by Heather Long
“A week is a lot of school,” I admitted.
“Pfft, for someone else, maybe. But not for you.” He pushed up from the floor. “You want something to drink? Or one of your pain pills?”
I grimaced. I had managed to not take one all day, even though I had been sore after Coop and I played. The shower had helped, but I’d gotten a little stiff from sitting around so much.
“You don’t have to take it, but you keep wincing,” he told me. “If you’re hurting and I can help, I want to.”
“I haven’t eaten in a while, it might be better to wait until after food, or I’ll end up face planting.”
He nodded and rubbed his right hand. The bruises were still livid marks across his knuckles. They’d turned a beautiful shade of green and yellow. There wasn’t much they could do about his knuckles after they’d relocated them.
“I’ll get you a soda, then, yeah?” He didn’t wait for me to answer as he headed for the kitchen.
“Ian,” I said, and he paused, swinging his glance back to me. “Did I ever actually say thank you or just imagine it?”
He frowned. “For what?”
“For hitting him.” For stopping him.
His jaw tightened. “You don’t have to thank me for that.”
“Yes, I do. I don’t remember it, but I saw your hand, you know. After you got over here, and the cops told me some of it and so did Denitra and the guys.”
Dropping his chin, he let out a sigh. “Frankie, it shouldn’t have ever happened. He should never have been anywhere near you, much less drugged you. I barely remember punching him.” Anger clicked under the words. “I just wish I’d done more.”
Then he headed for the kitchen. It took him more than a minute to get a Coke out of the fridge. I wished I could remember the part where he got there, if nothing else. Something so I could say definitively one way or the other.
That blank wall just sucked.
“I’m sorry,” he murmured as he came back with two cans. He sat on the coffee table next to my feet and popped open can before he passed it to me.
It was my turn to ask, “For what?” The can was cold against my palm, and his fingers were warm where they lingered until he was sure of my grip.
“For being pissy. You don’t need to deal with my baggage from last weekend.”
“Well, at least you remember your baggage,” I said, giving him a small smile. But his expression didn’t change. “Okay, so not my best work.”
“Why are you trying to make me feel better?”
“Because you’re my friend,” I said. If nothing else, we’d been friends for a long time. I’d been trying to salvage that, even if I’d been hurt. The hurt wasn’t gone, but the last week had definitely muted it some. “You’re not happy.”
“Of course, I’m not happy. You’re hurting.” He stared at me, his brows drawing together tightly. “Frankie, tell me you understand that I do still care and what hurts you—fuck.”
“No,” I said quietly, pulling my feet off the table and sitting forward. “Finish it.”
He exhaled a breath, tongue against his teeth as he shook his head. “The last thing you need is me unloading on you.”
“The last thing I need is you telling me what I need.” The words came out sharper than I intended, but he gave a little jerk, then blew out another breath.
I took a sip of the soda before I set it down on the table, then focused on him. There were shadows beneath his eyes. There were shadows beneath all of our eyes. No one had slept well the last week, even if I’d gotten more sleep than all of them.
“You’re right,” he said slowly, and those words came out a little rough. “Will you tell me what you need?”
“Well, talking to me would be a good start,” I said. “I don’t really have a lot of experience with…” I held up my wrist then motioned to the two of us. “The only guy I ever ‘broke’ up with wasn’t really one I dated for long, and last weekend was full of new experiences.”
The humor didn’t land, but damn it, I was trying. A muscle ticked in his jaw, and the knuckles on his left hand went white before he relaxed his clenched fist.
“I suck at this, Ian… Just tell me what you were going to say. Unload on me. Maybe it will help, and then I won’t feel like…”
“Like?” he prompted.
