“Christ,” a familiar voice groaned, and I moved the soft hand to focus on him, seeing Garrett holding his head in both hands. “What the hell, Zuri?”
Lifting the heavy hand away from my throbbing face, I winced when it scratched the skin on my cheek and then saw the red cast on it.
My first question was: They did these in red? I don’t think I’d ever seen a red cast before.
The second question was: Why is my hand in a cast?
That one quickly moved on to: Where am I? when I noticed the sheets that definitely didn’t belong to me and were wrapped around me like a fajita.
“Did you…” I mumbled, still trying to let all of it sink in. “Did you swaddle me?” And then I saw the wall in front of me and felt one behind me as I tried to roll onto my back. “And put pillows around me like a baby on a bed?”
“You kept rolling around, so I had to do something to stop you hurting yourself and rolling off the bed,” he replied, pointing above my head.
Following his finger, I looked above me to see the corner of the sheet that was wrapped around me, tied in a knot to the headboard, anchoring me in place.
“Turns out your arms are like Houdini. I ended up watching a video on YouTube of how to swaddle a baby, thinking it would keep them in place, but obviously, you got free.”
I wasn’t sure what to think of that information. As far as I was aware, I slept in one position every night. Sure, I’d wake up in a slightly different place on the bed, but everyone did that, right?
Not sure what to say, I went with the next question. “Why am I here?”
Wincing when he pushed his hair off his forehead and accidentally skimmed his hand across the spot where our heads had connected, Garrett moved so that he was lying on his side beside me.
I’m not at all ashamed to admit that seeing him without his shirt on, his lower half covered by a blanket, stole my attention. Well, from what I could see of him with the pillows between us.
An issue that he fortunately rectified for me when he grabbed them both and threw them behind him onto the floor. Then I was immensely grateful for everything he did because I could see his chest, stomach, and the fact that the sheet was loosely draped over his crotch. That’s when I decided that Garrett was a genius!
Well, that was until he started speaking.
“How much do you remember about yesterday?”
Frowning, I tried to think back. “I did some unpacking. That must be why my back feels like it does. Every time I move, I swear the muscles feel like someone’s cutting them open.”
The cringe from him made my eyes narrow.
“Okay, I’ll just give you a quick rundown, then I’ll answer questions. Ready?”
By the end of it, I was torn between living in my burrito nest for the rest of my life and smothering myself with the pillow my head was on. Judging by the way he was acting, I hadn’t let my problem slip, though, so at least there was that, I guess.
Deciding the pillow was the only option, I tried to reach for it with my good hand and then stopped when it pulled painfully on the wounds on my back. Left with no other option, I dropped the arm over my face instead.
“My life is the worst.”
His chuckle didn’t make me feel better.
“No, it’s not. You were on strong painkillers, so you didn’t have any control over what you were doing.”
Raising my arm slightly so that I could glare at him with one eye, I growled, “Like that makes it better?”
“It was only Rose and me, and we won’t tell anyone,” he lied, looking above my head at whatever was behind me. “No one else noticed or heard you.”
“She’ll totally tell Raul.”
Meeting my eyes for a brief moment, he bit his lower lip while he considered it. “Yeah, she might have. But he won’t tell anyone.”
Hoping he was right, I closed my eyes again, trying to figure out how I was going to get what I needed to do done with one hand and a million holes in my back.
Almost like he was a mind reader—which, given where my thoughts kept going when I saw his bare chest, I really hope he wasn’t—Garrett patted my thigh, almost hitting the other one given how tightly wrapped up I was.
“Don’t worry, I’ll help you unpack and sort whatever you need out. I don’t think my brother’s working either, and I might be able to get DB and Ellis to come.”
The sheriff for our town was called DB by the men, Dave or David by the women. He was also married to a tornado named Tabitha, who had the coolest pink hair I’d ever seen in my life. Ellis was his best friend and the local tattoo artist and was married to her half-sister, Jose.
They were all such a close-knit bunch that the women would also come if he called the men to help.
That meant they’d find out about my injuries and ask how it happened if they didn’t already know about it—which was unlikely. On the off chance that they didn’t, though, asking about them would inevitably lead to Rose or Garrett's indication that something else had happened, which would end up with my actions from last night being coaxed out of them.
Unfortunately, during my musings and rising panic, Garrett had already sent out a message to someone because he dropped his phone onto the bed between us and rubbed his hands together.
“There. I’ll make coffee while we wait to see who’s available.”
I would later find out that he’d sent a group message to all of them the night before and that it was already planned. What’d he’d sent this morning was:
She’s awake and sober. We’ll be there in an hour.
I wasn’t aware of this until two hours later, after I’d given in and taken some painkillers—ones that wouldn’t make me loopy.
But I was right about some of it because his phone lit up, and a stream of messages came through from all of them.
Including the women.
Chapter Four
Zuri
After an hour of seeing Rose, Garrett, and Raul—who’d definitely been filled in on what I’d done judging by the lip twitching that’d been going on since I opened my door—struggle not to tell the group around us, I’d snapped, “Just do it.”
So the whole house knew now, and I was even more embarrassed, seeing as how Garrett hadn’t told me about ninety percent of what I’d done. The shithead.
“She was screeching the music to Pony while he was sitting there getting sewn up with his top off,” Rose wheezed, holding her pregnant stomach while she laughed.
“Is that the song from Magic Mike?” Jose asked, her eyes glittering with the tears from how hard she’d laughed.
Basically, I was surrounded by unsympathetic assholes because the men weren’t much better—sans pregnancies, obviously.
Nodding, Rose continued, “She went through three boxes of tissues, throwing handfuls into the air and yelling to ‘make it rain, baby. Make it rain.’”
I repeat—my life was the worst.
“Why was she singing All The Small Things, though?” Tabby asked as she flattened one of the boxes in the kitchen. “It’s a great song and all, but it’s kind of random.”
Glaring at me from where he was moving a shelving unit into place with his brother, Garrett growled, “She kept looking at my dick while she did it.”