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He was just here.They sure do like to tell Xander what to do and how to behave. I look up at him, seeing his expression mirroring my thoughts.Expectations…
Bossy family members.
I know them well.
Boldy, I say, “I’ll drive.” And I wish those two words didn’t have envy wrapped around them. I know Stacey isn’t someone to be jealous of.
Do you?
Do you know that, Kaya?
She’s a family friend of the Butchers, the entire city knows that, and he’s not mine anyway, so there is absolutely no reason to feel anything. At all. About this situation…
Still, the way her name sits on his display—Stace.Ugh.The confidence she addresses him with, the familiarity, reminds me of acupuncture. It doesn’t hurt, per se, but it’s annoying and unsettling, and I want to rip her, erm,them, out from under my skin.
Jealousy is acupuncture.
His wounded blue gaze meets mine, and I shrug as if it’s no big offer, just doing my civic duty for the city’s new boxing legend. “Tell her I’ll drive your car. Then you don’t have to leave it here.”
Nice.
He texts her too quickly for even me to read and pockets his phone, staring blankly into my eyes, shocking my heart back to a frantic level.
I straighten. “What?”
“I’m driving you home.”
“I’m drivingyouhome,” I press. He holds himself with such gravity, even with tissues stuffed inside each nostril and one bloodshot eye while the other is in a tunnel of his own swelling skin. “You look like shit.”
He closes the gap between us, and I hold my breath as he says, “Liar,” in that deep timbre with daring notes.
I gasp out a breath. Iama fucking liar. Dragging my eyes over him, he looks like a beautiful warrior, primal, feral, sex-on-legs, and I’d let his CPS lips between my thighs even in this state, soggy tissue plugs and all.
While I hold his stunning but battered gaze, I feel his fingers thread through mine. He pulls me along with him as he collects his things, my shirt and jeans, and scoops his car keys up, before heading out the staff exit to his Jeep.
He opens the passenger door for me, and my brows weave in tight. “Are yousureyou’re okay to drive? I don’t want to be like everyone else and tell you what the hell to do, but I also don’t—”
“I’d never put you in danger, Woman.” He nods to the seat. “If I feel disorientated at all, I’ll let you drive.”
How do I argue with that?
“I’m at the Willow Motel.” I nearly choke on the words, accepting his hand into the car. “Just for now.”
On the drive, we sit in silence, but he’s not quiet at all. He’s pissed. His hands have the steering wheel in a vice-like grip, his jaw works at an agonising tempo, and his breaths remind me of a bull readying itself to charge.
I’ve got passionately intense Xander right now.
“Talk to me,” I say, staring at him. “An MRI? What’s that about? Is that something all boxers get? Is it because of today? Why did Chuck hit you like that? Was it…” I pause and look at him fisting the wheel like he wants to snap it. “Xander?”
As his aggressive silence continues, anger simmers inside me.
I can’t believe this.
“Seriously?” I scold. “Now you have nothing to say to me? You’re fucking mute all of a sudden?”
My outburst is met with further silence, and it feels unnatural for both passionately intense Xander and intensely passionate Xander to be so quiet.
When we arrive at the motel, the flickering neon-green sign, reminiscent of a 90s horror movie, flashes as he parks. He looks straight ahead, his narrowed eyes drilling holes across the single-storey building, scrutinising the run of doors along the veranda—judging it.
