Behind her, a tall guy in a black sweatshirt and black jeans approaches, sliding a cell phone into his back pocket. The very embodiment of intimidation, he looks like he’s about tear one of the waiting room chairs out of the ground and start trashing the place. A deep, unhappy frown marks his brow. I’m about to warn Dr. Romera that a dangerous-looking inked-up psychopath is about to lynch her, but then the guy slides his arm around her waist.
Well, fuck me.
How ironic is this?
I took one look at Dr. Romera, and I took one look at the guy, and I decided there wasn’t a realm or plane of reality in which they might possibly be together. Which is exactly what other people do when they see me and Alex walking down the street together, holding hands. I look wholesome, the same way Dr. Romera does. Our men both look like they just got spat out of hell because even the halls of the damned couldn’t contain them.
Beside me, Halliday squeaks nervously, plucking at my sleeve. “I’ll meet you by the car. I need to make a phone call.”
I hope to god she’s not calling 911.
“All good?” the huge guy asks, giving Dr. Romera a smile that borders on frightening.
The smile the doctor returns to him is far sweeter. “Just saying hello to a previous patient. Silver, this is Zeth. He’s my…well, he’s mine,” she says laughing awkwardly.
The guy, Zeth, turns his attention to me, nodding just the once, and I almost mimic Halliday and make a run for the door. “Pleased to meet you,” he tells me, in a deep, rough-edged baritone.
“Likewise.”
He brushes a hand possessively over Dr. Romera’s hair, smoothing down an errant strand. “I have something I need to take care of. Be back for you in an hour?”
She nods, and I have to look away from them, embarrassment coursing up and down my spine. The expression on his face is so openly sexual that I nearly burn up from the heat of it. Shit, is this how people feel when they’re trapped at close quarters with me and Alex? I seriously hope we’re not this fucking obvious.
I’m contemplating how best to back away from them without being noticed when I see someone on the other side of the E.R. that makes my pulse spike through the fucking roof. Narrowing my eyes, I glare at the bastard talking to the nurse at the desk with all the intensity of a thousand burning suns. “Lowell.”
“What the fuck did you just say?” Zeth isn’t looking at Dr. Romera anymore. He’s looking at me, and I really wish he wasn’t. His eyes are sharper than daggers and glint very dangerously indeed. “Did you just say Lowell?”
Dr. Romera’s eyes are on the verge of bugging out of her head. She looks at Zeth, then back at me, tightening her hand around the white lab coat she’s holding.
I’ve said something wrong, somehow, and I have no idea how to fix it. “Yeah, um… A detective with the DEA.”
Zeth’s back straightens. “Here?”
Nervously, I point over to the Detective, unsure if I’m doing the right thing. “He questioned me about what happened when I was attacked. He implied that I’d made it up or something. I accused him of taking a bribe from the Weaving family and things got a little ugly.”
The rigidity in Zeth’s body eases. Even Dr. Romera seems to relax. Zeth’s dark eyes bore into the detective, though, still just as cutting as they were a moment ago. “No such thing as a coincidence,” he growls. “I’ll go talk to him.”
“Hey, don’t,” Dr. Romera pleads. “Go. Run your errands. I’ll make sure the guy doesn’t cause any problems here. It’s all good. Seriously. Please.”
I wouldn’t have thought a freight train could stop this guy once he gets an idea in his head, but that one word from Dr. Romera—please—has him pumping the brakes hard. “Fine. Okay. Let me know if you need me.” He nods to me again, giving me an approximation of a smile. Reaching into his pocket, he takes out a wallet and produces a plain card from inside. “That fucker causes you any more trouble, you call this number.” I take the card from him, noting that there’s no name on it. No address. No business information. Just a Seattle number, printed on the face of the card stock in stark, unassuming characters.
“Uh…thanks?” I’m worn-thin from spending time with Zen, and this weird interaction has officially fried my brain. I need to get the fuck out of here. Bidding the doctor and her whatever he is goodbye would be the polite thing to do, but I’m too turned around to come up with the words. I hurry out of the hospital, ignoring the cold wind that slams me right in the face as I step out into the lot, and I don’t stop walking until I reach Halliday’s car.
“What was that all about?” Hal asks when I throw myself into the passenger seat.
“I have no idea. I really don’t want to know. Come on. Let’s get out of here. I’ve had enough of this place to last me a goddamn lifetime.”
Halliday turns the key in the car’s ignition, bringing the vehicle to life. She puts the car in reverse…only she doesn’t execute the maneuver. When I look at her, fat, unhappy tears are streaking down her cheeks. “Jesus. What is it, Hal?”
She sniffs, aggressively rubbing at her nose with the back of her hand, like she’s mad at herself. “I wasn’t supposed to say.” Her voice is thick and clogged up with emotion. “You know me, though,” she says, smiling brokenly through her tears. “I don’t hold up well under pressure. Zen…things are far more complicated than they seem. She’s fucking pregnant.”
My blood runs ice cold in my veins. At the same time, Sam Hawthorne’s voice whispers at me from the grave. “If you wind up pregnant, that’d probably be really bad, don’t you think? You’d have to explain that you went whoring around with not one but three guys…”
Detective Lowell suggested I was thinking too logically when I walked in that pharmacy after Leon Wickman’s party and downed a Morning After pill. Sam planted the seed in my head, though. He’d painted a picture, and I’d wanted to avoid that terrible outcome at all costs.
Doesn’t look like he had the same little chat with Zen.
17
ALEX
The week passes by and things settle into a weird, off-kilter routine. I pick Silver up in the Camaro, waiting in the driveway for her to come flying out of the house with her guitar case clutched under one arm, her hair flying all over the place in the wind.
On the way to Raleigh, I make a point of discussing what’s going on inside my head, even though it’s dark, and fucked up, and I don’t want to. I’m no good at talking about my fucking feelings like a little bitch in therapy but sharing things with Silver is different. She doesn’t judge me for whatever I’m thinking. I don’t feel any less Alex, the unstoppable, undefeatable rebel of Raleigh High, for revealing the tender, raw parts of myself to her. If anything, I feel like I’m beginning to understand myself better by looking inwards instead of burying everything down and ignoring it the way that I normally would.
Giacomo maintains his distance. I teeter on the brink of forgetting that he’s even here, poisoning the Raleigh air with his toxicity, but I don’t quite manage to pull it off. A part of me can sense the fucker lurking in my peripherals, just waiting for another opportunity to swoop in and turn my shit upside down again. I vow to myself that I won’t let his presence affect me, though. For the most part it works.