"Not as often as I used to." I didn't want to lie, but I didn't want to give her the full truth yet either.
Luckily she didn't press. "I'm sorry about your hands."
"It's nothing," I said, grabbing a sterile gauze and coating it with peroxide then reaching for her hip to turn her to face me. I felt myself wince, steeling my stomach. "This is going to hurt," I warned.
She gave me a small nod and took a deep breath.
She pressed her lips together and tried to bite the bullet about it, but by the time I had all the cuts cleaned out, her tears were mixing with the peroxide.
"Sorry," I said, stroking a finger down her jaw. "This will help," I added, reaching for the triple antibiotic and a Q-tip, sliding the gloppy shit all over her face. "Okay," I said when I was done. "I need to check your ribs," I went on, wondering how much of an issue that might be.
She swallowed hard and nodded tightly. "Okay."
That was it- okay.
She didn't reach for her shirt to lift it.
"Can I?" I asked, touching the hem of the tee.
She gave me another tight nod and I slowly moved the material up, revealing more of her pale skin, marred in several spots with light bruising that, while it didn't look like much, probably hurt like a bitch and would hurt more given a night to really set in. But it wasn't too bad. Better than I expected. When I caught sight of her gray and white polka-dotted bra, I stopped, pressing the material of her tee under the band with one hand and reaching out with the other, sliding across her belly and seeing the muscles under the skin contract at the contact as her air rushed out of her. She was so fucking sensitive and I had hoped to explore more of that on New Years. But not like this. Not hurt. My hand pressed into her ribs gently at first. With no reaction, I pushed harder. "Nothing?" I asked, angling my head up to look at her.
"No," she said in a breathless little voice that shot right to my dick in a completely inappropriate response given the shit situation.
"Okay," I said, forcing my hand to move and pulling the material back down to cover her. "Here," I added, moving out of the bathroom for a second and coming back with one of my tees a second later. "There's blood all over yours," I added as she took it.
Granted, I could have gone across the hall and gotten her her own clothes, but somehow I wanted her in my shirt and she didn't object. "Take your time," I added as I went to the hall and reached to close the door. "I'll be right back."
With that, I shot out into the hall and grabbed the bags, dropping them carelessly onto the kitchen island then going back across the hall to find her damn cat. I found the carrier and brought it with me through the apartment until I finally found him sitting in the corner of her bedroom closet. When I got close, he let out a hiss and struck out with his little razorblades claw. "Like it or not, scratch me to hell or not, your ass is getting in this carrier," I told him, snorting when he immediately seemed to shut up. I stowed him away, grabbed the obsessively clean litter box out of the bathroom, and headed back toward my own apartment.
And I found her in the kitchen in my tee, carefully unpacking my bags.
"You were really planning a special night, huh?" she asked, her tone sad.
"Still am," I said, putting the carrier and cat box down and opening the door, watching the little flat-faced ball of fur dart off to explore and hoping he wasn't the type to scratch things all to hell.
"That's... nice, Ryan," she said, shaking her head, not able to keep eye-contact. "But I can't expect you to keep that promise now that you know I, ah..." she waved a hand, unable to say it even.
"Look," I said, exhaling hard, not the type to really sugarcoat shit and wanting to be straight with her. But there was another part of me that just wanted to say fuck all that and tell her not to worry about that. For better or worse, the logical part of me won out. "I don't fuck with drugs. I don't like them. I don't like what they do to the people who use them and how that affects the people around them. It's not my scene. That being said, I'm not judging you for doing what you needed to do to survive. Trust me, I fucking get that. It doesn't change the fact that I want to drink champagne and watch some stupid fucking ball drop in Times Square tomorrow night."
I swear you could see the tension draining from her. Her shoulders lowered; her jaw unclenched; she stopped frantically trying to organize the mess of bags.
"Okay?" I asked when she said nothing.
"Okay," she agreed, nothing more than a squeak of a sound.
