Elijah shot glares at the men he thought were responsible for the series of groans that sounded in the room around us.
Back on the screen, both of us leaned forward and made hissing noises.
Nodding, she continued, “Yup. I almost popped one of my wazzers. I think in the interest of booby health and safety, I’m going to have to pee with the door unlocked from now on.”
Well, that apparently wasn’t good enough because the two of us led her to the ladies' bathroom to show her how the doors worked for future reference.
All that could be heard was:
“Lefty loosey—so that opens it. Righty tighty—so that closes it.”
“Loosey is locked, tighty is open.”
“No, wait, this wall on this side locks it,”—this was followed by the sound of Beau knocking on a wall—“that wall on this side over here opens it.”
“What if the bathroom’s facing in the opposite direction to this one?”
“Then, she needs to stand like she’s facing the way we are now. Obviously, if it’s in the opposite direction, the lock will turn in the opposite direction. Everyone knows, all locks face forward. It’s a lock fact.”
Without even meaning to, my head thumped down on the table.
“You ok over there?” Parker asked, sounding amused.
Without lifting my head, I shook it, ignoring the slight squeak of my skin on the polished surface.
“No. I’ve just confused myself about the locks on our doors.”
There was a round of snickers from the other occupants of the table, but Sadie understood the mental trauma I was going through. “Avoid the second cubicle after the door. It’s got a wicked jagged edge that’ll pierce your dirty pillow if you scrape it.”
“Or you could just learn to unlock the door like normal people,” Tate suggested, sounding way too smug about it.
Twenty-three minutes of embarrassment later, I leaned over to Sadie.
“Want to help me torture Levi and Tate?”
A small smile lit her face. “I miss torturing my brothers, so I’m in.”
I remembered her talking about her three brothers of the heart, something she hadn’t told us about in detail while we were sober yet, and made a mental note to ask her about them later while I filled her in on what I had planned.
Now that the viewing was over for the night, people started talking amongst themselves again.
However, my brother wasn’t finished. “I’ve had a few comments about the level of drunkenness of the girls that night and how they managed to be as coherent as they were given the amount of alcohol they’d consumed. I have that covered in a series of footage of them making their drinks that night that I’ll show you next week, but I’ll put you out of your misery now, too. In the video, the girls frequently forgot which jug of margaritas they were drinking from as they made it, so one of the jugs ended up being about ten percent mix, ninety percent alcohol. That was the last one they drank from, which was why we found them passed out when we got here the next morning.”
Leaning across the table to where my dad was sitting grinning, I hissed, “What does he mean?”
His reaction got him added to the revenge list. Why? Because he just chuckled. “Oh, you’ll see.”
Tapping my hand, Sadie said loud enough for the rest of the table to hear, “They all seem so nice when you first meet them, but they’re all evil.”
“I know,” I sighed, rubbing my face with both hands, wishing I could just disappear.
Then she said something that shocked the hell out of me and made me burst out laughing. “Damn if I don’t love that. You’re a lucky girl.”
Later that evening…
I usually loved being at home, alone and in my own space with just my dogs and cat, but tonight I felt antsy. I’d had a shower, shaved, done a deep conditioning treatment on my hair so I didn’t look like Simba, I’d moisturized… Hell, I’d even done one of those face sheet mask things. Could I switch my brain off to sleep? Nope.
Strangely enough, my thoughts weren’t focused on the footage from the bar. With my history, people would probably assume it was because I was self-conscious. What was being shown, though, was funny and didn’t give away any deep secrets, so it wasn’t hitting any of my triggers.
Instead, I was thinking about Parker.
Was I enough for him? Could I help him on his road to getting past what’d happened to him? Would he get there and then find someone better for him? And about one hundred what if questions.
It was driving me crazy, and I just didn’t have the answers to it because only time would tell. Was I willing to open myself up to the possibility of getting hurt, though? Normally, no, but with Parker, it was yes. I’d known him for so long that I knew he was worth all of the what ifs. I also knew deep down that he wouldn’t do anything to hurt me purposefully and that if he wanted to move on, he’d treat me with respect—which was more than could be said for most.
What was now worrying me was: where was his stepmom? Did she know where he was? Why wasn’t she in prison? What if she was doing it to someone else? And, why the fuck hadn’t his dad done anything about it?
Those thoughts left me feeling pissed off, so I got out of bed and walked downstairs to make a cup of chamomile tea. I was going to do something I had big issues with—I was going to do an internet search on both of them. I wanted to know what they did, where they were, see if I could find out any information on them to give me an idea of what to do.
Yeah, I wanted revenge for Parker and Dale. Was I the kind of person who could do that? No, but if I had an idea that’d make an impact on them in some way, I could probably find it in myself to do it. Actually, fuck that. I wasn’t talking about hurting them physically or doing anything significant, but even just a fuck you would be something at this point.
I was just looking through the search results for Chantal Knight, curled up on my couch with the cup of steaming hot tea lifted to my lips to take a mouthful of, when the sound of a train horn roared through the silence of my house, and someone knocked on the floor to ceiling window beside the door, scaring the fuck out of me.
