by Laura Avery
I didn’t have to ask her who she was referring to, I already knew. My eyes moved away from Jackson and onto Liam. His large body was slouched over onto his side, studying his brother intently. I didn’t have to be two feet away from him to know he had a look of pain glued to his face.
“He’s been better,” I admitted.
Silence.
“Will he be okay?”
I let the worry in her voice sink into my veins and then did some sighing of my own. I realized suddenly how little I actually knew about Liam and Charlotte’s relationship. Clearly, it had some issues but who was I to judge? Look at the roller coaster of emotions I was wrapped up in with Jackson. Whatever their story was, it was theirs and theirs alone.
“Isn’t he always?” I whispered back. Liam’s hands were covering his entire face now, leaving only enough room for his eyes to be peeking out and focusing in on Jackson. Pierce had his arms on Liam’s shoulders, standing in the back of him as the doctor worked. It was the only time in my life I had ever seen the two men even slightly worried. They were always so sure, it was strange realizing they had a weakness.
“What are you doing, Charlotte?” I asked what I was thinking.
“I don’t know,” she answered honestly.
The front door swung open before I could even think about forming a response and Morgan came rushing out. She threw her arms around me and crushed the phone against my ear. “Oh, my God, Emery! Thank God you’re okay! What the hell happened to Jackson? Pierce and Liam are, like, totally, freaking out in there!”
“Freaking out?” Charlotte’s voice rang louder at Morgan’s words, clearer. “What’s going on over there, Emery? Did something happen?” She sounded panicked.
“No,” I told her as Morgan continued to smother me. “I mean, yes. I mean, I’ll have to call you back.” I hit the end button even though I could hear her protests coming from the other side of the speaker. I knew she was worried but I didn’t owe her anything. She had turned my life upside down with her lies and still didn’t have the decency to tell me the complete truth about why. My anger toward her had faded but only a fraction. Even if I didn’t understand her and Liam, it didn’t mean I was okay with the way she had treated me. I had thought she was my friend. The thought made me wrap my arms around Morgan and hold her closer to me, she was my only real best friend. I should have known that all along.
She pulled away and searched my body. “Are you okay? Are you hurt anywhere?” She looked frazzled, her dark red hair was sticking up in every direction and her normally vibrant eyes had deep brown circles underneath them.
I held her hands in mine and shook my head. “I’m fine, he didn’t touch me. He just…” I swallowed back the lump in my throat. “He just went after Jackson.” My mind felt like a piece of Swiss cheese, fried with too much emotion and scary events to think straight. “What are you even doing here? I thought you were back at the dorm.”
Morgan shook her head. “Pierce has barely let me go anywhere since this whole thing with his foster brother started. Did you… I mean, have they been able to figure out who he is yet?”
Pierce had explained what was going on to Morgan? The knowledge was like a slap in the face. Pain filled the inside of my stomach for reasons I couldn’t fully understand. It was something Jackson would have never done for me, not unless his brothers said it was okay.
Suddenly, I felt angrier than ever. I was done with this, done being kept in the dark, done having no control. “I don’t know what’s going on,” I snapped. “But, for once, I’m going to find out.”
I zoomed around her and pushed open the front door, taking the steps toward the dining room harder than necessary. I wasn’t going to sit outside like a good girl while the only man I had ever let touch me sat on a kitchen table bleeding out because it was the damn polite thing to do. Fuck that, Liam and Pierce already hated me, so what was I trying to prove?
“Um, Emery,” Morgan called, struggling to keep up with me. “Pierce specifically told me that we weren’t allowed in there!” I could hear her breaking into a jog behind me in the hopes of stopping me. “And he seemed really serious about it!”
“Ask me if I care,” I roared over my shoulder.
“Yikes,” she mumbled.
I pushed through the doorway like a bat out of hell, desperate to take my anger out on the only two Lucas brothers who were still conscious. I met Pierce’s eyes right away. “I want to know what’s going on in here. I want to know how he’s doing.”
