They’d casted my hand and were keeping me overnight to monitor me because of the concussion when all I wanted to do was go home—or to Will’s home—and sleep in a comfortable bed that wasn’t paper thin.
Silence descended on the room, making me itchy and uncomfortable. Will sat in the chair beside my bed, staring but not saying a word. I was disconcerted enough as it was; I couldn’t handle his stoic silence any longer.
“Will you say something?” I finally asked, breaking through the whirring of the air conditioner. “Anything, I don’t care. Yell at me. Tell me I’m an idiot for ever marrying him. I just can’t take you giving me the silent treatment.”
His forehead furrowed in a deep, harsh frown. “Is that what you think?” he asked in an ominously low voice. “You think I’m mad at you?”
“I don’t know because you aren’t talking to me. What else was I supposed to think?” I went to throw my hands up, but a bolt of agony shot through my ribs so intense that it stole my breath and made me cry out, which only made the pain that much worse.
“Christ.” Will moved fast, shooting from his chair and bending over the bed to place gentle hands on me. “Careful, baby girl. Don’t hurt yourself. Just… stop moving.”
“Good God,” I grunted, sitting back on the reclined bed, my eyes squeezed closed. “Jeez, who knew cracked ribs could hurt so damn bad.”
“I’m gonna kill that motherfucker,” Will growled as he paced, prowling the room like a wild beast in captivity. “I’m gonna drive over there and rip his goddamn head off for what he did to you!”
I wasn’t sure why, but seeing my brother like that did me in. In spite of the excruciating pain, I burst into body-racking sobs. “Ow, ow, ow. Oh shit, that hurts,” I said between hiccups.
Will rushed back over, pulling his chair closer and wrapping my undamaged hand is his big, strong one. “Shh, shh, sweetheart. It’s okay.”
I finally got ahold of myself… somewhat. “I-I’m s-s-so st-stupid.” I sniffled.
“Hey now, stop that.” His callused fingers skated through my hair soothingly. “You’re not stupid, baby girl. This isn’t your fault at all. It’s all on that son of a bitch.”
“But if I hadn’t—”
“No,” he commanded fiercely. “No. I’m not letting you take blame for any of this, so don’t even try it.”
“You don’t understand,” I said on a broken, defeated whisper. “I knew. I knew I made a mistake before I ever walked down that aisle. I was having second thoughts when you came in to talk to me. Hell, I’d been having them since he slipped that ring on my finger. It gradually got worse throughout our engagement, but I always made excuses for it. I finally had enough. I couldn’t take it anymore, so I was packing up to leave when he—” I swallowed thickly, unable to finish that particular sentence. “I should’ve listened to my gut. I never should’ve married him. How is that not my fault?”
“You loved him once, and you wanted to make it work. That’s how. It didn’t work out. That isn’t a reflection on you, Lyla. You gave it your best shot, and no one, not one fucking person, can say you didn’t try.”
“But I never should’ve—”
“We grow, baby girl. As people, we grow every single day for as long as we live. That means we make mistakes, and we learn from those mistakes so we don’t find ourselves down the same road later in the future. If you aren’t constantly learning, you’re doin’ something wrong, sweetheart. This was you learning. But that doesn’t mean that bastard had a right to put his hands on you, and you can bet your ass that I’ll be making sure he never does again.”
“Will, please don’t. Whatever you’re thinking, just don’t. Okay? Promise me you won’t hurt him.”
“I can’t make that promise, Ly. And I can’t believe you’d ask me to. After what he did to you, are you really fuckin’ defending him right now?”
“No, of course not! I’m protecting you! I don’t want you to get into any trouble. Not for me. So please, promise.”
“I won’t get into any trouble.”
That did absolutely nothing to assuage the fear building in the pit of my stomach. “He’s an asshole, Will. Like the king of assholes! If you kick his ass, he’ll file charges, I just know it.” The longer I pleaded, the more frantic I grew. I couldn’t let him hurt Will too. I just couldn’t.
“Baby girl, I won’t get into trouble, I swear.”
“Just promise me you won’t touch him. Don’t give him an excuse to go after you. Don’t let that bastard take you away from me. Please.”
“Okay, okay,” he cooed as I pulled on his hand, forcing him closer. “I promise. You have my word, Lyla. I won’t touch him. But this asshole’s gonna pay. If you don’t press charges—”
“Oh, I’m pressing charges. You bet your ass I’m pressing charges.”
For the first time all night, my big brother actually smiled at me, and with that bright, handsome grin shining down on me, I finally felt like everything was going to be okay.
As long as I had my big brother, things would always be okay.
Chapter Twelve
Lyla
Four and a half months later
“Will!” I shouted from my desk inside the garage’s office. Shortly after I moved out of my place and in with him permanently, he’d told me of his plans to buy out the body shop he’d been working at since his graduation and take it over. His old boss had been looking to retire for a while and was just waiting on Will to save enough money to make him an offer.
Will’s love for cars made him special to the old guy, and he eventually signed the place over to my brother for a song. In the meantime, I’d quit my job at the law firm I’d been working at and started on with Will. It worked out perfectly, seeing as I hated my old job and had only gotten it because Daniel’s father had been golfing buddies with the partner I worked for and pulled some strings. The partner was a misogynistic asshole without a single good quality. I couldn’t stand him, and I’d gotten a real kick out of telling him exactly what I thought of him and his firm just before walking out of the offices for good.
