“Maybe you can leave then,” I said before thinking better of it.
She turned and stared so long it made me feel like an even bigger ass than I already knew myself to be. “Yeah. I’ll call my brother tonight and ask him to come get me as soon as it’s safe tomorrow.”
“Better to spend Christmas with your family, anyway,” I said.
But something deep in my chest ached, dull and throbbing, at the thought that she might be gone tomorrow.
Which made no sense. I should be glad to be rid of her. We’d been driving each other crazy since the moment we’d first met, so anything that would get her out of my life had to be for the best. Didn’t it?
“Definitely better to spend Christmas with my family,” she said, and she returned her attention to whatever was going on outside my window. “I haven’t ever spent one without them. This is the first Christmas Eve I haven’t been with them.” She backed her chair away from the window and went back to the coffee table to collect her phone. “In fact, I think I’ll call Gray now. Who knows? Maybe he can get here tonight.”
So that was that. She was ready to be done with me, and she’d do whatever it took to make it happen. Whether I’d intended it to happen this way or not, I’d run another person out of my life.
Possibly forever.
Shouldn’t I have been happier about it?
DUE TO THE combination of the weather and the holiday, there wasn’t a single pharmacy open that late on Christmas Eve or at all on Christmas Day. Just my luck.
The longer I had to wait to get to a pharmacy, the more anxious I grew, too. How long was it safe to wait before taking the morning-after pill for it to still be effective? And did the effectiveness diminish in relation to how much time had passed? I wasn’t sure, and every time I tried to pull out my phone and do a quick Google search, some member of my family or another interrupted me. That meant I had to quickly hide what I’d been searching for and put my phone away, because the last thing I needed for any of my family to know was that I’d had wild, crazy monkey sex with a grumpy, tattooed Russian while we were snowed in together.
Not that I was getting much time alone to do my searching, either.
Mom had been hovering since the moment Gray and I had come through the door on Christmas Eve night, constantly trying to help me do every tiny little thing. I had to keep reminding her that having my car stolen didn’t make me any less capable than I had been for the last however many years, other than making it difficult for me to drive anywhere. She didn’t like it. Hovering was her thing. It made her feel like she had some control over life, I supposed.
Gray kept sitting down next to me and grilling me about how Dima had treated me the whole time I had been there. Granted, I hadn’t warned him about the house being a split-level, so now he had a thousand questions about how I’d managed to do certain things. The answers were all the same, too: Dima carried me. My brother didn’t like that answer, for some reason. Probably because I always put my foot down and insisted on doing everything for myself if it was at all possible…and even trying to do the impossible on my own. I was too stubborn for my own good, and we both knew it, so the fact that I’d had to rely on Dima’s assistance stuck in Gray’s craw as much as it did mine.
When those two weren’t in my grill, I had my nieces and nephews climbing all over me like a jungle gym. Logan had me drilling him on multiplication tables in between bouts of teaching me how to play Roblox on his mother’s laptop. Kennedy wanted to practice braiding my hair. She made an awful, tangled mess of it every time she touched me, but I didn’t have the heart to turn her away. Almost-three-year-old Erin begged for me to take her for a ride and pop a wheelie almost as often as she wanted to have a Frozen sing-a-long while wearing her Elsa princess costume from Halloween. The youngest of the kids, my nine-month-old nephew, Finn, was the easiest. He just wanted to giggle and make faces at me and shove bites of his squashed banana in my mouth. So even though the kids were constantly around, at least they were fun, which was a nice change of pace from the adults.
The only two people in the house who weren’t incessantly checking on me or trying to get my attention were my father and Sierra, my sister-in-law.
Dad knew better than to poke and prod at me after the way I’d blown up at him a few months after my accident. He’d been trying to get me to slow down and stop pushing myself so hard, but that wasn’t in my nature. Which, of course, he knew. He’d raised me to be a strong, independent woman, capable of taking care of myself. But I was still his baby girl, so he hated seeing me cry in frustration when I tried and failed. Still, my blowup had brought us much closer together, and we’d come to an understanding after that. He could still worry about me all he wanted, but he needed to keep it to himself…and if I needed his help, I promised I would ask for it without hesitation. Since we’d agreed to those terms, we’d been fine.
Sierra was another matter entirely. She and I had never been close, but now that I was in a wheelchair, she seemed to resent me more than ever. I supposed it was because some family decisions hinged on whether things would be accessible for me or not. She seemed to think I got more attention than I deserved, and with the focus on me, it pushed her to the fringes. I had never fully figured out her issue with me. Regardless, my accident had only driven a bigger wedge between us than what had been there to start, and my whole car-getting-stolen-and-me-staying-with-them-for-the-holidays thing seemed to be eating her alive from the inside. The sooner she could get me out of her house, the happier she would be.
And frankly, that was a score Sierra and I could agree on. I loved my family to bits, but I also needed my space—especially to process everything that had happened in the few days before I’d ended up here.
It was hard to believe I’d only been with Dima for less than two days. It had all gone so fast, even though we’d spent the entire time sniping at each other or else falling into bed together. And, crazy as it sounded, I missed him.