I’m sure most people will understand why I did what I did next.
In this day and age, the expense and inconvenience of water damage to our phones make us overly protective of them. We spend a fortune on screen protectors and cases just to prevent them from getting damaged. So, at that moment, when the cup went flying into the air, I did everything I could to protect my cell phone, leaving me open to the freshly boiled water from my beverage.
The biggest irony was: I’d upgraded my phone three months ago to the iPhone 11 Pro plus.
Yeah, the phone was fucking waterproof.
Nine
Parker
I had to remind myself why I’d become a doctor sometimes when viruses and bugs hit. Covering for sick doctors when I was hoping to spend some time with Ari wasn’t fun. For some reason, tonight had been busier than we’d expected, so I was only just getting a break.
Or, at least, I had been getting a break.
“Parker, we’ve got a burn patient who’s just come in,” one of the nurses called, stopping me as I got to the break room.
Sighing, I turned and walked back along the hallway I’d just come down, picking up the form from the nurses’ station.
“Liquid burns to the chest. No blistering…” I muttered, reading the information to myself as I walked to cubicle five.
I probably should’ve looked at the name of the patient because when I pulled the curtain back and saw Ariana sitting with a guilty-looking Archer, my eyebrows almost hit my hairline. Well, not really because that would be freaking weird, but they raised higher than normal.
Even though she was sitting on the bed, I automatically looked at Archer, scanning his body for evidence of an injury. That would be typical for this family, so it was just instinctual. Not seeing anything, I turned back to Ari and noticed the bulge on her chest under her t-shirt.
Not long ago, she’d fallen and grazed herself in the parking lot, and I’d freaked out. My rational doctor’s brain said she was okay and that I knew what to do, but the fact it was Ariana almost overrode that.
Clearing my throat, I glanced back down at the chart as I closed the distance between us.
It didn’t even occur to me to say hi or offer a standard pleasantry. Putting a pair of gloves on, I gently lifted her t-shirt to uncover the area where the bulge was and asked, “What happened, baby?”
Leaning to her left to look around my body, she shot her brother an evil look. “I was minding my own business when this asshole scared the shit out of me, and I dropped a cup of chamomile tea.”
Lifting the dishtowel covered bag of ice, I winced when I saw how red the skin was under it.
“Have you taken anything for the pain?” I asked, checking her paperwork to see if we’d given her anything here.
“Tylenol and Motrin,” she mumbled. “It’s all I had.”
“It’s late and your light was on. I was just being nice and checking to make sure you were okay,” Archer clipped. “And I’ll say—for the millionth time—I’m fucking sorry, all right?”
A disbelieving laugh huffed out of her. “The millionth time? You said it once in the car on the way here.”
“It was an accident,” he growled. “Accidents happen, Na-Na.”
Seeing she was about to answer back and knowing how heated this family could get, I shifted my body to cut off their line of sight to each other.
“I’m going to need you to take your top off, Ari. I need to see the whole area, and it’s blocking it.”
The blush on her face deepened, and Archer quickly announced, “That’s my invitation to leave, then. I’ll be outside.”
“Shit for brains,” Ari snapped, trying to see around me to glare at him.
“At least I’ve got a brain,” he replied, the sound of the curtain being pulled back into place following him.
I think she would have said something else, but she twisted her upper torso and groaned when it moved the injured skin on her chest.
“Okay, let’s have a look. Do you need a hand?”
I could see that she wanted to say no, but instead she sighed. “Yeah. If I raise my arms, it hurts the skin, and I really don’t want to take the ice off the area. I did it to put this on to come here, and it feels like I’ve got a barbeque going on.”
“You hold onto the ice then, and I’ll deal with this,” I said, starting to lift the t-shirt.
Carefully, we managed to remove one arm, and then the other, until I held the garment in my hand. Placing it on the chair Archer had recently vacated, I picked up the control that adjusted the bed and raised the head of it so she could lie back comfortably.
“Lie back. It’ll be more comfortable for you.”
With a groan, she lifted her feet onto the bed and did as I’d asked. After shifting around for a moment, she found a comfortable position.
“I just want to state for the record that this wasn’t my fault,” she sighed, glaring up at the ceiling tiles now.
“Accidents happen,” I murmured, lifting the ice pack and examining the area. “You did the right thing putting the ice on it,” I assured her. “There’s slight blistering, but the area is definitely swollen and red.”
“What does that mean?”
Placing the ice pack back onto her chest, I battled again with my doctor's side and ‘this is Ariana’ side. The overprotective side wanted to keep her in the hospital with me to watch her and make sure she was okay. The rational side of me knew she could go home.
Damn, this fucking sucked.
“The nurse who saw you when you came in put a note on your record for a second-degree burn. The ice pack stopped it being worse, but you’re going to have to continue with it for a while because you’ve got a superficial partial-thickness burn—”
The expression on her face went from confused to horrified. “A what?”
“It’s a second-degree burn,” I repeated. “And you’re lucky it’s only on one part of your chest and not…” I stopped and pointed at her breasts.
“You’re telling me, my ass hat brother gave me a second-degree burn on my tits?”
