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My brother never said goodbye.
Not even to patients.
He was there one minute and gone the next.
That was likely his biggest fault.
“Freakin’ awesome,” I said as I threw the phone down onto my bed and contemplated whether or not I wanted to get my clothes armor on, or dress for ease of taking my pants off.
I chose ease, slipping on some black joggers, a black pair of socks, black On Clouds, and black t-shirt.
After grabbing a to-go cup of coffee, I headed toward the hospital, knowing it’d take me at least an hour to get there.
Living on the outskirts of Dallas was great. Until you needed to get into Dallas and had to deal with traffic.
I’d just stepped into the elevator when a distinct smell caught my nose.
Zip.
The girl was delicious smelling, and dammit if it didn’t make my dick react every time I smelled her.
Hoping beyond hope that she went to her apartment, and not down to the lobby, I pressed the button that would take me down.
I wasn’t in luck.
When I got down to the bottom floor, I stepped out and heard her before I saw her.
“What color am I today, darlin’?” I heard asked.
Coffey, I thought.
Simi’s husband.
“You’re blue.” Zip laughed. “You’re always blue. In my head, coffee and you are always associated with blue.”
“Not brown?” Coffey asked.
Zip snorted. “I can’t help what my brain associates with your name. I’m not sure why. I’d be more interested to know why the letter Z is always electric neon yellow. And anytime that I listen to Fleetwood Mac I have this explosion of color inside of my brain that I want to happen forever.”
Because it’s the first letter of your name, and everything about you screams electric.
Zip was nothing short of a live wire.
I wouldn’t be surprised if she walked up to someone and turned them straight into a raving lunatic.
She was that magnetic.
Zip was short.
As in, so freakin’ short that sometimes if I wasn’t expecting her, I assumed it was some random twelve-year-old in our building.
But then she turned around, and not a single damn thing about her screamed ‘child’ to me.
Her hair. Her fuckin’ tits. Her skin.
It was this beautiful golden hue.
I knew somewhere in her family line she had some Italian, or some nationality with equally golden bronze skin.
Today she was wearing a pair of short blue jean shorts that looked to be old as F but were probably made that way. She had on an off-the-shoulder AC/DC shirt, and a pair of black cowboy boots.
She was obviously embracing the Texas life.
“You do realize, right, that it’s literally about thirty degrees too cool for you to be comfortable wearing that?” I asked.
She looked at me with a frown. “In case you were curious, I have a photo shoot today with Hades. And it’s promo material. It’s supposed to look cute and trendy.”
With that statement, she posed, throwing up her back foot in that cute way that girls always did, tilted her head enough to make her hair shift to the side, exposing her neck. My eyes automatically took in the long column of her neck.
So freakin’ delicate.
I wanted to wrap my fingers around it.
“Where’s this photo shoot at?” I asked. “Do you have to walk? And what’s up with your hair?”
“Hightower Estates.” She spouted off a name, and I inwardly cursed. “And I’m taking the bus.” She paused and looked at me. “As for the hair, I’m trying out a new shampoo and curled it to within an inch of its life.”
Zip didn’t drive Dallas or any big city, she used public transportation. She didn’t like to put her sisters out if she didn’t have to.
She was right next door to the hospital.
If I didn’t offer her a ride, I’d feel horrible.
“I’m heading that way,” I grumbled. “Going to meet my brother at the hospital.”
She frowned. “Is he…”
“He’s fine. He works there,” I answered. “They all do.”
She fell into step beside me, then walked out the door with me with nary a flinch.
“You cold?” I eyed her.
She didn’t wrap her arms around herself.
Didn’t do much of anything but fall into an easy walk right beside me.
I pointed to the parking garage and said, “My car’s in there.”
“Then why didn’t you go down to the parking garage level instead of the lobby?” she asked, confused. “And no, I’m not cold.”
“Because it’s closer to the outside right here,” I started the truck up with the clicker.
Or, more importantly, it wasn’t going to allow me to see you if I went down to the parking garage.
“Why aren’t you cold?” I wondered.
That didn’t make sense.
I was fully clothed in joggers and even had on a sweatshirt and was chilly.
Meanwhile, she was dressed like it was summer.
“A long time ago, my dad kind of whipped the cold thing out of us,” she admitted, making my heart lurch. I’d heard things about their dad, and none of them were good. Winston couldn’t stand him, and openly mentioned that he’d like to reincarnate him just so he could kill him again. “We lived and worked in a circus from the time that we were small children. No joke, if he heard us complain even a little bit, we were regretting it. I remember one time in particular I told my father that I wasn’t feeling well, and that I needed to go inside since I was cold. He forced me to sleep outside the rest of the night, and the next morning when he finally let me inside, I had such a ragingly bad fever that Keene had to take me to the emergency room. When we got back with antibiotics, we found out that he’d left us and we had to hitchhike to where he was two states away.”
