“That seems to be everyone’s favorite topic.”
“And check those ribs,” she added, pointing at him. “You’re breathing like a man pretending breathing doesn’t hurt.”
“I’m breathing fine.”
“You lie badly when your face is purple.”
“That’s bruising.”
“That’s stupidity showing color.” She turned one red-polished nail toward me. “You make him clean it.”
I lifted my chin. “That was already the plan.”
Easton muttered something too low to catch and kept walking.
Mrs. Alvarez shut her door with a definitive click, and I followed him to the end of the hall, where he unlocked an apartment with a newer deadbolt and a door painted so many times it no longer fit correctly inside the frame. He got it open on the second try because his injured hand slipped on the first, and I watched him bite down hard against the pain, his jaw clenching.
He stepped inside and turned to block the doorway, his body filling the space.
“You got me upstairs.”
“I’m coming in.”
“No, you’re not.”
“Yes, I am.”
His eyes dragged over me in one rough sweep, not soft or careful, but something hotter and angrier than either. “You always this pushy when you’re calling it helpful?”
I stepped into his space until the toes of my boots nearly touched his. “You always this dramatic when you need first aid?”
His jaw flexed. “You do not get to come in here and play nurse.”
“I’m not playing nurse. I’m playing the woman who had to drive you home because your friends were about to start drawing straws over who had to make sure you didn’t escape through a bathroom window and commit a sequel.”
“I didn’t ask you to drive me.”
“No, you agreed because apparently Ryan and Cade’s emotional-supervision package offended your masculinity.”
“It offended my will to live.”
“You’re bleeding in a stairwell and still dramatic.”
“I’m bleeding because Maddox had a fist too, Clarke.”
“You’re bleeding because you used your hands like consequences.”
His face went lethal, all the careful control snapping into something raw and dangerous.
Good.
I wanted the fight. I wanted the heat. I wanted him mean because mean was easier than the fact that he had stood in The Sin Bin with murder in his eyes because Maddox had said my name like filth.
“Move,” I said, my voice low.
“Make me.”
Nothing softened or healed, but the room changed the way it does when someone strikes a match and pretends fire isn’t the point. His body filled the doorway, tall and tense, his chest rising shallowly beneath the dark cotton of his shirt, one hand bleeding and the other braced against the frame like he trusted wood more than either of us.