“Like I’m useless,” I admitted. The words tasted like ash on my tongue, and some of the day’s good mood just drained away. “You guys have had to do everything. I don’t know where I would have been this week without all of you.” Or how I’d get through the next week or the week after that. I couldn’t go back to work until the wrist was better. There was stuff I could do at Mason’s, but so much of my job required both hands. Maybe if it were my left wrist…
“Hey.” He exhaled the word as he leaned forward and caught my left hand. The warmth of his fingers wrapping around mine betrayed just how cold I was. “You are not useless. But you are freezing. What the hell?” He didn’t wait for me to answer, just stood and snagged the blanket off the back of the sofa before he pulled it over me and slid onto the sofa next to me. “Snuggle?”
I raised my brows.
“I’m not freezing,” he said. “You are.”
I hadn’t realized I was until he’d held my hand, and I eased toward him as he wrapped an arm around me. My splinted wrist ended up resting against his leg, but his arm around my shoulders was like an electric blanket, and I let out a little shudder as the warmth chased away the chill.
“Thanks,” I said. “I didn’t even realize I was that cold.” The A/C was on, but that was normal. I’d been in shorts and a tank top all day. The thunder outside rolled like a bowling ball racing down to strike the pins. The rush of rain striking told us the storm had finally hit.
“No problem,” Ian murmured, then pressed a kiss to the side of my head. “Sorry,” he said almost as soon as he did it. Then sighed. “Dammit, I used to think I was good at this.”
“Which this? ’Cause we have a lot of thises going on.”
He chuckled. The soft vibration of it shook me, and the corners of my mouth began to twitch. “We do have a whole lot of thises going on.”
I snickered, then his laughter deepened and he squeezed my shoulder. “In this case,” he said as he tried to get his laughter under control. “I meant talking to you.”
“Oh, so you used to be good at talking to me?”
“Yeah.” He hesitated a beat. “Why? Do you think I wasn’t that good at it?”
I leaned my head back against his shoulder so I could look up at him, eyebrows raised.
“Okay, Angel, that’s just mean.” Then he winced, but neither of us commented on the slip. “I was good at talking to you.”
“You still are,” I said in the effort to make some peace. “When you aren’t deciding what I need to hear.” That sobered us. “Speaking of which, you said what hurts me…?”
Not looking away from me, he nodded. “I care about you. That hasn’t changed. What hurts you, hurts me. I don’t want you hurting. You’ve been hurting for days, and I can’t make it just go away. You’re not sleeping well. You’re putting on a brave face. But…”
“But?”
His mouth twisted, and he glanced from me to the hall. The rain outside was coming down loud against the windows, and the rumbles of thunder came more frequently. He shot a glance toward the window, then back at me.
“But you’re not okay.” He clenched his jaw like he needed to brace for my response.
“No,” I agreed with him. “I’m not.”
Silence greeted my statement, and he frowned.
“Surprised I’m agreeing with you?”
“A little,” he admitted. “Yeah. You…”
I shrugged, then shifted a little so I was leaning a little more comfortably against him with my head pillowed on his shoulder. I wasn’t so much looking at him as the wall over the television. It was still muted, though there was some game on. I didn’t even know who was playing.
To be honest, I didn’t care.
“I don’t usually talk about stuff that goes wrong.”
“No,” Ian said. “You don’t. You generally tell us everything is fine, and we have to pull teeth to find out what’s happening.”
“Kind of hard to pretend when you guys know more about it than I do.”
“Frankie…” He sighed.
“You do. You remember it. I don’t. A part of me is glad. But most of me hates that blank spot. I hate not knowing what happened. I got the wrist and the face and the bruises on my back—I know what he tried to do, and I know I hurt him back. But there’s still a blank spot.”
He didn’t respond to that, not at first. Not that there was much he could say, not really. “I’m sorry,” he said finally. “I can’t imagine what that has to be like for you. A part of me is glad you can’t remember it.”
I frowned.
“Hear me out?”
Still not caring for the idea he might be glad about it, I nodded. Thunder cracked overhead so loud, I jumped and Tiddles fled from the back of the sofa to race down the hallway toward my bedroom. He and the others were probably under my bed.
Ian squeezed me gently. “It’s just thunder.”
