by Parker, Ali
“Can I see him now?”
“Yes. He’s in the north building on the first floor. The nurses at the desk will take you to him when you arrive. He’s unconscious now, so if you would prefer to wait until morning, we can inform him that you’re coming when he wakes up.”
“No. I’m on my way.”
“All right. I’m glad to hear. It’s nice for patients to wake up to a familiar face. See you soon, Mr. Thomas.”
I hung up the phone and stood up. I picked up my jeans from where they lay at the foot of the bed on the floor. I stepped into my boxers first, then the jeans, and then shrugged into my shirt.
Laina was sitting up and rubbing the sleep from her eyes. “Mason? What’s going on? Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. Rick got into trouble last night. He’s in the hospital.”
“What?” She sounded more awake now.
“I don’t have the details yet. I’m going to go see him.”
“I’ll come with you,” she said, swinging her legs over the side of the bed and hurrying over to collect her pants. She picked them up and frowned. They were still wet.
“You can stay here,” I said as I opened my drawer and grabbed a pair of socks. “Get some sleep. I’m fine on my own.”
“Mason,” she said firmly. “I want to come. You don’t need to go alone.”
I nodded. “All right.”
“Can I borrow a pair of sweats?”
“Uh. Yeah. Sure. Top drawer of the dresser.”
She got dressed as I hurried into the bathroom and splashed water on my face. I raked my hair off my forehead, swished some mouthwash around, and went back into the bedroom to find her tightening the drawstring of my gray sweatpants. She had her bra on and nothing else. Had I not been overwhelmed with the news about Rick, I would have been turned on looking at her in my pants.
Laina put on her crop top and nodded to me. “Let’s go.”
The twenty-minute drive to the hospital was torture. Laina sat quietly beside me. I wasn’t sure how, but she knew I wasn’t in the mood to talk. She stared out the window as the rain pattered against the glass, and as I pulled into the parking lot, she told me to go ahead and that she’d catch up with me after she paid the meter for the parking.
I took her up on the offer.
The nurse at the desk on the first floor directed me to Rick’s room as Casey had promised. I found him in a room of his own, still unconscious, and collapsed into the chair beside his bed. He looked rough. He looked like he’d been in a battle for his life.
His nose had been broken, and he had two black eyes. The doctors had put a brace over his nose and secured it with thin white strips of medical tape. His bottom lip was split open, his jaw was bruised, and I could also see bruises along his forearms, likely from blocking punches.
“Fuck, man,” I breathed as I looked my brother over. I was having terrible flashbacks of sitting with him in this very same hospital the night he’d been shot. This wasn’t as terrifying because his life wasn’t hanging in the balance, but the beeping monitors and the bandages and the blood were enough of a trigger to have me feeling some of that same anxiety.
Laina arrived a good ten minutes after I had. She held two cups of coffee in her hands and brought them over to me. I pulled up the second chair for her, and she lowered herself into it. She passed me my coffee. “I wasn’t sure how you take it, so I added a bit of cream,” she said. Then she reached into the pocket of my sweatpants and withdrew a couple sugar packets. “And I grabbed these just in case.”
I tried to smile as I took one from her and tore it open. She also had stir sticks, and I used it to mix the cream and sugar into my cup. “This is perfect. Thank you.”
“I ran into one of the doctors. She said she’ll be in shortly to talk to you.”
“Okay.”
Laina reached out with her free hand and put it on my knee. “She said he’s going to be fine.”
I closed my hand over hers.
The doctor, a middle-aged woman with blond hair, tired eyes, and a kind smile, came in after we’d been quietly sipping our coffee for five or so minutes. She asked me out into the hall and held a clipboard to her chest as I stepped into the fluorescent lighting.
“Hi, Mr. Thomas. I’m Dr. Gene.”
“Hi,” I said, rubbing the back of my neck. “Mason is fine.”
“Very well. Mason. Your brother is in good hands here and will make a full recovery. We don’t have all the details, but he was dropped off in front of the emergency room doors at three fourteen this morning. Nobody saw who dropped him off. Well, besides a senile patient on his smoke break who isn’t all that reliable. That doesn’t matter. What does matter was that he was beaten pretty badly. He has a broken wrist and nose, which I’m sure you noticed. Aside from that, there was some brain swelling, which has gone down and does not worry me at this point. I’d like to see how he is when he wakes up to make sure he’s coherent.”
“Do you think weapons were used?”
“Perhaps.” She nodded. “A baseball bat or something similar.”
“Fuck.”
She gave me a small smile. “Yes. It is unpleasant. Do you know who might have done this to your brother?”
“I can speculate, but I can’t prove anything.”
She nodded knowingly. “Well. The two of you might want to file this with the police. But I’ll leave that in your hands. Do you have any questions for me?”
I shook my head. “Not right now.”
“Well, if any occur to you, I’ll be around. I’m on the night shift and will be here until my shift ends at seven o’clock. I’ll be coming to check on him every couple of hours. Are you going to stay a while?”
“Yes.”
