by J Bree
Once Blaise parks, we pile out and wait at the door for Ria. We’ve been here to pick him up a hundred times over the last few years and she scoffs the moment she comes out, snapping, “It really gonna take five o’ you to git him outta here?”
It kills me not to roll my eyes at the old hag, but we’ve learnt that Blaise is the right person to smooth things over. He stalks over to her like he’s done a million times and lays the charm on thick. “When have we ever turned down the chance to spend the evening with you, Ria?”
And just like that she chokes on her own tongue as she gets the fuck out of our way. The scenery never changes, we go through the stockroom, then the kitchen before making it out to the bar area. It’s dark as hell out here and I have to pause for a second to let my eyes adjust.
The place is fucking packed.
It’s usually busy but there are people jammed into every little nook and cranny of the place until I feel my skin crawl, my stomach roiling a little at the lack of air.
I don’t let any of that show on my face.
Harley takes the lead and I push Avery between us, giving Blaise a look so he’ll do the same with the Mounty. She startles and I’m sure she’ll want to argue about it but I’m too focused on watching Avery to help Blaise convince her. This place is well known for girls being assaulted, too many people and too damn dark to be safe.
We should have left them in the car, safe and locked in.
We search the ground floor but Joey has never been big on alcohol. He’s always wanted the harder shit so we’re forced to head upstairs. The music is too fucking loud and shit and half the people up here are off their fucking heads. I tuck Avery back under my arm and see Blaise do the same with the Mounty from the corner of my eye. It’s crazy enough up here that she lets him do it without a word.
Because he’s the only one with his arms free, Harley takes over the search. After a few minutes without any word from him, I pull Avery over to the restrooms, our usual meetup point, to wait him out. The girls huddle together again but Lips’ eyes are sharp as they take in the writhing bodies, like she could see through them all if only she looks hard enough.
We’re all startled by the disability restroom door opening and Harley’s head popping out.
“Mounty, I need you to look at this,” he snaps out and Lips moves without question, ducking behind him as he stands like a fucking wall in the way.
“Move, Harley, we need to get him out of here,” Avery says, but he shakes his head.
“Just let Lips get a look at him first. Give it two fucking minutes, Aves, don’t—”
“Why the hell would she need to look at him?”
I share a look with Blaise but then Lips calls out, “Don’t judge me for asking this but I am supposed to try and save him or are we waiting this out then calling it in for a cleanup?”
Save him?
Fuck.
No more playing nicely, I jab Harley in the gut to move him and shove my way into the room.
Joey’s dead on the floor.
Fuck.
Wait, no, he’s breathing but just barely, he looks like a fucking corpse.
Senior is going to kill me.
And Avery.
“I die if he does.” I don’t even mean to speak, the words just rip their way out of me, but the most painful ones stay lodged in my throat, Avery is dead too.
Lips instantly springs into action, not another word needed for her to transform into a field nurse and start working on saving the fucking useless asshole brother of mine. She rolls Joey to his side and shoves her fingers into his mouth to clear it out. His hacking breath starts to even out and she props his head up at a different angle until his breathing stabilizes a little more.
Blaise and I both watch her but Harley is watching me, his eyes too fucking fixated. He heard what I said and the puzzle pieces in his head are slowly moving together.
I’ve done everything I can to keep him from ever knowing about the guillotine hanging over my neck. He had enough worries with his own ticking time bomb family.
“I can call a doctor. What does he need to reverse this?” Avery asks as Blaise gets the door shut and locks it.
Harley finally looks away and moves to help Lips, kneeling down to help to support Joey’s twitching body. Fuck.
What did he even OD on? The list of shit he takes is about as long as the list of shit that’s available. I stoop down to start rummaging through his pockets and, sure e-fucking-nough there’s a pile of little clear baggies. The Jackal’s insignia grins back at me. I hate him even fucking more.
