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“If you don’t care, don’t make assumptions,” I tell her before shutting up.
“Look, I realize this isn’t the best situation for either of us. I’m here as a favor to my… friends.” She smirks as she straightens out my injured arm, making me hiss as she lifts it. “But if you do what I ask of you, you’ll recover faster than if you just sit and pout about how unfair life is.”
My mouth drops open in shock. Okay, I’m not imagining it. This woman is a bitch. “You don’t know anything about me.” I grit my teeth when she moves my arm to the point of pain.
She changes the angle and rotates my arm again to the point of pain, holding it until I want to scream at her.
“It will hurt, but you have to push through it. You can go a little farther than you are, but you’re anticipating the pain, so you tense before you get there. Try to breathe through it for me while I run through it again.”
I do as she asks, thankful she remains professional despite her animosity toward me. I breathe through the pain as she pushes harder than before. A couple of tears slip free when it feels like my arm is going to snap, but she eases up on me, which makes the pain recede, and a dull ache takes its place.
We don’t talk for the rest of the session beyond her giving me commands and me following them. Once I’m done, my arm is shaking, and sweat coats my tank top.
She steps back and looks at me like she’s thinking about what she wants to say for a minute before she speaks. “You did good.”
“Doesn’t feel like it, but thank you.”
“They won’t hurt you, you know.”
The sudden change in conversation gives me whiplash.
“They might look scary, but they are good men. I don’t know what will happen to you in the future, but while you’re here, they won’t hurt you. I just thought you should know that. Woman to woman.”
I stand on wobbly legs, a little dumbfounded. The hostility seems to have shifted to pity, and yet I have no idea why she thinks she’s entitled to feel either.
“I didn’t ask for your opinion or feelings on the subject. I thought you were here to help deal with my arm, not my heart. And how you can stand there and preach all this to me when you have no idea what’s going on is laughable.”
“I know what’s going on. Creed told me. I’ll admit, I’d expected you to tell me some story by now, but—”
I hold up my hand to stop her. “I’m married to those two men out there. Have been for four and a half years. I’m here because I took a bullet meant for Creed. I’m here because they drugged and kidnapped me. I’m here because they need psychological fucking help. So don’t tell me you know. Because if you do and you condone their actions, you’re just as fucked up in the head as they are.”
She walks closer to me, putting a sway in her hips that is wasted on me. I take a second to appreciate the extra couple of inches I have on her when she opens her mouth and rips me to shreds.
“I call bullshit. I might not know much, but I know they’re not cheaters. And since I’ve had the pleasure of warming Hawk’s bed a time or two, I know you’re lying. And kidnapping? Really?” She shakes her head as if disappointed, but all I can hear is white noise and the echo of her words about her warming Hawk’s bed, because she’s not lying. I knew they’d moved on, of course they had, but I didn’t need to know it had been with the 2.0 version of me.
“Thanks for your help, Jess, but don’t come back. I think I’ve had all the help I can stomach from you.”
I turn and walk back to the bedroom, feeling her eyes on me until I close the door and lean against it.
What the hell? No wonder she was acting the way she did. In her mind, she had a claim on them. Or at least Hawk. To her, I’m the interloper. I’m not even mad at her anymore. It’s clear she’s only been given limited information. But to bring her here? Why would they do that unless it was to hurt me?
My arm throbs, in stark contrast to the numbness the rest of my body is feeling. I walk to the bathroom without consciously thinking about it and strip off before stepping into the cold shower. I wash away the sweat from my session, my mind elsewhere, before I climb out and wrap a towel around myself.
I’m still dripping wet as I walk back to the bed and sit on the edge of it. I don’t know how long I sit there before the door opens. Creed and Hawk walk in and stare at me, their eyes blazing a path across my exposed skin before I look up at them.
“How’d it go?” Creed questions.
My eyes are on Hawk, who must read something in my expression because his face pales. “I would never have done that to you.”
“Avery,” he whispers, sounding tortured.
“What am I missing?” Creed looks between us, confused.
“You don’t know? It wasn’t something you planned to trigger me?”
“Trigger you? I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Hawk rubs a hand over his face before looking at Creed. “Jess and me…” his voice trails off as if it hurts him to admit the rest, but it doesn’t hurt him anywhere near as much as it does me.
