“Oh no? I saw you get in her car, fuckwit. Sweet black vintage Mustang, tricked out rims. She waved something at you, and you took it like the greedy bastard you are.” His smile turned lethal. “See, thing is, bud, we travel in the same circles. Carson kids never manage to make it too far out of the hood, do they?”
“I’m not from fucking Carson.” The disdain in Gray’s voice turned the chill in her bones to ice. “Try about twenty miles north, asshole.”
“Oh, right. You’re the suburban rich kid who started slumming with the cute little foster kid who’s so good at shaking her…sticks.” Snake smiled and narrowed his eyes on Jazz. “You like to play with powder too, sweetness? Is that what they teach you up north?”
“Shut the fuck up.” Gray went flying at Snake so fast that Jazz barely had time to get out of the way.
Stunned, she stumbled into the side table near the door, righting it and herself in time to hear Nick heave a sigh of epic proportions before he waded into the fray. Gray had the surprise advantage because he’d attacked Snake with a damn near flying tackle, but Snake outweighed him by a good forty pounds and was now showing that by shoving his meaty fists into Gray’s ribs. Nick muscled his way between them, finally managing to separate them just as Jazz grabbed the frosted hurricane lamp on the table and swung it, nearly hitting Nick in the face.
“Hey, watch it,” Nick yelled, ducking just in time.
“Sorry. So sorry.”
She would’ve dashed around him and taken a cheap shot at Snake while Nick had a hand on his chest, but the blood blooming on Gray’s white T-shirt snagged her attention before she could. She dropped the lamp on the table and rushed at Gray, dragging him back with her into the living room.
“Where are you hurt? Where did he hit you?” Even as the questions burst from her lips she saw the source of his bleeding. His nose gushed like a fire hydrant, the thick red liquid pouring out so fast that she choked out a cry.
“Get him out of here,” she screamed at Nick.
“Fuckin’ nosebleed, huh?” Snake called from behind them, his disgust palpable. “I barely touched the bastard’s pretty face. Goddamn cokehead.”
The words drove nails into her back, striking soft tissue that gave way from the pressure. She clutched Gray’s shirt tighter and pushed him down on the couch, blocking them out. Snake was just throwing taunts. More nasty shit like the stuff he’d tossed out a few minutes ago. All he wanted to do was hurt them.
It wasn’t real.
None of this was real.
She fell to her knees in front of Gray and dragged off her shirt, beyond caring about the catcalls coming from the front hall. Nick’s voice rang out, loud and sharp, as he tried to force Snake to leave. Snake jeered about “pretty white tits” and she didn’t so much as flinch. Nor did she cringe when he mentioned tabloids and headlines and singing his little heart out.
None of it made one iota of difference right now.
With trembling hands, she pressed the material to Gray’s nose and instructed him to lean back, her voice gentle in direct counterpoint to the harshness that surrounded them.
Only Gray mattered.
* § *
He woke up in his bed. Not his bed at their apartment, but the bed at the cabin. Soft, dryer-fresh sheets tickled his chin and he smiled, remembering how his mom had always tucked him in when he was sick. The smile faded as the pain in his ribs kicked in, followed swiftly by the sting in his nose. Sting was a kind word for the brushfire incinerating his sinuses.
Sweet bloody hell.
“You’re awake.”
That voice did not belong to his mother. Or Jazz.
He opened one eye and groaned as the back of an iPad came into view. No. Jazz loved him. She wouldn’t send the first horsewoman of the Apocalypse to his bedside unannounced.
“Doesn’t look too bad.” Cool fingers pressed on his jaw, tilting his face this way and that. “Not broken. Can one sprain one’s nose?”
“Maybe one can, but I doubt he did,” Nick said from behind her. “He barely took a hit. On the other hand, I took a knee to the goddamn balls—”
“God forbid your best days would be behind you in that arena. Fear not, I’m sure you’ll live to mindlessly bang again.” Lila sat on the edge of Gray’s bed and shook back her wheat-colored hair. “Grayson, I didn’t expect you to be my problem child.”
It shouldn’t have made him smile, especially since he was riding the knife’s edge of pain and he had no clue where Jazz was. “You were saving that role for Nick, huh?”
“Saving it? The boy was born for that role.”