“There is no drug to reverse a cocaine overdose. They just treat the symptoms,” Lips mumbles, loud enough that we all hear her.
“Fuck. Okay.” Avery is starting to panic and Lips looks up to meet her eyes.
“He needs an ambulance and 24-hour care until he gets through. Look, it’s not too bad.”
Harley shoots me a look so I know for sure that she’s lying and then he catches Lips’ eye, swallowing roughly at what he sees there. “Is there anything we can do while we wait?”
“Recovery position and we need to make sure he doesn’t choke on his own tongue. That’s it about all we can do in this restroom. We should call an ambulance.”
Fuck.
It’s my turn to look at Avery, all of the pros and cons of that option floating silently between us.
Joey doesn’t do well in ambulances or in hospitals.
The red tape that Avery will have to get through for him will be a fucking nightmare.
Senior will be fucking livid.
Lips clears her throat and says, “I’m not waiting for an ambulance, we need to move him now.”
She gestures to Harley to go with her and so Blaise and I kneel to take our places beside Joey to keep him where he needs to be. Avery locks the door behind them and then we fucking wait, watching Joey’s chest the whole goddamn time to make sure the asshole keeps breathing.
Harley hot-wires a van at Lips’ request.
It’s not a hard job or even dangerous, Avery has Haven’s CCTV tapes wiped before she’s fully seated in the fucking thing, but the fact that the Mounty knew he is a pro at this shit eats at me. Did he tell her? Are they getting closer? I’d thought he was too busy making an idiot of himself around her but maybe he is getting somewhere with her.
He’s my cousin, one of the four people I trust more than anyone or anything in this world, someone I would kill and die for… and I want to fucking bleed him out for being the one she’s going to pick.
It’s my own fault.
But I don’t care.
I’m fucking haunted by the memories of her lips on mine, of how easily she fit into my arms and the way her body molded into mine like we were made for each other.
I’m obsessed.
And I’m going to have to watch them together and pretend that it’s fine, that none of this matters and that I’m not watching the only girl who’s ever meant something to me, love someone who isn’t me.
It puts me in a foul fucking mood. When Blaise and I get Joey to the back of the van I drop him in too hard considering we’re trying to keep the asshole alive and Avery shoots me a look. I let Lips and Blaise arrange his body so he won’t suffocate on his own tongue before climbing into the back and sitting on the musty old carpeted floor. I sigh and then climb in after them, trying not to think about what the vehicle has been used for because… no, thanks.
“So, we’re criminals now? We just take things whenever we want them? I’m not sure I have enough black in my wardrobe for this, someone should have pre-warned me,” drawls Blaise as he wipes his hands on his jeans.
“We were always a little criminal, Morrison,” I scoff.
“Lips, if we can’t take him to the hospital is there somewhere else we can take him?” Avery asks, and she sounds so fucking scared I want to kick Joey all over again. Fuck. Someday, someday, I’m going to beat the fuck out of him and it’s going to feel so fucking good.
“How the fuck would she know?” I snap, too harsh but everything about tonight is fucked.
They ignore me anyway.
“Yeah. Head to the Bay. I’ll give you directions once we hit the city.”
Harley nods like this is all so fucking normal, and then the van falls silent. The roads are quiet until we hit the highway to Mounts Bay, the sounds of traffic coming through Harley’s cracked window even this early in the goddamn morning.
I notice straight away that the Mounty is feeling every goddamn bump and turn. I keep expecting her to move or to yell at Harley to slow the fuck down, but she just sits there and takes it. It’s such a fucking Mounty thing to do, something that Harley would do as well, and eventually I roll my eyes at her stubbornness. I elbow Blaise and we each grab one of her arms to drag her over to wedge her between us. I clamp a hand on her knee and Blaise winds an arm around her hips to secure her.
She clears her throat, then rasps out, “Thanks.”
I shrug and Blaise nods, a little distracted like he always is when she’s this close to him. I get it. I’m also having to talk my dick down.
