Star-Crossed(7)

“Huh.” The doctor pulled on his gloves. “Betcha got teased for that in school.” Romeo offered his left hand for the doctor when he sat on a stool in front of him.

He flexed his fingers, showing off the massive span of his broad, opened palm, and asked drily, “Do I look like I got teased in school?”

“No.” The doctor stared down at Romeo’s hand in awe. “I’m willing to bet you did just fine in high school.”

“Are you gonna sew up my hand or what?”

The doctor reached out, delicately touching the long cut that ran up the side of his palm. “I’m going to clean it first. I want to make sure all the glass is out.”

“Bring it on,” Romeo said, his voice heavy with disinterest. If anything, he welcomed the distraction. “Do your worst.”



* * * *





“We waited for you.”

Romeo rolled his eyes as he stepped into the waiting room with ten fresh stitches in his hand. He spotted his brothers sitting side by side in white plastic chairs. “Of course you did.”





19

They jumped up and walked over to Romeo, looking concerned. Nova got to him first and tilted his head to eye Romeo’s bandaged hand. “Took you a long time.”

“Pigs cornered me before the doc was even finished sewing me up, and took my statement, and you know that takes forever.”

“I still don’t understand why you’d deliberately throw yourself in the middle of this shit,” Nova muttered under his breath because the police were still crawling all over the hospital. “I’d rather cut out my own eyeball than deal with a buncha pigs, and you had to know this was gonna happen.”

Actually Romeo hadn’t considered spending forty-five minutes dealing with two of Las Vegas’s finest when he’d pulled Clay Powers’s girl away from her crazy ex-husband. If he had, he might have changed his mind because no one hated cops worse than Romeo.

“Yeah, that was a fun wrap-up to a shitty week,” Romeo agreed. “Anyway, I need to get outta this place.”

Tino shuddered. “Me too. You’re the only one I’d sit in that hospital waiting room for, Rome, ’cause I hate ’em. Even without pigs crawling all over the place, I hate ’em.” He contemplated Tino for one long moment, knowing he despised hospitals for the same reason Romeo did. They’d spent four years sitting in uncomfortable plastic chairs and eating bland hospital food while their mother battled cancer.

Romeo grabbed Tino’s powerful bicep through the thin material of his T-shirt. He pulled his brother close and then draped an arm over his shoulder. “Thanks for waiting.”

Nova breathed a sigh of relief and pushed aside Tino as he gave Romeo an enthusiastic hug. “You knew we would. We’d never leave you alone in this place. Hell, no.”

“Let’s bounce.” Romeo pulled Tino close once more because he was the baby and something about the hospital conversation had Romeo wanting to coddle him a little.



20



He was still pissed at both of them, but he’d be angry later. “We’ll chill at the hotel tonight; then we can get the fuck outta Vegas. I’m over it.”

“I like Vegas,” Nova argued, walking on Romeo’s other side as they headed out of the hospital. “What the hell is there not to like about Vegas?” Big surprise, anyone who had a brain like Nova loved Vegas. The asshole could bounce from table to table and make a fortune, but it was more than that. It was the challenge. A way to keep his brain busy for a few days and usually Tino and Romeo just liked to watch him do it, but not for this trip. All three of them had been tense the whole week.

“This time?” Romeo laughed. “I can give you a whole friggin’ list of reasons not to like it.”

Nova sighed as they walked past the automatic doors. “We’re sorry about the fight. It had to be done, but I know you don’t wanna hear it.” Romeo didn’t want to talk about it. He wanted to stand there and breathe in the dry Las Vegas air and flush away the smell of the hospital. In fact, he did just that, just stopped on the sidewalk entrance and worked on breathing in and out. He silently prayed to his mother, to the mother Mary, to any maternal being somewhere in the universe that could help the three of them out of the holy shit of trouble that seemed to follow them no matter how hard Romeo fought for something better.

He was so distracted by his inner thoughts that he only barely heard the soft twang of a Southern accent echo over the courtyard in front of the hospital. There were people all over the place dealing with the aftermath of the incident at the hotel.

“And I’m Clay Powers’s lawyer. Here’s my card.”