Liam snapped his head up from the table. “Get out.”
“No.” I stepped further into the room in an effort to get the point across. I wouldn’t be going anywhere. “I want to know what’s going on with the man I’m involved with.” It was a bold statement, one I knew was a mistake when I saw Pierce cringe and Liam leap out of his chair, letting it fall back onto the ground with a heavy thud.
“Involved with?” Liam hollered, looking at me as if I was delusional. “Is that what you think you are? He’s our brother. Our blood. You’re just convenient, so I suggest you get the fuck out of here before I throw you out.” His tone told me just how much he meant it.
“I’m so convenient that he followed me thousands of miles away, right? So convenient that he just couldn’t seem to kill me even though you demanded it of him?” I was scared, terrified even, of the way I was talking to one of the most dangerous men I had ever seen up close but I wasn’t about to back down, not when I had come so far, not when Morgan was getting a sense of respect I wasn’t when she hadn’t even earned it. She hadn’t lived through what I had, she didn’t deserve to be in the know, not yet, not more than I did.
Who the hell were they to hand out that kind of privilege whenever they felt like it? I had one thing going for me and that was that I knew they weren’t going to hurt me. They could want to all they wanted but if Jackson woke up and they had done something to me he would lose his shit and they knew it. Jackson may have been confused on if he loved me more than he hated me but he still didn’t want anyone else touching me. He had made that much crystal clear over the last six years.
“Emery,” Morgan warned from behind me.
“Whose side are you on?” I snapped.
She retrieved back, winching.
“You’re a bitch,” Liam informed me. His body was puffed out, so worked up that he was shaking. “You’ll never be good enough for my brother, don’t you get that? You’re nothing, you’re fucking no one.” He took a step closer to me. “And someday, I promise you, I will kill you.”
His words stung. It was like he knew just what I was the most insecure about, aware of what words would tug on all the parts of myself I hated. The parts that believed he was right, that I would never have what it took to be the girl Jackson wanted forever.
It made me hate him even more.
I wanted to hurt him, hurt him the way he had hurt me.
“I’ll be sure to say goodbye to Charlotte the next time I talk to her then,” I stumbled out with a smirk. “She’s doing really well, by the way, found herself a nice little boyfriend in the new life she’s created for herself.”
I succeeded instantly. Liam lunged forward, trying to get at me. “You fucking whore!” Pierce pushed his big brother back against the wall, trying to contain him. “I’m going to kill you, you hear me? Fucking kill you!”
Pierce held Liam in place, leaning in close to him and whispering words that I couldn’t hear into his ear. I had no idea what he was saying but whatever it was worked. Liam’s body slowly returned to normal but the look of death in his eyes when he glanced at me remained.
“Yo,” a deep voice said from the other side of the room. “Do you guys mind getting the fucking young and the restless out of here so I can do my damn job?”
I jumped at the stranger's command, turning my attention to the new voice. I had been so wrapped up in Liam and Pierce that I had completely forgotten someone else was in the room.
“You act like it’s so simple, C
arl,” Pierce huffed.
“This,” Carl said, gesturing to Morgan and me as he continued to swirl his muscular hands around the inside of Jackson’s wounds, “is exactly why I don’t mix my playing with my work.”
I was immediately struck by how young he was. He couldn’t have been more than a few years older than Liam, toned and muscular with dark features and a full sleeve of tattoos. He had remained calm through our entire exchange, almost as if he saw the same kind of dramatics every day or maybe he just wasn’t floored by much. I had no idea. The only thing I knew for sure what that he looked nothing like any doctor I had ever seen.
“This is the doctor you called?” I asked incredibly.
Carl looked unaffected by my outburst, smirking instead of being offended. “This is the doctor they called, dramatic one.” He kept moving his fingers around Jackson’s body even though he was looking at me. “I’m also the doctor that’s going to save lover boys life here.”