"Once more and make me believe you believe it," I said, smirking as I moved toward the kitchen and started putting away the food.
"I believe it," she said, handing me the hummus I had picked up to go with either the pita, vegetables, or four different kinds of chips I had also grabbed. Not being a snack person, usually too busy to do so and just eating two or three whole meals a day, I had fuck-all idea of what I was doing in that damn food store.
"Ryan?" her small voice met me a few minutes later as I bunched up the plastic bags and shoved them into some plastic thing Anita stuck inside my cabinet for collecting them, a purchase I thought was asinine at the time, but turned out to be pretty practical.
"Yeah?" I asked, turning back to find her watching me.
"What am I supposed to tell Bry?" she asked, genuinely sounding like she needed an answer to that.
And, well, when a woman with a busted face who kissed you like she fucking meant it down to her soul was worried about something, yeah, you fucking handled it for her.
"Don't worry about Bry. I'll handle him."
"No, Ryan. That's..."
"I'm handling it," I cut her off. "No use arguing about it. You've got to have a killer headache right about now," I added, reaching into the cabinet beside the sink where I kept a bottle of aspirin. "Here, take a couple of these and go lay down with an ice pack," I said, handing her the pills and going for the icepack, wrapping it in paper towels and handing that to her as well. "I need to make a couple phone calls and then I will check on you."
"You don't need to..."
"I'll check on you," I cut her off again, voice a little firm and she gave me a grateful smile and headed down toward the bedrooms.
I reached for my cell and went toward the hall, slipping into her apartment for privacy and hitting the first number that came to me.
The other end picked up and my ear was assaulted with music and a woman's laughter. "Yeah?" Mark's voice asked, still half-laughing about something that I had interrupted.
But there was no time for guilt.
"Got a problem," I said and I could hear him immediately moving away from the noise until there was nothing.
"What's up?" he asked, tone serious.
"Remember my neighbor and the guys she got herself wrapped up with?"
There was a short pause and a very tentative, "Yeah?"
"They're drug dealers and she held the stash. Tonight she was robbed and busted up and, well..."
"That shit ain't gonna fly," he supplied for me.
Exactly.
"Yeah."
"Give me a name for the dealer and I will do some digging."
"Bry. That's all she gave me. They've been friends since they were kids. It's 30s so I don't think you have to worry about it being Third Street. They're more into their cheap street shit. Who is running pharmaceuticals around here anymore?"
It wasn't something I often had a need to know, to keep up to date on. We all kept an eye and ear on the bigger players in town- The Henchmen, Hailstorm, the Grassis, Richard Lyon, and...
"Oh, fuck. Tell me it's not fucking Lex, man," I said, raking a hand down my face, my calloused palms catching on the stubble there.
Mark paused. "I can't say for sure. He has his hands in everything, but I doubt he would have his shit sitting in some apartment with no protection."
True.
"Here's hoping," I agreed.
"How is she?" Mark asked into the silence.
I exhaled. "Holding it together. Looks like hell. But nothing seems serious. She's staying with me until she can stomach her own place again."
"Good," he said, uncharacteristically missing an opportunity to rib me. "So, I'm assuming that when you find out who these guys were..."
"They're going to pay," I agreed, hanging up.
There were some goddamn basic rules every decent person followed in life- you tipped your serving staff, you gave money to the people with bells at Christmas, you held doors, and you fucking never put your hands on a woman in anger.
It was time they learned that lesson the hard way.
And I was a really good fucking teacher.
EIGHT
Dusty
Is it bad that my first thought when they charged into my apartment and I knew exactly what I was in for was worrying about what Ryan would think when I saw him the next day?
I was pretty sure that was not the right thing for me to be thinking at that particular moment- men I had never met or even seen before screaming at me, shoving me, demanding to know where the pills were.
It wasn't that I hadn't been scared. But I found that all my years stressing over invisible monsters somehow made it easier for me to focus through the fear than maybe most would be able to in that situation.