“No shit. It was just really loud thunder, Captain Obvious.”
He paused.
Then snickered.
Despite my best efforts, I was laughing again.
“Anyway,” he managed to push out. “The part of me that’s glad is just—I don’t know if you were afraid or if you were angry or…what you were feeling. I just know I don’t want you to have to relive it.”
I guess that made sense.
“Then, not knowing means you just kind of fill in the blanks.”
“I hate horror movies.”
“Yeah,” he said slowly. “We know.”
“This is like being in my own. There’s a door you shouldn’t open, but they’re going to open it. The suspense of waiting to see what’s on the other side chokes you, but you do it anyway. What’s worse? Opening the door to see what’s there?”
“Or imagining all the horrible things that could be there.” The fact that he got it helped. “Shit, Frankie, I wish I could tell you.”
“You could tell me what you saw when you got there.”
He went very still.
“If you can.” Maybe that was asking too much?
The door to the bathroom opened with a squeal of hinges, thunder rumbled, getting louder and louder, then the back door opened with a bang. I jumped, and the fact that Ian did too made it a little better.
Coop and Archie made it inside, dripping wet, and Ian grimaced. “I’m going to help them,” he murmured, and I nodded. “Stay there, guys, I’ll grab you some towels.”
They looked positively drowned.
“Are you all right?” I asked, leaning forward to stare at them, even as I tried to get my racing heart under control.
“We’re fine,” Coop laughed. “Just Ferraris and big ass puddles don’t mix.”
“Bite me,” Archie said with a grin. “We got the food. I hope you’re hungry, babe. We got a little bit of all your favorites.”
Ian was back with Jake right behind him. Hair damp and wearing a clean t-shirt over boxers, he winked at me on his way past. “You good on a drink, Baby Girl? Or you need something to go with your enchiladas?”
My stomach growled. “I’m good, Ian got me a soda.”
Coop and Archie stripped out of their soaking wet shoes and clothes in the kitchen, then toweled off while Jake and Ian got the food set up on plates. Then they all piled into the living room. “Okay, someone turn up the A/C before everyone freezes.” Jake slid onto the sofa next to me and pulled the blanket over his legs too.
“Hey,” Coop complained. “You’re not cold.”
“Nope,” Jake said with a smirk. “I’m not. You can go find clothes.” Then he balanced my plate on a pillow in front of me. “You good? Or should we shift to the floor so you can sit at the coffee table?”
“I think I can do this.” If I used my splinted wrist to brace it, I could mostly eat with my left hand. I’d been getting pretty good at it. I couldn’t cut food at all, but the great thing about sour cream chicken enchiladas, refried beans, and rice, was that I didn’t need to cut up much. It all broke apart easily.
Archie shot me a grin from the floor where he sat on the other side of the coffee table, and Coop took the spot by my feet while Ian settled on the other end of the table.
He met my gaze and mouthed ‘later?’ and I nodded. Yeah, I would like to finish our conversation later. The corners of his mouth tipped up.
“Okay, movie time,” Archie said. “It’s Coop’s turn to choose.”
Jake and Ian both groaned, and I laughed.
“You know he’s going to pick Die Hard.” It was his default movie if he couldn’t figure out anything else to watch.
“Nope,” Coop said. “I’m not picking Die Hard.”
I snorted, and he grinned up at me.
“Don’t believe me?”
“I’m just saying it’s the movie you usually pick.”
“Well, not tonight. Tonight, I think we’ll watch this.” He had the remote, and he navigated over to the latest streaming service Archie had added to my box. I swore I had them all now, but over the course of the week, he’d just logged me into all of his accounts. It was kind of nice.
“Seriously?” Ian said, and even Archie canted his head back to stare at Coop.
“Yep.” Coop grinned wider, and Jake snickered.
“It’s in French, Coop,” I reminded him, and he winked at me.
“I know,” he murmured, giving me a playful leer. “I love it when you speak French, remember?”
