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I shook my fist out, trying to banish the stinging ache that had reverberated up my forearm.
“You…” Adena choked on a breath as she blinked at me, one hand pressed to the side of her face. “You… bitch!”
“Wow. Original.” I felt my mouth moving, but my voice seemed to come from far away. So much anger and adrenaline was coursing through my body that I was beginning to shake. “Tattle on me if you want. Then maybe I’ll tell everyone you fucked with my car. Tell them what your idea of a fucking prank is.”
She jerked back as if I’d hit her again. Her eyes widened, then narrowed. Her nostrils flared as she glanced around the hall, taking in the large crowd that’d gathered around us, watching our entire exchange. She made an angry, almost animalistic noise in her throat before turning on her heel and stalking off down the corridor.
As she moved away, my good leg wobbled, and I suddenly realized I no longer had my crutches. I knew I shouldn’t have put weight on my broken ankle when I stepped forward, and I tried to keep all my weight off it as I put my arms out to regain my balance.
Hands closed around mine as Cole and Finn each stepped up to my sides, steadying me as Elijah retrieved my crutches. A murmur of voices filled the hall again as people went back to what they’d been doing before the altercation, whispering about it in hushed voices, and Mason stepped up to face me, breathing sharply through his nose.
The pain I’d seen on his face was gone, but the emotions that were left were no less intense. His body invaded the bubble of space around me, his energy pressing against me.
“You shouldn’t have done that, Princess. What the hell were you thinking? You could’ve hurt yourself. Your leg—”
“It’s fine.” I shook my head. “I get my cast off soon anyway. It’s been getting stronger.”
“Does it hurt?”
Yes. It throbbed dully, not a sharp pain but a pulsing ache, a reminder that it hadn’t born my weight in weeks. I didn’t answer, but he read the expression on my face and cursed.
“You need to let yourself heal up,” he rasped, his voice strained. “And you don’t need to give Adena any more reasons to go after you.”
“She can’t talk shit like that about your mom,” I insisted stubbornly. My hand hurt almost as much as my ankle, but I didn’t tell him that. “It’s not fucking right.”
Mason blinked. For a moment, the tense, angry energy radiating from him softened. Then he reached down and swooped me into his arms, gathering me up in a fireman’s carry. I let out a little yelp of surprise as he shot a glance at Elijah, who still held my crutches.
“Bring those.” He glanced back down at me. “You’re staying off your feet for the rest of the day.”
As if that settled the matter, he moved toward the door with long, steady strides, as if my clunky cast and I weighed nothing. None of the other Princes objected, falling into step beside us and pushing the door open when we reached it.
Mason carried me all the way across campus to the Wastelands, up the stairs, and into my dorm before depositing me on my couch. Elijah rested my crutches against the wall near the couch as Finn grabbed a bunch of pillows to stack up under my leg.
“You’ve got a pretty good right hook there, Legs,” he murmured, shooting me a lopsided grin as he straightened.
Cole rifled through my freezer and came back with a plastic bag full of ice cubes. He ha
nded it to Mason, and then the four of them sank into seats around the living room. The tall, chestnut-haired boy sat on the couch next to me, moving the ice over my knuckles and down my forearm.
The other three fell into conversation around us, but Mason didn’t speak for a long time, and neither did I.
It’d been stupid to drop my crutches just to punch Adena.
Worth it, but stupid.
Fortunately, I had an appointment scheduled with Doctor Garrett on Saturday afternoon. I was almost at the six-week mark of wearing my cast, so I was due to get it taken off soon. Mason had kept his word and made me stay off my feet for the rest of the day on Thursday, and the pain level in my leg had gone back down quickly.
Still, I was nervous about seeing the doctor, afraid he’d tell me I had somehow set my healing back, or that it hadn’t been going all that well in the first place. That I needed more surgery, or that the bones weren’t setting right.
Elijah drove me to my appointment. The others had wanted to come, but I was too nervous to have a whole group with me. And Cole wasn’t around anyway. The phone call from his dad had been to tell him he was required to go home every weekend until the end of the semester—that he couldn’t stay on campus when classes weren’t in session.
I hated not having him around. It wasn’t like I spent every weekend with the Princes, but I hated knowing he wasn’t at Oak Park, wasn’t close by. And I hated knowing where he was even more.
Elijah pulled up outside Roseland Medical and glanced over at me. “Do you want me to come in with you? I can wait out here if you’d rather.”
“No.” I pried my fingers away from the door handle, which I’d been squeezing so hard my knuckles had gone white. “I want you there, if you don’t mind.”
“Never.” He tugged the key from the ignition and turned to face me. Then he reached over and cupped my cheek, leaning across the center console to press a kiss to my lips. “It’s gonna be okay, Tal.”
