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Axel.
My mom.
Axel knows my mom.
The mantra fills my head, making my brain throb and my heart twinge. But I tell it to shut the heck up, that it can’t be true.
“I need you to try to breathe as normally as you can.” Ridge pushes to his feet and slowly leans in toward me with the thermometer in his hand. “I’m going to put this in your ear and take your temperature. Try to hold as still as possible, okay?”
I nod and do as he asks, again noticing the unsteadiness in his movements. And again, questioning if his nervousness has to do with Axel saying he knows my mom. Then another concern occurs to me. Are the guys going to kick me out over the possibility that my mom had a connection with a drug lord?
Stop thinking that! It’s not true. Your mom wouldn’t ever associate with a man like Axel.
But no matter how hard I try, I can’t forget the memory of me driving in the car with my mom and a man I’m pretty sure works for Axel.
I swallow the lump wedged in my throat. “Ridge… Did Jackson or Wilder mention anything I said before I passed out?”
He positions the thermometer in my ear. “They said you passed along a message from Axel… And that you said something about him mentioning your mom.”
“Oh.” I don’t know what else to say, so I keep my lips sealed and stare at my hands.
My heart hurts. My head hurts. Even my soul hurts a little bit.
“Zhara, you need to understand something about this world.” Dipping his head, he catches my gaze.” A lot of crazy stuff happens. People you thought were your friends end up betraying you.” He swallows hard, as if recollecting a painful memory. “Even your family can stab you in the back. And there are a lot of liars. And these liars will destroy weak people to get what they want, so you never know what’s true and what’s not.”
“You think I’m weak?” I ask then shake my head. Of course he does, because I am. Always have been.
He firmly shakes his head. “Not at all and that’s why I’m telling you this—so you can learn what to watch out for.” He uses his free hand to brush a few strands of my hair out of my eyes. “After what happened on your very first day, I’d be a complete idiot if I thought you were weak.” He offers me a small smile. “You’re a lot braver than most people and way braver than I am.”
I shake my head. “I don’t think that could possibly be true.”
“Don’t doubt it. I kickass with anything that has a computer chip for a brain, but put me in a situation where I actually have to talk to a person and I lock up.”
“You mean, you get stage fright?”
“Yeah, I guess you could look at it that way, but I’m not really on stage.”
“Well, technically no, but you’re acting, right? At least that’s how I felt when I was in the car with Axel—I didn’t even feel like I was Zhara anymore.” Honestly, I don’t feel like her now, but that might be the drugs lingering in my system.
“Yeah, I’ve heard some of the guys say something similar.” He removes the thermometer from my ear as it beeps. “I think looking at it that way makes it easier for them to do some of the shadier things the job requires.”
“What sort of shady things?” I ask, partly curious and partly worried. What if they’ve killed people?
“Nothing as severe as what you’re thinking,” he says, his lips quirking.
“Hold on, how did you know what I was thinking?” I cover my mouth with my hand and let out an exaggerated gasp. “Wait? Was that really a mind reader doohickey you just put in my ear?”
He chuckles, glancing at the temperature on the thermometer. “Nah, I left that at home today.” His brows dip. “Huh? So, it didn’t go up?”
“What didn’t?”
“Your temperature… It’s 97.5, which is slightly out of the normal body temperature range.”
“Oh, I’m always like that,” I tell him with a dismissive wave. “I have been for as long as I can remember.”
He meets my gaze, a crease visible between his brows. “Have you ever talked to a doctor about it?”
“No, but I also haven’t been to a doctor since I was like six.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, I don’t get sick very often. In fact, I think the last time I was actually sick was when I was six.”
He scratches his forehead. “And did the doctor mention you having a low body temperature?”
“I can’t remember. But I do remember my mom mentioning it a few times and telling me that if anyone ever said anything about it to tell them it was normal and that I was okay.” I pause, noting how puzzled he looks. “Was she wrong? Am I not okay?”
“No, you’re fine.” His gaze descends to the pulse and oxygen meter. “Your pulse looks great, along with your oxygen level.”
“That’s good then, right?” Because it doesn’t seem like he thinks it’s good.
He forces a smile as he fixes his gaze on me. “Yeah, that’s a good thing.”
“Okay.” I may not know him well, but I swear he’s keeping something from me.
Before I can press for details—that is, if I could even figure out how to press someone I barely know for details—Wilder strolls into the room. He’s wearing different clothes from the last time I saw him, now sporting a pair of dark jeans, a grey t-shirt, and clunky boots decorated with thick buckles. His blonde and blue hair is a tousled mess on the top and as always, his long eyelashes make him appear as if he’s wearing eyeliner.
When his gaze falls on me, a smile lights up his face. “You finally woke up.”
I plaster on a fake smile and nod, but the movement feels like a lie. The truth is, while I know I’m awake, I don’t feel that way at all. In fact, I feel like I’m wandering around in a confused, sleepy dreamland where nothing makes sense because nothing is real.
Devil’s Poison
After Ridge is finished playing nurse—which, as it turns, out his mom is the real deal and that’s how he has all the medical equipment—he instructs Wilder to go get me something to eat. Wilder has a few choice words to tell Ridge for trying to boss him around, but eventually he heads out of the room to, as he put it, “go whip me up a lovely feast.”
Before he walks out of the room, though, he shoots Ridge a dirty look. “I’m only doing it for Zhara, though. Not because you bossed me around.” He smirks. “And now you owe me a favor.”
“Sounds good,” Ridge replies calmly, like a freakin’ patience wizard guru or something.
After Wilder exits the room, I turn to Ridge. “I can do the favor for you,” I tell him. “He’s getting the food for me.”
Ridge’s lips quirk as he puts his doctor tools into the top nightstand drawer. “Thanks for the
offer, but trust me, you don’t want to owe Wilder a favor.”
“Why? How bad are his favors?”
“They’re not necessarily bad, but they’re not necessarily good either. Like one time he made me pose for him for a still life, art project he was doing. He made me hold my computer while I was doing it too, in the air, like a torch.”
I giggle at the mental picture in my head. “That doesn’t sound too awful.”
He takes a seat in the chair, sitting right across from me. “I had to stand still for over four hours. He wouldn’t even let me have bathroom breaks. I seriously pissed my pants a little bit.”
I try not to laugh, but the image of Ridge standing like the statue of liberty for four hours and trying not to pee his pants while Wilder paints him is sort of funny.
Ridge sighs, but a trace of a smile graces his lips. “Go ahead and laugh. Everyone else did.”
I bite down on my lip. “I’m not trying not to laugh.”
He gives me a really look. “Then why are you biting your lip so hard?”
I shrug. “I’m hungry and I have cherry lip gloss on, so I thought, what the heck, maybe chewing on my lip will help my hunger.”
Yep, and there’s my awesome lying skills making a grand appearance. Jeez, after having to lie to a drug lord, you’d think I’d be able to lie like a pro by now, but nope.
He gapes at me momentarily then starts laughing. “You’re kind of a little weirdo, aren’t you?”
“You really think so?” I question. “Because I’ve always been told I’m rather ordinary and boring.”
He shakes his head. “No way. I’ve only been talking to you for about twenty minutes and you already got me to laugh. I don’t do that a lot.”
“Well, that’s just sad,” I say. “I think I’ll try to get you to do it more often.”
He smiles, but confusion resides in his eyes. “You’re different from what I was expecting.” He dithers, chewing on his bottom lip. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but considering who your friends are, I thought you were going to be stuck up and kind of ditzy.”