“I am not dramatic!” I protested.
Pierce chuckled, mumbling something under his breath.
“Yeah,” Carl said. “You seem really calm and mellow.”
“I don’t think you mean that!” I told him, my mouth slightly ajar. Who the hell was this kid to come in here and start passing judgment on me? He didn’t know me! “You aren’t even a real doctor!”
“How do you figure?”
“You’re about twelve!”
“You’re an idiot,” Liam mumbled.
Carl started digging around in his black doctor's bag again. “Well, this twelve year old needs quiet if you want him to heal your boyfriend here.” He pulled out a long row of bandages and a long metal pole before tossing them to Pierce. “This twelve-year-old also knows that if you don’t get that hand flat within about ten minutes I’m going to have a hell of a time snapping the bone back into place.”
I glanced down at my hand and blinked. I had been so caught up in Jackson that I had completely forgotten about my battered hand. I pushed it behind my back, trying to hide the poking out bone but it was too late, Pierce was already tracing his gaze onto my wrist.
“Fuck,” he mumbled, moving forward. “Let me see it.”
“It’s nothing,” I lied.
“You’re lying,” Mr. know it all Carl informed everyone. “I know for a fact that must hurt like a bitch.” He lathered some kind of liquid over Jackson’s wound. “Didn’t anyone think to check the drama queen for wounds?” He glanced down at Jackson for the first time since I had walked into the room. “He’s going to be out for a while.”
“But he’s going to be okay?” Liam questioned.
“He’ll be fine. I just have to watch the wound for infection.”
Pierce and me both sighed in relief at the same time.
I moved toward Jackson but Pierce pushed me backward. “No, no way. You aren’t going anywhere near him until we stabilize your hand like the doc said.” He reached for my wrist but I pulled away.
“It’s fine,” I snapped. “Like I would trust him.”
“She’s starting to give me a fucking headache,” Liam complained.
Pierce pushed my body backward and carried me into the living room against my protests. He threw me down on the couch and groaned. “Can you just calm the fuck down for one second? You’re making me carry you out of rooms like a child now? What are you, Morgan?”
I wanted to tell him that maybe if I acted more like her then he would tell me shit too but I knew better. I didn’t care about Morgan and Pierce’s weird situation. Pierce wasn’t Jackson and every minute I was stuck in here with him was another second I was away from the man I really wanted to be near.
“Just let me see it, okay?” Pierce said, his tone softer as he reached out and pulled my wrist from behind my back and started studying it. “Shit, I can’t believe I missed this when I was taking you out of the cuffs. Jackson is going to…”
“Jackson is going to what?” I begged him to finish. I wanted to hear him tell me that he knew his brother cared about me. That he was well aware of the fact that he would lose his shit if he woke up and I was hurt. It might have been pathetic but I didn’t care. I felt so weak despite how tough I had acted seconds earlier in that room.
Pierce held eye contact for a few beats before shaking his head and ignoring my question. “This is probably going to hurt.” He pushed my hand straight and laid it on the metal pole before he started to wrap it tightly. He eyed my lack of reaction with surprise. “Or not.”
It had stung for a second but it had been nothing compared to the thought of living the rest of my life without Jackson. “I feel like I’m just numb,” I whispered. “I can’t feel anything.”
The realization of just how close I came to never seeing Jackson again combined with the relief that he was okay hit me all at once and I felt tears starting to drip down my face without my permission.
“Fuck,” Pierce looked uncomfortable. “I thought we talked about this whole crying thing.” He moved his large body down and sat down next to me on the couch. “I’m not any good at it.”
I leaned into him naturally. “What’s wrong with me?”
“You’ve been through something.” He pulled me into the side of his body, placing his arm around me and letting my head sit on his neck, almost like I was a little sister he had to protect from the big bad world. “Sometimes things are harder to handle than you realize.”
