don’t want to hear anything you have to say. Leave. Me. Alone.”

  He glared at me and I glared back, refusing to back down.

  “You’re smart to dislike me, Macie.”

  I tilted my head to the side and raised an eyebrow as I waited for an explanation, but he didn’t give me one. Regardless of why he said it, I knew he was right. He was a bad guy. My job was to help people. I didn’t even associate with criminals, much less have friendships or whatever this was with them. The smartest thing would be to turn and run as quickly as possible.

  But I didn’t move. I continued to stare at him expectantly. His eyes broke away from mine as he started to look me up and down. He smirked when he was finished checking me out and made eye contact with me again. I glared at him, and his smirk turned into a full smile. I put the hand that wasn’t holding my textbooks on my hip and took it upon myself to look his body up and down with no shame.

  I wanted to hate what I saw. I wanted him to be disgusting and awkward, but he was far from either of those things. His dark hair was messy and I imagined him getting out of bed in the morning with it looking like that. He had stubble along his jaw that made him look like the bad guy that I assumed he was. His t-shirt fit him perfectly, displaying his muscled chest and arms. When my eyes came to his waist I jerked them back up to his face, not wanting to go down that road.

  The smile he had been wearing had disappeared and the indifferent look in his eyes had been replaced with…was that desire? I felt my stomach flop when he took a step toward me. I inhaled a deep breath when he took another step. His face was inches from mine and I wanted to be unaffected. Or at least make him think I was unaffected by him.

  He reached out and ran his fingers down the length of my arm. Chill bumps followed behind his touch and I cursed my body for being such a traitor. He slowly started to lean closer to me, his head was lowering and his gaze was fixed on my lips. I licked them involuntarily and slowly rose onto my tiptoes. His lips touched mine and my entire body started to tingle. When I opened my mouth for his tongue he knocked my books to the ground and wrapped his arms around me. He pulled me against him and kissed me harder, and I welcomed it.

  A phone started to ring and effectively pulled us both out of whatever trance we’d been in. He looked at me with his brows drawn togethe
r for a second, then his phone rang again. He dug it out of his pocket and turned around to answer it. I grabbed my books off of the ground and quickly walked in the direction of my apartment. He didn’t try to stop me again.

  As I made my way back to my apartment, I did my best to sort through my jumbled thoughts and emotions. I was thoroughly and completely confused. However, two things were perfectly clear to me: Jasper White was trouble. And I couldn’t control how much I wanted him.

  Sam had been in bed for the last four days. The doctor said he would be lethargic after the blood transfusion and stitches, but I was beginning to think he was just milking it. I was sick of cleaning up his mess by myself.

  The day Sam was in the warehouse, he’d walked in on Jon trying to take some of our loot. Sam confronted him about it and they got into a fight. Apparently, Jon had a knife on him and sliced the inside of Sam’s forearm. He got away with some of the jewelry but hadn’t managed to take anything big.

  Jon did manage to start a war within the Raiders. Daniel was obviously taking his side and I was obviously taking Sam’s. Times like these weren’t good times for Sam and me to be loners. We didn’t have the benefit of other Raiders having our backs while Daniel and Jon definitely had that to their advantage. The fact that Sam and I didn't have the slightest clue as to who the others Raiders were made it that much worse. They had the opportunity to catch us completely off guard.

  The doctor couldn’t believe that Sam had had the energy to drive himself to the hospital for stitches after the amount of blood he’d lost. They said that he shouldn’t have even been conscious. Sam couldn’t remember much of what happened after Macie got there. He said she kept squeezing his arm and then she passed out herself. He assumed she’d stopped the bleeding and that’s what made him feel normal again, but I knew there was more to the story than that. There had to be.

  A day hadn’t passed without my thoughts wondering to Macie at one point or another. She’d gotten under my skin and I hated it. I hated myself for kissing her, but I couldn’t stop myself from wanting to do it again.

  I’d been doing double the amount of jobs the last few days in order to make up for Sam’s lack of jobs and to keep my mind off of Macie as much as possible. I’d had to move everything from the warehouse to a storage shed. Now that Sam had beef with Jon, we would have to actually pay for a place to keep our stolen shit. That wasn’t a good thing. We didn’t like paying for anything; that’s why we’d become Raiders in the first place. And the cops always checked storage units when they were looking for stolen property. I put it under a fake name and hoped that I would be able to find another vacant building to stash it in soon.

  “J? You in there?” Sam yelled from the couch.

  “What?” I snapped.

  “Whoa, what’s crawled up your ass?” he asked as I walked toward him.

  “I’m sick of taking care of you, man. Have you even showered since you got home from the hospital?”

  “Fuck off, man. My arm got sliced open. I had to get a blood transfusion,” he griped.

  “I’m going out. I’ll bring you some food when I come back,” I said as I walked out and slammed the door behind me.

  I got on my bike and rode. I didn’t have any destination in mind; I just didn’t want to stay where I was. I drove all over Jacksonville but eventually ended up at Showtime’s. I considered calling Brooke when I saw that she wasn't working to keep me company for the night, but decided against it when I thought about all the annoying shit she would talk about.

  I took a seat on a stool at the bar and ordered two beers. I downed the first one and planned to take my time with the second.

  “Fancy seeing you here again,” a woman said as she sat down beside me. I studied her for a moment before I remembered her name was Taylor and that she was Macie’s friend. I glanced around, hoping to find Macie somewhere close by.