“What, no smart-ass comment?”
She’s still so goddamn sure I hate her. “No. I don’t have anything left to say.”
She stares up at me for a second before her eyes fall shut. She’s not sleeping, her face is twitching too much for that, but she stays silent. Her hands flex in her lap like she doesn’t know what to do with them, and I try to focus on Joey’s rattling breath.
As we get to the city limits, Harley breaks the silence.
“How much will this cost?”
Lips’ eyes pop open and she shrugs, her shoulder brushing against mine. “Nothing, I’ll call in a favor.”
Harley snarls and rips his body around to snap at her, “Fuck no. You’re not using up a favor for this fucking murderer. It’s bad enough you spent one on me. Get a price and we’ll pay it.”
A favor.
There’s a million different things a favor could mean in the Bay, and I’m shocked to know that she has access to any of them. Just how far into the criminal world is she?
She sighs and says, her voice sounding fucking exhausted, “Not one of those favors. The Doc owes me for some work I did for him last year. It’ll be fine.”
Some work for a doctor?
What the fuck would a Mounty kid be able to do for a fucking doctor? I don’t like the sound of this, but Joey’s breathing is still rattling away in his chest and we’re running out of options.
For once I just keep my mouth shut.
I don’t miss the look that Avery and the Mounty share, but neither of them say a word and the van falls silent again. I can’t stop thinking about what the hell Lips could have spent her childhood doing here on the streets in the most dangerous and notorious city in the country. How the fuck did she get grades good enough to win the scholarship to Hannaford if she was running around collecting favors from fucking doctors and catching the eye of the Jackal?
Who the fuck is the Mounty when she leaves school and comes back here, back to the city she calls home?
When the van finally pulls up at the curb, even though I’ve been listening to all of Lips’ directions and taking note of it all, I’m still fucking pissed at how shitty the neighborhood we’re in is. It doesn’t matter that the house is the only one that looks half decent, it’s still smack-dab in the center of the fucking slums.
There’s no way this doctor is legit, but I’ve got no fucking choice but to sit and watch as the Mounty bounces out of the car and up to the front door. It swings open straight away, but I can’t see a thing of whoever is standing there.
“Fuck, are we about to lose our kidneys here?” Blaise mumbles, loud enough that the other two catch it, and Avery throws a glare over her shoulder at him.
“Obviously Lips wouldn’t bring us somewhere where we’d be in danger. Use your brain before you speak; guys are such idiots!”
Blaise huffs at her and slings me a look. “You agree with me, right? Maybe the Mounty can’t see how fucking… ghetto this place is because she’s from here, but I’m definitely picking up the ‘black market’ vibes.”
I shrug and watch as she finally turns and waves us over to her. “Joey deserves nothing more than to lose a fucking kidney, so as long as he walks out of here breathing, I don’t give a fuck what the doctor takes.”
Harley unbuckles his seatbelt and grumbles back, “Yeah, we’re gonna be talking about why the fuck your life is tied to his, don’t think you’re slipping that in and we’re gonna just run past it.”
Like hell am I telling him a fucking thing.
For one he’d do something stupid, like go after Senior. For another I can’t fucking stand the idea of them all knowing about the beatings I’ve been forced to just… accept. Take. Submit to.
Fuck.
Absolutely not.
Blaise and I heft Joey’s prone body across the grass and into the house, following Lips’ directions into a medical room. I blink the moment we step in because… it’s an entire fucking hospital. The hallways were all tiny suburban household and this room has a fucking beat-up looking X-ray in the corner.
I drop my sociopath brother on the bed in the center of the room and then follow the Mounty out to wash our hands, because we’re both covered in Joey’s vomit.
Lips lets out a shaky breath and it’s the first indicator that she’s actually been worried about tonight, that she’s been worried about whether or not I’ll make it out of this if Joey dies.
It’s jarring.