I hadn’t even been at Gray’s house with the family for as long as I’d been with Dima, but it felt like it had been two weeks.
I needed to get back to my place. To my life. As soon as possible.
Christmas Day finally came to an end and the house got quiet. When Tuesday morning rolled around and the roads were all clear, I took that as my sign that it was time to hightail it out of there and try to resume life as normal. And my father was going to be my salvation, whether he realized it or not.
I wheeled up beside him at the breakfast table and fixed a bowl of cereal, grateful for the cacophony that my nieces and nephews were providing all around us. “Any chance you can borrow Gray’s SUV today and take me home?” I asked him.
He gave me a suspicious look. “Already bailing on us, huh?”
Kennedy whacked Erin over the head with the younger girl’s sippy cup, which elicited a fresh wave of screams from both girls.
“Stop being a poopy head,” Logan yelled at the same time.
I raised a brow in my father’s direction. “Are you surprised?”
He laughed. “Not in the least.”
“I love them to pieces. But there’s only so much of this I can take. And since I’m the aunt and not the mommy…” I left that hanging, glancing over at Sierra, who looked as harried as I’d ever seen her while she mopped up the bowl of baby cream of wheat that Finn had just gleefully dumped on the floor amidst his older siblings’ dramatics.
“Any chance you wouldn’t mind having Dear Old Dad sleeping on your couch tonight?” he replied.
“I doubt Mom would let you get away with that.”
“Not unless we stowed her away and rescued her with us. I bet we could hide her in the trunk and they wouldn’t notice until we were in the clear.”
“You really think she’ll let you shove her in the trunk?”
He shrugged with a sheepish expression. “I’ve had crazier ideas.”
I laughed. “So can you, though?”
“You can’t get through at least o
ne more day?” Dad asked. He glanced over to where Mom was trying to break the two girls apart. “We barely get to see you anymore.”
“How about I make dinner for just the three of us—you, me, and Mom—on Thursday or Friday? We can have a quiet night in.”
“So you’re not giving in.”
“Nope. This is one of those Daddy, I need your help moments you’re always telling me to be sure I ask for.”
“Unfair. This is not what I meant.”
“I’m still using it as my excuse.”
He laughed and shook his head, but thirty minutes later, he had the keys to Gray’s SUV in his hand and was ushering me out the front door.
I got in, and he helped me break down my chair and put it in the back. Then he got behind the wheel and started the ignition.
“I need to make a stop before you take me home, though,” I said cautiously. This was definitely going to be the tricky part.
“The police station to see what’s going on with your car?” he replied, backing out.
“No, the pharmacy. The police said they’d call me once they know more, and they’ve had their hands full the last few days with all sorts of other things. I’m sure they’ll get to my case soon-ish.”
Dad made a hmphing sort of sound, but he didn’t question me.
When we went into the pharmacy, he discreetly looked at fiber supplements and other fun grown-up things like that while I waited to speak with a pharmacist. Within ten minutes, my questions had been answered and my prescription for the morning-after pill had been filled. Now I just hoped it would work.
“Do I want to know?” Dad asked once we were back in the SUV.
“No, I’m a hundred and ten percent positive that you don’t.”
“Then I know.”
“Daddy,” I whined.
He threw his hands up in surrender. Good thing we weren’t on the road yet. “It’s your business. Not mine. Just tell me one thing.”
“What’s that?” I asked suspiciously.
He pointed at the prescription bag I’d stashed in my purse. “If that doesn’t work, and you need help, will you please let me help? Doesn’t matter what kind of help it is, either. I just want to be there for you.”
Which was precisely the reason I’d asked him to be the one to take me, and not either Mom or Gray. Those two would have insisted they needed to know everything and be involved in every step of the process, when it was none of their darn business and there wasn’t anything they could do, anyway.
I let out a soft chuckle, but I nodded. “If I need help, you’ll be the first to know.” There were a lot of things that could happen, though, which wouldn’t require me needing my father’s help. He just didn’t need to know that part.
He nodded thoughtfully, but then he pulled out onto the road to drive me home. “So what’s your plan for if the police don’t recover your car?” he asked after a moment.
“I already informed the insurance company it was stolen. They’ll replace it.” Granted, I’d have to wait for a new car to be retrofitted for all my modifications, so it wouldn’t happen right away, but I could at least start the process. “There might be somewhere I can rent an accessible vehicle in the meanwhile, and if there’s not, I can get Terri or Eric to give me a ride to work. I’m sure Wade will pick me up for Para-Pythons practice, and probably anything else I ask him to do.” And maybe a bunch of other things I didn’t ask him for, too. We might not have worked out as a couple, but he made for a heck of a friend. “I can bug Gray into taking me to the grocery store sometimes. It’ll give him a good excuse to slip away from Sierra and the kids for a bit of peace if nothing else.”
“So you’ve got a plan…”
“I’m coming up with a plan,” I corrected him. “There are still details to be sorted out, but I will sort them out. Have you ever known me to just sit back and flounder around?”
“That’s my girl.” He patted me on the knee.
