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“I’ll tell her nothing. She doesn’t need to know.”
Slick doesn’t look very impressed with my declaration, but it’s not my job to make her feel better.
“She’s going to have questions.”
“I’ll tell her I was able to make it back from Guam for Christmas,” I insist.
“Christmas was yesterday.”
My heart pounds in my chest. I might’ve known that had I felt safe using the remote on the bedside table and turning on the television.
“What will you tell her about the bruises?”
I press my fingers to the purple under my left eye. I didn’t exactly have cosmetic concerns when I flew off the table as all those men came into the recording room in a hail of bullets. I don’t know what I hit on the way down, but it left one hell of a black eye.
“You’ll have to tell her eventually. We have people who can help you work through all of it and make sure you’re in a better place to have that conversation.”
“She. Isn’t. Safe,” I repeat slower, as if she’s an idiot rather than a damned doctor because the woman isn’t fucking listening.
“We have people in Lindell keeping an eye on her.”
“That feels like a threat,” I say, my eyes running the length of her in an effort to determine whether I can get the upper hand if I lunge.
“I assure you it isn’t.”
“They said—”
“You’ll let me fucking see her or you’ll have to fucking kill me!” a man roars from the other room.
I hate the way Slick holds her hand out as she reaches for a gun concealed under her clothing. It’s her way of telling me to stay back, that she’s willing to get hurt protecting me, and I don’t fucking like it. It calls into memory too many things I ignored while under Pirro’s entrapment in an effort to keep my sister safe. This woman saying she has a man back home to get back to, yet she’s willing to get hurt before that happens to protect a stranger, is fucking foreign to me.
Even fully dressed, clothes covering almost all of his wounds, I recognize him immediately. I have to determine whether I should run to him or if I really do need Slick’s protection. Honestly, it could go either way with the things that have happened between us.
Nash stands across the room, seething and a little twitchy, as he goes chest to chest with the big guy who declared himself the president.
He must sense me or he notices me move in his periphery because he turns his head, immediately locking eyes with me.
There’s shame in his eyes, but also this sense of camaraderie for the things we went through together.
He looks as stuck as I feel, as if he demanded this but never imagined he’d actually get it, and he is now torn on what to do next.
I’m the same exact way, wondering if running and hiding would be best, or if I’m meant to run in his direction.
I make the decision for both of us, stepping around Slick and walking toward him.
Chapter 20
Nash
I hate the silence in the room as she walks a couple of steps closer. I feel like a fucking science experiment with the way everyone is watching us.
She stops right in front of me, within arm’s reach, but not touching. Her throat works on a swallow. I want to pull her to my chest but touching her without her permission ever again just can’t happen.
Knowing that doesn’t stop me from brushing hair from her face and wanting to kill which ever bastard gave her the black eye. It’s been days since I’ve seen her, possibly longer, but it wasn’t there last time. She flinches away before I can touch her, and I feel the pain of it to my core. I can’t blame her for it. I’d never see it that way, not after what’s happened.
“Did Pirro do this?”
She shakes her head, her bottom lip quivering, tears clinging to her lashes as if she’s too stubborn to let them fall.
“One of these motherfuckers here?” I snap.
“No,” she whispers. “It happened by accident.”
My eyes narrow, making her take a step back, and I fucking hate that she seems fearful of me, despite giving her every reason to fucking hate me to my core.
“I hit my face on something when they came into the room. I thought I was going to die.”
“You were never in any danger,” Kincaid says. I guess I can count myself lucky that he doesn’t rip my arm off when I hold my hand up to silence him.
The man may not know it, or he’s just ignorant because from Angel’s point of view, but he was seconds away from killing her in vengeance of what he perceived she was doing to me.
“I had to make sure you were alright,” I say, knowing the word is subjective to a million different perceptions.