“Well, not exactly on your tits, per se. More across that area of your chest. You were lucky it didn’t burn your breasts, though, because a burn like that on the skin—”
I stopped when she sat up straight, her glare focused on the curtain. “Do you know what he was doing when I dropped the cup?”
I figured this was a rhetorical question, so I didn’t say anything.
“He had his face pressed against the glass and was doing a blowfish on it while he pressed that fucking doorbell. Can you believe that? I heard a train roaring through my house and then saw him trying to eat my damn window.”
Again, it was rhetorical. But just in case an answer was needed: Yes, I could believe that. Archer was probably the most normal one out of this side of the family, but he still had Townsend blood running through his veins.
“How illegal is murder?” she suddenly asked, her voice probably coming out louder than she’d intended for it to. “I mean, in these circumstances, when you’ve got a second-degree burn on your ta-ta’s because your brother’s a dickhead—how illegal would it be?”
“Fucking illegal,” a deep voice I recognized as belonging to Connor—one of the deputy sheriffs in our county— replied from the cubicle next to us.
Not to be deterred by the voice of authority—literally—she shot back, “But given the circumstances—”
“It’s still fucking illegal.”
While she tried to plead her case with him, I went about getting what I wanted to put on the area to stop any further blistering. When I had what I needed, I went back to where the discussion was still ongoing.
“What if I blamed it on rabid PMS?”
“Hey, Parker, is she decent?” he asked me, hearing me chuckling at her question.
Skimming my eyes up to her semi-naked torso, stopping briefly on the swell of her breasts above the pretty bra she was wearing, I moved over to where the curtain separating the cubicles ended and stuck my head around the corner of it so I could see him. I didn’t expect to find him with a bloody bandage on his shin.
“No, she isn’t. And looking at you, you shouldn’t be moving either.”
“Lucky bastard,” he whispered. “Okay, when she’s decent, can y’all open the curtain so I can talk to her. I feel like I’m at a confessional with a psycho with it closed.”
Shaking my head, I went back to treating Ari, whose lips were twitching at his description. At least she’d stopped trying to justify murdering her brother.
“I’m going to put some of this on it,” I told her, holding up the tube. “Then I’m going to put this dressing on it. Burn treatment isn’t a standard thing, it depends on the doctor and the burn itself. You’ve got a first degree burn around here,” I pointed at the surrounding area. “It’s the second degree one that I’m more concerned about. You need to keep the area clean, baby, and tomorrow I’ll change the dressing to one that’s basically a gauze with what looks like Vaseline all over it, and we’ll put a normal dressing over the top of it. Once the blisters are healing, we’ll reassess what we’re doing. Does that sound okay?”
Shrugging the shoulder on her uninjured side, she looked at the stuff I’d brought in. “I’m not the doctor here. If you think it’s best, then go for it.”
Putting on clean gloves, I punctured the tube and squeezed it out onto her red skin, wincing when she made a noise.
“Sorry, baby. I’m going to smear it out now. Tell me if I’m hurting you.”
“This sounds filthy,” Connor snickered, distracting Ariana from what I was doing.
“So, what if Archer just disappeared? Like, one day he’s here, the next he isn’t, and we can’t find him, and there’s no evidence of foul play. Does that count?” she asked him, making me roll my eyes.
“Consi
dering you’ve just tried justifying his murder to me, I’d say you’d been in deep shit,” he rumbled back.
“Well, I can’t help it if he goes missing!”
“You’ve just asked me if it counts if he disappears after discussing how to justify killing him, Ariana. Can you not see how that would implicate you hugely in why he disappeared?”
Chewing on her lower lip, she thought about what he’d just said.
A bark of laughter met her silence. “Jesus Christ, she’s thinking it over, isn’t she?”
I was in the process of opening her dressing and had to put a hand on her stomach to stop her from getting off the bed. “Yeah, she is. She also looks like she’s going to try to kick your ass.”
This time, her glare was aimed at me.
Giving her an innocent smile, I laid the dressing across the area and then picked up the bandage that I’d have to wrap around her chest to keep it in place. I was about to wrap it around her but realized her bra would get in the way. Reaching over for her t-shirt, I passed it to her and gestured at her bra.
“That’s going to need to go while I do this, but you can cover your…” I pointed at my chest, aware that Connor was probably still listening in, “with your t-shirt.”
“Can’t you just use tape?” she asked, eyeing the item in question.
“I don’t want to run the risk of putting tape on a burned area or sensitive skin. I’ve seen what happens when someone does that, and trust me, I’m doing you a kindness right now using this.”
Lowering her voice to a whisper, she said, “I need a hand with the back of it.”
Leaning over her back, I undid it as carefully as I could and then helped her remove her arms from the straps.
I’d just begun wrapping the bandage around her when Connor decided it was story time.
“I had sunburn once. I went to Mexico with my friends to celebrate my twenty-fifth birthday, got drunk, and woke up the next morning with these huge blisters on my shoulder because I’d messed up with the sunblock.”
Forbidden Gold (Providence Gold Book 5) Page 13
