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That had to be why, when I left the room with my papers in hand, skirting around police officers, I hadn’t felt her come near me.
And I did usually feel her.
She had this animal magnetism to her that drew you in like a moth to a flame.
At times, I just knew that she was there before she’d made an appearance.
And it’d been like that since I’d first seen her in an apartment frantically flapping around while she tried to figure out how to get her immobilized sister out of an apartment that was twenty floors in the air.
“Nash.”
I stopped and turned with my body nearly the entire way out of the automatic ambulance bay doors and frowned.
There she was.
Leaning against the wall.
Her short blonde hair was everywhere, giving her an edgy look that I was sure she hadn’t intended to portray.
Her eyes were swollen and red. Mascara running. Her brown eyes that were normally so devastatingly beautiful had angry red lines going through them.
Her face was splotchy and the clothes she was wearing were surprisingly vulnerable looking.
She was wearing a pair of long bike shorts in blue that stood out amazingly against her tanned skin. An oversized t-shirt in heathered gray that said ‘Welcome to the Circus’ on it. And a pair of battered tennis shoes.
She was hugging herself, too.
She looked small.
And scared.
I turned slightly, only to get pegged in the chest by the doors as they tried to close and couldn’t.
I stepped out of the way of them, ignoring the jolt that caused my head to pound viciously, and said, “Are you okay?”
She nodded. “My sisters keep almost dying.”
Something inside of my chest squeezed at that. “They’re okay.”
“I know,” she said softly. “It doesn’t stop it from being scary, though.”
I moved forward almost without thought and pulled her into my arms.
She sniffled, then pressed her face into the space between my pecs, and her body softly shook.
I’d never seen Zip so vulnerable.
I wasn’t sure how to handle it.
Patting her back carefully, I looked to my side just in time to see a man point his fancy camera at us and take a picture.
God.
Dammit.
CHAPTER 3
What doesn’t kill you disappoints me.
-Nash’s secret thoughts
NASH
I blinked my eyes open and stared at the red numbers that were displayed on my ceiling thanks to the projection alarm clock my mom got me last Christmas.
I didn’t think it was possible to hate mankind any more than I already did, but there was my phone ringing at seven in the morning on my one and only day off.
God. Fucking. Dammit.
I was tempted not to answer it, but with my family coming in town today for our family reunion this weekend, it could very well be one of them.
I groaned, hating the way my head still throbbed even a week later, and reached for the phone without looking at the caller ID.
“Hello?” I answered, sounding just as groggy as I felt.
“Mr. Christopherson,” the woman on the other end of the line said. “This is Mallorie Wellborn, the physician who treated you at the hospital last week.”
I squinted one eye, as if that would help me hear and comprehend better, and said, “Yeah?”
“I’m so sorry it took us so long to get back to you. By now, I imagine your concussion is better, but I wanted to reach out to you after finding a few oddities in your blood work,” she said. “Per your employer’s request, we ran every test known to man. Remember?”
I stifled a yawn and said, “Yes, ma’am.”
“In those tests we ran a blood test that identifies tumor markers,” she said.
My heart started to pound, and I was most certainly awake now.
“Yeah?” I rasped, sitting up in bed.
She began to explain everything that this specific test might indicate, but she didn’t need to. My degree allowed me to understand, even if I didn’t practice.
“Yes,” I continued, trying to hurry her along.
“We highly recommend that you get in to see a specialist immediately,” she continued. “I’ve already referred you to a doctor here in Dallas, his name is…”
I didn’t need her to say anymore.
Honestly, from when my father had been diagnosed with testicular cancer at the age of twenty-nine, it’d been recommended to us that we get screenings for it every year from our twenty-fifth birthday on.
I just… hadn’t.
I didn’t want to know.
To be quite honest, I kind of knew I’d get it one day.
My father had it. My grandfather had it. My eldest brother had it.
Every last one of them were missing their balls.
But since I was sort of attached to mine, I secretly hoped if I ignored it, kept my body in peak physical health, and ultimately followed all the rules but that one, I might be able to avoid getting it.
Apparently, that was wrong.
I already knew which doctor I would be going to, too.