It’s jarring because I know for sure it has nothing to do with him and everything to do with me, and I don’t know what to do with that information.
She keeps her head down and leads me back into the room, only looking up once we’re in there and then looking around like she’s waiting for danger. I think that might be her default setting here in the Bay, but I still don’t fucking like it. I hadn’t even noticed how much she’s relaxed since she became friends with my sister, but seeing the tension rolling through her again sets my teeth on edge.
Harley obviously feels the same way, that and he fucking loathes Joey, because he’s glaring at the doctor like he’s the cause of all of this bullshit. Avery is tucked up under Blaise’s arm and he’s frowning at everything as he keeps an eye on her.
She’s shaking like a fucking leaf.
Lips steps over to the bed and crosses her arms, taking in every inch of Joey’s pathetic, twitching form as the doctor mumbles out, “Friend of yours?”
Her answer is instant. “No.”
He raises an eyebrow at her, but he doesn’t falter as he puts an IV line into my brother. I hope there’s more than just fluid in that line; I hope there’s some fucking miracle drug that will keep him breathing.
“Why bother bringing him in then? Just dig a hole.”
I’d like nothing more than to reach across the table and strangle the life out of this man. The Mounty sees it too and changes topics quickly.
“He’s worth saving. How’s Maria and the kids?”
Of course she’d know all about his family. She’s just like Avery, retains all sorts of information just in case the moment arises that it’s useful to her, but she’s also… softer here in this room. She’s still looking around like someone is here to kill her, but there’s something about this old hack doctor that has also made her a little more human.
I don’t like it… I don’t like it because I want that soft side of her. I don’t want it directed to anyone outside of my family.
“She’s pregnant,” the doctor says with a sigh. He begins taking notes of all of Joey’s vitals. He doesn’t look worried or shocked, there’s no urgency in him at all, so I’m assuming the asshole will live.
Lips groans, “Fuck,” and he glances back up at her with a wry look.
“I’ve tried to get her on the stick but she insists on taking the pill then forgets to half the time. I’ll be building an extension on the house by
the end of the year.”
“Maybe tell her to stay away from cocks for a while instead,” Lips replies with a grin, and he roars with laughter at her.
Avery straightens in Blaise’s arms, pulling away from him until she’s mostly standing on her own two feet again. The shaken look is gone, the cold mask she shows the world back in place, and some of the icy rage in my gut dissipates.
The doctor starts to hook Joey up to his machines. “You know, if she finally has a girl I’m going to get her to name it after you. You’re a good girl, we need some of that in this house.”
I do not like him calling her a good girl.
It feels fucking creepy to me, and Harley’s lip curls in the corner at the same time I take a half step toward Lips, ready to drag her the fuck out of here.
Avery glares us both down like we’re unruly children.
The Mounty blanches and sputters out, “Fuck no! Don’t traumatize the poor spawn. It’ll be bad enough not knowing who the daddy is.”
The doctor grimaces and drops his eyes away from her. “Oh, I know who the daddy is. Maria will be lucky to get to keep the baby.”
“Why? Who knocked her up?”
Doc surveys the room before he speaks. “Matteo.”
Pure, unadulterated panic flashes across her face.
It’s the same type of panic she’d had when Harley had confronted her about Lance and the bet.
Her voice is nothing more than a croak, “Doc. Doc, do not let her tell him. Fuck, send her away.”
Whoever this Matteo is, he needs to die.
“I’ve tried, she won’t go. She’s got it in her head that they’re in love.”
Lips reaches out and grabs his wrist, shaking it just enough to get his attention, “I’ll give you the money. I’ll pay to get her away, Doc.”
He gives her a grim look. “I’m not stupid. I know she’s going to be forced to abort the baby.”
Lips looks like she’s going to throw up, but she doesn’t say a word. Avery glances over at me and shakes her head again, a sign to shut up and stay out of it, but I really don’t like this.