Face hot, I bit back another laugh. Yes, I did remember. It was something he’d admitted to while we’d been making out on this sofa. “All right, Amelie is not me.”
“It’s all good,” Coop assured me as he rubbed my foot under the blanket. “You can repeat any lines we miss.”
Jake snorted, but the protests died off as the movie began. The film was an older one, but it was also delightful. I felt so bad for the main character, but her quirkiness won over the guys, and it wasn’t long before they were laughing along with me as she set out to fix things for people she’d never met.
It was a sweet film.
By the time it was over, we were all yawning and I hurt more than I wanted to admit.
“Pain meds,” Ian said as he and the others were cleaning up. “You’ve eaten and you’re going to bed, right?”
I sighed.
He wasn’t wrong.
“Yeah,” Jake said after studying me for a beat. “Pain meds.” I didn’t argue.
Fifteen minutes later, with my teeth brushed and my face washed and changed into boxers—Archie’s—and a tank top, I crawled into bed. Archie waited until I was settled before he slid in, and then Jake settled on my other side. Coop stretched out on the floor on a pallet he’d made, and Ian was over in his corner with his pillows and stuff.
Jake tucked a pillow under my right wrist and curled sideways before Archie shut off the last light.
It was weird how normal this had gotten. Despite the fact that I was so tired, I almost didn’t want to close my eyes.
“Guys…”
Archie shifted so he could catch my left hand and then interlaced his fingers with mine.
“Thanks.”
Jake pressed a kiss to my temple, and Archie squeezed my hand.
“You’re welcome,” Coop said into the quiet. “We know we’re awesome.”
There was a downbeat, then an upbeat before laughter eddied through the room. A pillow must have been thrown, because the soft thud of it hitting served as the first salvo, then another went flying. The scrabble of the cats racing out made me laugh harder. Then a pillow whacked me in the face in the dark.
“Hey,” Jake growled as he snatched the pillow off of me. The bed depressed and then bounc
ed as he launched off of it. Archie must have caught the next one. I couldn’t hardly see any of them, but their laughter and the whacks carried just fine.
It took another ten minutes before one of the pillows totally gave out. The rip of sound ended the horseplay.
“Watch your eyes,” Coop warned, then the light snapped back on. I squinted mine open and then winced at the pillow stuffing spread around the room.
“Okay, so…who sleeps without a pillow tonight?” Jake asked.
“That would be me,” Ian said with a grin. “I started it.”
He looked damned pleased with himself, too. When he glanced at me, I grinned. To be honest, they were all laughing and smiling. It had been a while. A week really, since I’d seen any of them this relaxed.
Well, okay, Coop had been pretty damn relaxed earlier in the day, but this was different.
“Fair enough.” It took them another couple of minutes to clean up. Finally, Jake crawled back into bed, and Archie smirked before the lights went out. He hadn’t left his spot, but that was more to shield me than anything.
Some of the tension bled out of my muscles, and I wasn’t sure if that was more the pillow fight or the pain meds. Either way, I relaxed. Surrounded by their scent and the soft sound of their breathing, I said, “As I was saying…”
Archie groaned. “You’re gonna incite a riot, babe.”
“Shut up, Archie,” came from the other three, and we all laughed.
“See what I put up with?” he complained, but squeezed my hand gently.
“You put up with a lot, and we’re really happy you do.”
“See, you get me. We’re connected.”
Jake snorted. “Shut up and let her finish so she’ll go to sleep.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
I grinned hard enough to make my cheeks hurt. “You know what—it doesn’t matter. We can figure it out tomorrow.”
“It matters if it’s important to you, Baby Girl.”
“No, right now, it just matters that all of you are here.” Even Ian. Or maybe especially Ian. He didn’t have to be. But he was.
“No place else I’d rather be,” Jake promised.
“Ditto,” Archie said.
“Well, I’d rather be in the bed,” Coop offered. “But I’m close, so I’ll live.”