  “She’s not here. She had to, uh, work tonight,” Taylor said awkwardly. I nodded and took another pull off my beer.

  “Ah, so you were looking for Macie,” she said with a grin. I froze with my beer half way to my lips. Damnit. There was no denying it now.

  I shrugged and finished off the beer that I had wanted to take my time with. Taylor chuckled and patted my shoulder. “Good luck with that,” she said as she shook her head.

  “What do you mean? You don’t think she’d be interested in me?” I raised my eyebrows.

  “For as long as I’ve known her, she’s been too busy to be interested in much of anyone. And even if she were interested in you, I’m sure her brother would make you think twice about pursuing her. He’s pretty…protective,” she giggled as she said the word “protective.”

  “I’m not interested anyway,” I said as I stood up.

  “Of course you’re not.”

  I put cash on the bar and nodded at a very smiley Taylor before I left. I had drunk my beers too fast and didn’t want to risk driving, so I opted to leave my bike in the parking lot and get back to the apartment on foot. It was only a ten-minute walk, and I wasn’t in any hurry to get back home to Sam, anyway.

  My thoughts drifted to Macie for what felt like the hundredth time that day. I had been so shocked when I’d opened the door to the warehouse and seen her lying there with Sam. He hadn’t even recognized her; he was too out of it to realize that we’d kept tabs on her place not long ago.

  Sam had wanted me to leave her there. He’d suggested that we move as much of our stash as we could and get out of there before she woke up. Had it been anyone else, I would have gone along with his plan. But it wasn’t anyone else. It was Macie. It was the tiny, hot-headed, take-no-shit-from-nobody girl who I’d watched stand up to a man behind a bar with no fear in her eyes. The girl who had obviously just saved my best friend’s life. There was no way I was leaving her there alone.

  The look of disappointment on her face when she realized that everything in that building had been stolen was forever engrained in my memory. It felt like a punch to the gut. Which made no sense, because I stopped giving a fuck about disappointing people when I was a kid. Why was it different with her?

  I was almost to the apartment when I saw a couple walking away from the car they’d just parked on the curb. I smiled at the woman and nodded to the man as they walked past me. When they turned the corner and were out of sight, I casually made my way to their vehicle. I had the door open in seconds and the engine roaring to life shortly after. I felt the buzz that I already had intensify as I put the car in drive. I sped onto the main road, smiling as I watched the needle on the speedometer climb higher and higher. I switched lanes carelessly and didn’t stop at a single traffic light. After my quick joyride, I returned the car to the same spot I’d taken it from. Before I got out, I opened the glovebox and took out the bank envelope, shoving it in my pocket without counting the cash. I don’t know why people think it’s a good idea to keep an “emergency fund” in their glovebox; it’s one of the easiest paydays I’ve ever gotten.

  I felt much better as I walked the rest of the way home. I was relieved to see that Sam had fallen asleep on the couch. I’d forgotten his food and didn’t want to listen to him bitch about it.

  The buzz I’d gotten at Showtime’s was fading fast. I took a hot shower and decided to call it a night. Sleep came easy that night.

  ***

  I woke up the next morning to the sound of the shower running across the hall.

  “It’s about time you get your ass in there,” I shouted at Sam.

  He shouted something back, but I was laughing too hard to hear him. I yawned and stretched a few times as I attempted to force my body to get out of bed.

  “Screw it. I’m taking the day off,” I muttered to myself as I pulled the blankets over my head.

  I laid there and listened to Sam get ready to leave the house for the first time in days. When I heard him lock the front door on his way out, I let out a sigh of relief. Finally alone, I transferred to Macie’s window.

  She wasn’t in
her room and the lights were out. I waited for a moment and hoped that I would catch a glimpse of the girl who had been taking over my thoughts recently, but she never showed.

  I slept until noon, then vegged out on the couch for the rest of the day. Sam came back with Blaire on his arm just as the sun started to go down. I gladly returned to my bedroom while they inhabited the small living area. I knew I shouldn’t have, but I transferred to Macie’s window once again.

  She sat on the edge of her bed as she brushed her wet hair. Now that I knew she could see me, I felt awkward watching her without her knowledge. I cleared my throat and waited for her to look in my direction.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked as she lifted the window a couple of inches with her right hand.

  “Just seeing if you felt up to having a visitor,” I said quietly.

  She hesitated for a moment before using both hands to lift the window all the way. I noticed her wince as she let her left arm fall back to her side.

  “You okay?” I asked as I let myself into her bedroom.

  “It’s nothing, just a sprain or something.” She held her wrist and looked around the room nervously.

  “Can I see it?” I asked her.

  She rolled her eyes as she pushed the sleeve of her sweatshirt up to her elbow. I didn’t have to compare it to her right wrist to know that the left was abnormally swollen. I moved closer and saw that the bruises were in the shape of fingerprints.

  “I’ll be right back,” I said through gritted teeth.

  I opened my eyes and took in a calming breath. I still felt zero calmness as I pulled my running shoes on and ran out the door. I ignored Blaire and Sam when they asked where I was going and let the door slam behind me.

  “Damnit!” I shouted when I realized that my bike was still in the parking lot at Showtime’s. I took off running and didn’t even consider slowing down until I saw my bike.