The rest of the way back to my house, he refrained from bugging me about things he knew better than to think I’d tell him. I texted my landlord to let him know we were on our way and would need the new keys shortly. When we pulled up in front of his house, Dan came out with the keys in hand and passed them through the window.
“You need anything else?” he asked.
I shook my head. “Nothing I can think of. I’ll let you know if that changes.”
Dan nodded. “All right, then. You know I’ll help you out in any way I can. Call me anytime.”
There was already a pickup truck in my driveway, though, so Dad had to park behind it. Wade Miller had his arms crossed and was leaning against the bed of the truck.
“What are you doing here?” I demanded when he came around to help me with my chair.
“Waiting for you.”
I laughed. “I see that. But why?”
“Can’t I just drop by to see you?” he replied. Evading the question. That wasn’t like him.
I raised a brow in question, and he gave me a subtle nod of his head in my father’s direction. So I still didn’t know why Wade was here, but apparently he had no intention of explaining until Dad was gone.
I nodded that I understood. “So we’ll call it a surprise visit, hmm?”
“Sounds like a plan.”
Dad took the keys and got the door unlocked, heading inside to take in an armload of my Christmas presents. In no time, Wade had my chair fully assembled, and he set the brake so it wouldn’t roll away when I tried to get into it.
“Wanna explain now?” I asked once Dad disappeared inside my house.
“I don’t know. Maybe you want to explain what happened between you and Nazarenko.”
I blinked, shaking my head. “What do you mean?” How on earth did he know that anything had happened with Dima beyond that trip to the coffee shop?
“Just that he’s been calling everyone involved with the Para-Pythons, trying to get your phone number or your address. Said you were with him during the storm and he needed to get in touch with you. But I figured if you wanted him to have your number, you’d have already given it to him. So there must be a reason he doesn’t have it.”
“Oh,” I said, completely taken aback. But then Dad came back out with empty arms.
“You sure you don’t need anything else?” he asked me.
“I’m fine. I promise.”
“And I’ll stick around for a bit to be sure she gets settled,” Wade put in.
Dad shook his hand and then bent over to hug me. “Still think you’re a traitor,” he said before getting back into Gray’s SUV and driving off.
“Traitor?” Wade asked, laughing.
“For abandoning him to suffer through the rest of the week with all of those kids.”
“Mm hmm.” But Wade turned and headed into my house, and I followed him. He shut the door behind me once we were both inside. “So,” he said, taking a seat on my couch. “Nazarenko. What does he want with you, and do you want me to make sure he leaves you alone?”
I rolled my eyes. “I don’t know what he wants, but I don’t need you to do anything about him.”
“Because I could make it happen. Just say the word.”
“If you mean you’d go threaten him with a gun—”
“Never said a word about threatening him,” Wade cut in.
“I notice you’re not arguing the part about the gun.”
“If it would make you feel better, I could arrange for someone else to deal with him.”
I laughed, but not because I doubted him. If anything, he was entirely too serious. “I don’t want anyone to deal with Dima. Not like that, at least.”
“Then how?”
I knew better than to have put a qualifier on what I said around Wade. I shook my head. “I don’t want you to do anything to him.”
He stared at me, and the familiar tic in his jaw started up, but he let it drop. “Why were you with him through the storm?”
“I stopped to get gas and my car got stole
n. He was there. He tried to take me to Gray’s house, but the weather got too bad too fast, so we ended up going back to his house until it cleared.”
“Why do I get the sense there’s a whole lot more to the story than you’re telling me?” Wade grumbled.
How on earth had I ended up with so many grouchy, grumbly men in my life? I sighed. “I’m fine, Wade. I’m all in one piece. No harm, no foul.”
“But you didn’t give him your number.”
“I didn’t think he would want or need it. He could have asked.”
“You could’ve offered.”
“But I didn’t. And he didn’t. Did he say why he needed to get in touch with me?” I asked, hoping it was something simple like I’d left behind the toothbrush he’d let me use while I’d been there. It had to be something like that, now that I thought about it. He’d been so ready to be rid of me that he hadn’t even been able to look at me or talk to me, almost, there at the end. So it didn’t matter how much I missed having him moaning and groaning. Whatever we’d had, it was done.
Or it should have been.
Wade stretched out both of his titanium legs and leaned back, settling in. “He won’t say. Just that he needs to get in touch with you. He wouldn’t even back off when I started dropping hints about the things I’d do to him if he hurt you.”
“There are a lot of things you do, Wade Miller, but dropping hints is not one of them.”
He smiled, the same sort of devilish smile that had gotten me to fall for him back in the day. “No, I suppose I don’t drop hints, do I?”
I rolled my eyes.
“So what do you want me to do about him?”
That was an excellent question.
“THE FUCK DID you do to your face?” Andrew Nash, Drew to the guys and one of my Thunderbirds teammates, demanded the moment I walked into the locker room before our next game.
Half the guys were already in the room, and they all turned to see what he was talking about.
I ran a subconscious hand over my bare jaw. It felt odd to the touch, especially where the scars from the wreck were.
Ghost Dance (Tulsa Thunderbirds Book 3) Page 12
