“I hate that you’re hurt, but I’m done with this shit. We’re a family. We always have each other’s backs. We’re not supposed to keep secrets.”
Guilt that I’d made her keep things from my parents ate at my insides. “I just hate the thought of Dad worrying himself sick.”
“I know, but that’s kind of the gig when you have kids.” I knew she was probably thinking, it’s also the gig when you fleece a criminal and put your kids in danger, because I was thinking it too. But neither of us would say that out loud. It just felt too much like a betrayal of the man we loved so damn much. “You’re on your way home now? With that hot guy?”
Damn the invention of the speaker phone and meddling, loud-mouthed sisters. “Yes. West’s taking me home.”
“How are you planning on getting in if you lost all your stuff?”
“I have a hide-a-key, remember?”
“That’s right. Okay, well, try to get some rest. Do you need me to come over and stay with you?”
I would have smiled if it didn’t hurt my lip so damn bad. “I’m good, but thanks. I’ll talk to you in the morning.”
“I’ll be over bright and early with a replacement cell.” That was one of the only good things about coming from a family of con artists. We had burner phones stashed all over the place. One less thing I had to worry about. “I love you, little sis.”
“I love you too, big sis.”
I ended the call on a sigh and passed the phone back to West. “Thanks for letting me use your cell.”
His gruff voice reverberated through the cab, giving me a little tremble. “No problem. Your sister sounds like she really cares about you.”
“She does. We might be a smidge more dysfunctional than other people, but we’re all really close.” I thought about my dad and how he was going to react when he saw me. “This is going to kill my father. He’ll blame himself.”
“Good,” West stated plainly. “He should. What happened to you tonight was his fault.”
My back shot straight, and I turned on him way too fast, tweaking my ribs and sending a lance of pain through my middle. “Ow, shit,” I hissed.
“Don’t move like that,” West scolded. “You’re going to hurt yourself.”
I gritted my teeth as I tried to find a comfortable position that wouldn’t hurt my ribs any worse. “Then maybe don’t talk shit about my dad, and I won’t have to.”
He turned to me for a second, one brow arched knowingly. “Is anything I said wrong?”
“It doesn’t matter if you’re right or wrong. He’s still my dad. He’s not a bad guy, and I’m not going to let you—”
“I never said your dad was a bad man, grift. I said what happened to you tonight was his fault. Because it was. And the moment he sees those bruises and cuts on your face, he’ll know it too. If he doesn’t already. You’re so worried about not hurting him that you probably haven’t stopped to consider he needs this little reminder. If he’s the kind of man to deserve your support, even after this, he’d want to carry around that pain. Trust me. It’ll be a living reminder to him, and he’ll never make this kind of mistake again.”
He had a point, but I was sore and pissy, and I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of saying so.
Fortunately for me, he let the subject drop, and the rest of the drive to my apartment was in silence. I was thinking about how badly I wanted nothing more than to climb into bed, pop a couple of the pain pills I got at the hospital, and sleep for twenty-four hours straight, when West’s headlights illuminated a familiar figure sitting on the sidewalk outside my unit.
“Just freaking great,” I grumbled as I gingerly reached for the buckle to my seatbelt.
West got there first, releasing it and easing it around me carefully. “There a problem?”
“Not a problem. Just a pain in the ass.”
He looked out the windshield and inclined his chin in Jason’s direction. “Take it you know that guy?”
“Unfortunately. He’s my ex.”
“Asshole couldn’t take a hint after you dumped his ass?”
“Other way around, actually,” I admitted. “He dumped me. Then about a year later, he had a change of heart, and decided he wanted me back. The hint he won’t take is that I’m over it and don’t want anything to do with him anymore.”
West’s brows went up, bafflement making those sherry eyes of his dance. “No shit?”
I felt one corner of my mouth quirk up in a barely-there grin. It was all I could manage. “I shit you not.”
A rakish smile wreathed his face. “I can run him off for you. I’m really good at shit like that.”
I had no doubt about that. My ex had been a football star back in high school, and he’d kept himself in shape to this day, but West still had at least two inches and several pounds of muscle on Jason.
“We can make him think I’m your new man.” Uh oh. Why did hearing him say that make me tingle in a few incredibly private places? “You know, since you think I’m hot and all.”
I’d never been more grateful for all the burned-out lights in the parking lot before. It hid the fact that my face was scalding red at that very moment. I was going to kill Serenity, just as soon as I gained back my full range of motion.
“That’s not necessary,” I squeaked. I really needed this night to end. “Anyway, thanks for everything tonight. I owe you one.”
I attempted to reach for the door handle, already dreading the sharp pain the movement would cause me, but before I could swivel all the way around in my seat, West’s hand landed on my arm and stayed me. “Just wait right there. I’ll come around and get you.”
“Oh, you don’t have to do that,” I started, even though the thought of being pressed up against his delicious smelling body again made me all kinds of tingly. When we first got to the hospital, he’d literally picked me up from out of his back seat and carried me inside, holding on to me until they found me a bed. And again, when we left, he lifted me from the wheelchair into his truck. To say it was pretty awesome being in his big strong arms like that would have been putting it mildly. “Really, I can do this.”
He looked at me the way so many of my teachers in elementary and middle school had looked at me after I scammed my classmates out of their lunch money in three card monte. Suckers.
“Not a chance in hell. Don’t move. I’ll be right there.”
God, he was bossy. Usually a trait like that would drive me absolutely insane. Jason had been a little bossy back when we were together, and if I hadn’t been so desperate to ride his coattails right out of the world I was living in and into a life of normalcy, I probably would have shaved his eyebrows off in his sleep. But there was something about West’s bossiness that actually made me a little, well . . . hot.
It wasn’t coming from a domineering, controlling place. I got the distinct impression that his bossing me around was strictly out of worry. Back at the hospital, every time I moved in a way that caused me pain, he’d get on me to lie still. And when the doctor was poking and prodding parts of me that had already been poked and prodded by that nice nurse, I thought West was going to rip his head off. I’d never had anyone outside of my family try to take care of me. It was nice. However, I knew I couldn’t get used to it.