“Very good,” she said. “The cafeteria opens at six o’clock.”
“Thank you.”
I watched her walk off down the hall and take a right into another room. I ducked back into my brother’s room to find Laina staring at him with a look of horror on her face. She blinked when I walked in and leaned back in her seat like she’d been caught doing something wrong. “It’s pretty bad,” she whispered.
I nodded and sat down beside her. “Yeah.”
“What did the doctor say?”
“That he got jumped. They beat him up pretty viciously, and someone dropped him off this morning. They must have found him unconscious on the side of the road or something.”
“We were just with him,” she said.
“They thought it was me.”
“What?”
“They jumped Rick last night because they thought he was me. He was driving the Mustang.”
Her eyes widened as realization dawned on her. “Do you think it was Sid?”
“I’d bet my forty grand on it.”
Chapter 10
Laina
The coffee shop I met Ginny at on Tuesday morning was our usual meetup spot. They served the best chai tea lattes, my favorite, and the pastries were made in-house fresh every morning. Today I was treating myself to a cinnamon roll coated with a thick layer of cream cheese icing. They’d warmed it up for me, as they always did, and as I cut through the doughy goodness, a waft of cinnamon and sugar rose up to meet me with the steam I unleashed from the center.
Ginny sipped her hazelnut latte. “So is Rick out of the hospital then?”
I had just finished filling her in on everything that happened on Sunday morning. I had told her he was jumped, and his memory was still pretty foggy. All he could remember was that he was cut off when he turned down a side street and boxed in when another car pulled in behind him. He’d locked his doors, but one of the guys broke the passenger window open, and they dragged him out.
Then they waled on him until he passed out.
Mason had been more than a little angry. He’d been beyond furious. Rick hadn’t understood at first. He’d kept saying it was fine, that shit like that happened sometimes. I was the only one in the room who knew what was going on.
> Mason blamed himself. He wished he was the one in the Fastback that night so he was the one who was jumped, not his brother.
When I pointed out that I would have been in the car with him, his temper subsided—but only a bit. His brother was still beat to shit, and his Fastback was gone. Stolen. Probably torched in a field somewhere.
“They released him yesterday morning,” I said. “He’s staying with Mason until he’s made a bit more progress with his recovery. He has a bad concussion, so he has to take it easy for a week or so.”
Ginny licked foam from her upper lip. “That’s insane. Does he know who did it?”
“No. He thinks there were four or five guys, but he can’t be sure. Apparently, they were all wearing ski masks. He doesn’t remember their clothes. And none of them said a word.”
Ginny asked a better question. “Does Mason have any clue who it was?”
“He’s pretty sure Sid and Mark had something to do with it.”
“The two guys from the race? The creepy one?”
“Yep.”
“That’s not a far-fetched suspicion, is it?”
“No. He’s probably not wrong. But there’s no way to prove anything, and the last thing Mason needs right now is the law sniffing around.”
“Why?”
I blinked at her. “Racing is illegal. You know that, right?”
She went a bit stiff with her latte raised halfway to her lips. “Um. I do now, I guess. But what does this mean for Mason? He has no car for this weekend now.”
“I know. He’s trying to get something together, but it’s not looking good. I think he has a little more than that forty grand to spend, and that’s not enough to get him something that will keep up with the other cars that are registered. It would be a big waste of all his winnings. This might not be his year.”
“Which means Sid will win?”
I shrugged. “More than likely. Mason was the best bet to take first place from him.”
“Well, that sucks.”
“Tell me about it.”
“And poor Rick.”
“I know.”
Ginny sighed and rested her cheek in her palm. She peered out the window we were sitting by to the street. People were bustling by with shopping bags in hand. Businessmen and women carried briefcases and laptop bags to meetings and lunches. The city was alive with the usual New York hustle and bustle as we took our time sipping our hot drinks.
I took another sweet bite of my cinnamon roll. “So. You and Rick. Is that going to be a thing?”
Ginny looked horrified. “What are you talking about?”
“I saw the way you were flirting with him at Taps. And he was flirting back. Maybe a visit from you would make him feel better.”
Ginny bit her bottom lip and swirled her latte around, mixing up the sediment of syrup that had gathered at the bottom. “I don’t know. It was one night. And I was drunk and having fun. Sort of like someone else.” She lifted her gaze to me.
I lifted my chin. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Oh, please!” she exclaimed, putting her cup down and pressing both hands flat to the table. She leaned in close, dropping her voice so the other customers couldn’t hear our conversation. “You were at Mason’s house when he got a call at four in the morning? Obviously, you slept with him. Am I right, or am I wrong? And how have we not talked about this yet?”
I shook my head. “There’s nothing to talk about.”
“You’re so full of shit!”
“Ginny!”
“What?”
I covered my face with my hands and fought the urge to smile. Ginny was giggling, and my cheeks were getting hotter by the second. I hadn’t ever had a one-night stand in my life—not that I was entirely sure that’s what Saturday night was. I hadn’t spoken to Mason since Sunday and was giving him space to get his shit together for the upcoming race. Naturally, space meant I had no clue where he and I stood. And if this was a one-night stand, I didn’t want to talk about it.