“No, it’s more than that. Why do I care about someone so much who hates me?” I shook my head and stopped trying to mop up the wetness from my eyelids. “There’s something wrong with me. That’s not, that’s not normal, Pierce.”
He sighed. “What’s normal anyway, Emery? Normal is overrated. Normal is boring. I wouldn’t ever want to be normal, Emery, aim for something more. Something terrifying, that’s how you know it’s real.” His chest was rising and falling softly with his words. “You don’t need me to tell you Jackson cares about you for you to know it’s true. It’s there, present in his actions if you just look beyond the surface. He cares, Emery. We’re just… we’re all…” he let the sentence linger in the air; as if finishing it would be admitting something he had promised a long time ago he never would.
“Damaged?” I supplied.
He nodded into my hair. “More than you know.”
“Does this mean we’re friends?” I said after a moment.
“No,” he answered immediately.
I half smiled. I wasn’t sure I believed him.
“Oh,” Morgan’s face came from the hallway. “Sorry.”
Pierce sighed and shook his head. “No, it’s okay, we’re pretty much done here.” He gave my shoulder one last squeeze before he stood up. “Are you going to be okay?”
“Yeah.” I nodded. “Yes, I’m good.”
I glanced back at Morgan and for one split second, I saw it. It flew by her features in specs, so fast that if I had blinked I would have missed it, but I didn’t and so I saw it. Jealousy. At that moment I finally had my answer, Morgan felt something for Pierce. Even if she wasn’t fully aware of it yet, it was there, hiding, just begging for the chance to come out.
I stood up. “I need to see him.”
Pierce blocked me. “Emery, he needs to rest. We all do. I promise you when he’s awake I will come and get you, okay?” His tone was firm, begging for me not to fight him. “Jackson would want you to sleep.”
I relented, suddenly feeling too tired to fight. “Fine.”
“Good.” He left the room and went back toward Jackson.
Morgan watched him go, a look of confusion written across her jawline. She thought he would say something to her, acknowledge her in some way. I saw a flash of hurt before she plastered a fake smile over it. That was the problem with the Lucas brothers, they could change on a dime. One minute you felt like you mattered and the next they were cold and withdrawn, acting like you were invisible.
She didn’t have to hide that broken feeling from me.
I knew it all too wel
l.
Chapter Three
“Oh, wow, he was really hard.”
EMERY
I sat on the edge of Jackson’s bed a few days later, holding his hand between my fingers and tracing small circles over his skin. He had been in and out for the past 48 hours but he seemed to be stirring now, on the verge of fully waking up. I moved the bag of ice that Pierce had given me for my wrist over to the nightstand, not wanting anything between our touch.
His eyes flickered open and for a few seconds they were a soft grey, the anger he was so accustomed too not visible, but then it faded and that same blackness flooded to the surface.
“Cameron,” he shot forward. “Where is he?”
“Shh,” I tried to push his body back down. “Stop, you need to take it easy.” I moved the blanket to the side of his body to make sure his wound hadn’t opened back up. “He’s gone.”
“I have to fucking find him,” he roared.
“You need to rest,” I ordered, running my fingers up and down his broad chest. His skin was hot and I immediately felt the spot between my legs grow to life. I blushed and pushed the wetness away. “Liam and Pierce are already on it, trust me.”
“They can’t do it without me,” he huffed.
“They can.” I moved closer to him on the bed, resting my leg over his thigh. “I hate to be the one to break it to you but you almost died. Believe it or not, that means you have to rest.”
“I’m fine,” he assured me. “Just a little sore.”
“Good. Are you…” I looked away. “Are you mad at me?”
“For what?” he sounded startled. “Did you do something?”
I shook my head. “No, just about the whole situation.”
“You didn’t do anything wrong, Emery. For once.”
I glanced at his naked chest and felt my heart start to race. How could I be turned on at a time like this? He needed me to be there for him emotionally not rock his body when he was close to being thrown on the other side for good.