Page 75 of Property of Bob

That was where she’d stayed all afternoon. I liked it more than I should have.

Ramona threw her head back and laughed at something McKayla said.

My eyes stayed on her.

Twenty years. That still didn’t feel real.

I’d gone twenty fucking years without seeing her, and now I couldn’t seem to go twenty seconds without checking where she was.

“You keep staring at her like that, you’re going to burn a hole through her head.”

I slowly looked at Cross.

He was sitting on the other side of me with his arms folded over his chest.

“I wasn’t staring.”

“Right,” he drawled.

“I wasn’t.”

Cross nodded. “And Prime isn’t an asshole.”

“Fuck you,” Prime called.

Cross lifted his beer toward him. “See?”

I shook my head and immediately regretted it when the muscles along the side of my neck pulled.

Fuck.

My hand went to my throat, and I pressed my fingers lightly against the skin below the scar and waited for the tightness to ease.

It did eventually.

“Doing okay?” Cross asked quietly.

“Fine.”

“You sound like shit.”

“Thanks.”

“You looked like shit too, but I wasn’t going to mention that,” he smirked.

“You’re a good friend.”

“The best.”

I dropped my hand. When I looked across the room again, Ramona was watching me. Fuck.

Her smile was gone.

I wasn’t hungry anymore.

Actually, I hadn’t been all that hungry to begin with, but everybody had been on my ass about eating. Apparently, losing enough blood to almost die meant I needed protein, calories, fluids, and about seventeen other things I’d stopped listening to the doctor explain.

I managed another bite. Then another.