But if it wasn’t…
Ginny pulled my hands away from my face. “Why are you embarrassed?”
“I’m not.”
“You’re bright pink,” she said flatly.
“I don’t know,” I said, slumping backward. My chair creaked beneath me. “I just… I wasn’t expecting Saturday night to happen. Now that it has, I’m a bit thrown off. Things were easy between me and Mason before. We were friends. I might have ruined it and made it awkward. And Benji… I haven’t even talked to him yet. He’s probably mortified.”
Ginny shrugged. “You’re a grown ass woman. Let him be mortified.”
I stared at her over the rim of my cup as I finished off my chai tea latte. “He’s my brother. I feel bad for putting him in that position.”
“Don’t.”
“Easy for you to say. You’re an only child.”
“True.”
I sighed. “The whole situation is just… I don’t know. Sticky.”
“I bet it was sticky.” She winked.
“Ginny!”
She roared with laughter, and people started looking at us, amused in turn by her amusement. She had one of those contagious laughs that caught the attention of everyone in a room.
Ginny got her laughter under control. “Okay. In all seriousness, try not to feel bad. Think about it this way. Was the sex worth it?”
I ran my tongue along my teeth. “Yes.”
“See? Don’t beat yourself up about it. A girl has to go after it sometimes, you know? And I can attest that Mason was worth going after. Even if the sex had been terrible, he would have been worth it.”
I shook my head but laughed softly. She was right in her own way. “The sex was definitely not bad. He was very generous.”
“Not surprised,” she said, her eyes alight with curiosity.
“I’m not giving you details.”
“Oh, come on. Let me live vicariously through you. I haven’t had sex in like—” She paused, counting her fingers, messing up, and then restarting. “—eight months.”
“It’s been a year for me.”
“Holy shit. Are you serious?”
I nodded. “I haven’t been with anyone since my ex. You know me, Gin. I’m not made for the hooking up and putting out thing. I like to know someone and trust them and have a relationship with them before I give that up. Trust issues.”
“That’s not trust issues. Sex is just special to you. There’s nothing wrong with that.”
I smiled. I appreciated her support.
She finished her latte and tucked her used napkin into the empty cup. “So why did you change your ways for Mason on Saturday?”
“I have no idea,” I admitted.
“I do.”
“Oh? Please enlighten me.”
Ginny gave me a cocky smile. “You like him. Like, like, like him.”
I arched an eyebrow.
“You’re not denying it,” she said, clasping her hands together. “Which means it’s true. I think I was a detective in my former life.”
“Really? I’m pretty sure you were a reporter.”
“Why a reporter?” she asked curiously.
“Because you’re always poking your nose in my business.”
Her eyes widened, and she burst out laughing again, drawing more attention from the other café customers. “You might be right.”
Ginny shrugged one slender shoulder and gazed outside. She watched a woman in a hot pink pantsuit walk by and then looked back to me. “Do you want this to be more than just a one-night thing?”
“I don’t know.”
“Sure you do. There’s no harm in admitting to yourself what you want.”
I sighed. “I mean, if it happened again, I wouldn’t be disappointed.”
Ginny rolled her eyes. “Wow. Can you just say out loud what you want? And say it with conviction? Like you fucking mean it, Laina. Come on.”
“I want him.”
She leaned back,
and her expression shifted from boredom to impressed. “Good. You should call him then.”
“No. He has a lot going on with his brother and the race right now.”
“You were there at the hospital with him. That counts for something. I bet he’d be happy to hear from you.”
“And if he’s not?” I asked nervously. It wasn’t a fun thing to contemplate. What if he rejected me? What if this wasn’t what he wanted, and once he’d gotten a taste of me, he was ready to move on to the next best thing? To a girl like Harley.
“If he’s not, then you don’t need to waste more time wondering.”
I frowned into my empty cup. “I hate when you’re right, Gin.”
Chapter 11
Mason
When I got up on Tuesday morning, it was to the sound of dishes clattering in the kitchen. I threw my blankets off, pulled on a pair of loose sweats, and padded downstairs to the living room. Rick had crashed on my couch the last couple of nights since getting out of the hospital, so it was covered in blankets and several pillows. The bed in my guest room wasn’t comfortable for him because the mattress was too soft, and with his aching back and kinked neck, he favored the couch.
I found him in the kitchen putting two pieces of bread in the toaster. He glanced up when I opened the fridge and helped myself to a glass of orange juice.
“Morning,” he said. His voice was more nasally than usual due to the broken nose.
“Morning. How are you feeling this morning?”
He shrugged one shoulder and peered down into the toaster. He’d always been impatient when it came to his food in the morning. As young kids, we would fight to get to the toaster first. Our parents never opted to get a four-slice toaster. Maybe they were amused by the battle that raged in the kitchen every morning between Rick and I. “I feel better every morning. The headache is finally passing.”
“Good.”
“How about you?”
I cocked my head to one side. “I’m fine.”