Now I kept Will’s books, updated the schedule, kept up with inventory, ordered parts—basically anything administrative he needed done since, in his words, “Office work fuckin’ sucks.”
I pretty much loved everything about working at that dirty garage, except for the times when my big bro wasn’t doing what I told him to.
“Will!” I repeated on a louder, harsher yell.
“Jesus Christ, woman.” He came sauntering into my office, wiping his hands with an oil rag while leaning back against the wall across from me. “You sound worse than Mom. The hell do you want?”
I stood from my chair and grabbed the invoices sitting on my desk. “First off, I’m totally telling Mom you just said that.”
He gave me a venomous glare. “Don’t you dare. She’ll never feed me again if you do.”
Rolling my eyes to the ceiling, I puffed my lips and blew out a breath. “You’re a grown-ass man, living in his own place, who still depends on his mommy to cook and do his laundry for him.”
Will grinned smugly, not the least bit apologetic. “What can I say, I’m her baby boy.” God, my brother was such a dork. “So what are you howling about?”
“You haven’t signed these invoices yet,” I sniped, slapping the papers against his chest. “It’s after quitting time for me, and I’m still here because of you. If I don’t get these invoices out, you aren’t gonna get paid until their next cycle. And I’m missing drinks with Tate.”
Will’s smile as he shook his head was full of his typical playfulness. “Damn, baby girl. If I knew you were gonna be this much of a ball buster, I never would’ve hired you.”
“And if I knew you’d be such a lazy jackass when it came to paperwork, I never would’ve taken the job,” I teased in return.
He grabbed the papers and moved to my desk, leaning forward to snatch up one of my pretty, brightly colored pens, and scribbled his signat
ure on the bottom of each page. “There. You happy now?”
“Yes,” I replied with a sweet, doe-eyed smile that always won him over. “You’re the bestest big brother in the world.”
“Such a pain in the ass,” he grumbled without a hint of annoyance. “Go on, get outta here. I’ll take care of getting these out. You enjoy the rest of your night.”
“See?” I cheered. “Bestest big brother! Love you always and forever.”
“Always and forever, baby girl.” He pulled me in and smacked a kiss on my forehead. “Now get.”
I skipped out, my heels clacking against the grease-stained concrete as I headed toward my car, a three-year-old used Toyota Camry, just another piece of my new life. Even though we couldn’t afford it, the Logan family insisted on appearances, so Daniel had bought me a sporty convertible BMW. I hated that damn car, and not only because making the payment each month put our account even further into the red. It wasn’t me at all.
But the used, bottom-of-the-line Camry? Well, I loved that car. I’d bought it all by myself. Will had insisted on looking it over and fixing any problems it had, but it was all mine.
As far as I was concerned, life was amazing. Sure, I was living with and working for my big brother, but I was free. My divorce would be final in a month and a half, and I might’ve been walking away from that marriage without anything but my clothes, but I couldn’t bring myself to care.
Daniel ended up spending the night in jail after the cops went and dragged him out of our house and arrested him for domestic abuse in front of all our neightbors. That was enough to terrify him to the point of pissing his pants. I got immense pleasure from that, and the fact that word had gotten out around the country club that he’d been locked up for beating his wife. The Logans’ fall from grace finally ended with them splattering against the concrete, and I didn’t mind that one damn bit.
Will hadn’t been thrilled with my decision to drop the charges against Daniel, but when I told him that I held the threat of more jail time over his head to get him to absorb all the debt acquired during our marriage, leaving my credit unblemished, he’d finally gotten on board. So not only was I free, but in the long run I actually hadn’t let him ruin me.
Will and Ava were the only ones who knew about that night. Will, of course, because he’d been there. But Ava started to get scared when she hadn’t been able to get a hold of me hours after our phone call. She went to Daniel’s house just as the cops were shoving him into a police cruiser. She called Will after that, and he gave her the full story. She showed up at the hospital before I’d been discharged and proceeded to break down in a tsunami of tears the second she laid eyes on me. I finally managed to convince her it was all going to be okay, but she’d been hesitant to leave my side for weeks.
It took a while, but things finally started to go back to normal. As far as my parents and other friends knew, the damage was from taking a fall outside my office building after work one day, and no one had been the wiser. I was fine with that. The fewer people who knew meant fewer pitying looks.
I was slowly working my way back to the Lyla of old, and I couldn’t have been more thrilled—thus girl time and drinks with Tate. Well, not technically girl time, since she was bringing her close friend Camden along, but close enough. I knew and loved Cam. He and Tate had met about five years earlier and had been best friends ever since. She’d helped launch his career, and he was now one of the most popular alternative rock singers in the country. He had an amazingly bluesy voice you didn’t hear much nowadays, killer looks that only made that smoky husk when he sang all the sexier, and a gift for writing lyrics that squeezed your heart. He was truly gifted in a way you didn’t all that often. On top of that, he was a fantastic, down-to-earth guy I loved spending time with.
I’d hoped the two of them would eventually get together and live happily ever after, but neither of them seemed to lean romantically toward the other. Not to mention I was pretty sure Tatum was still hung up on Declan, even though she’d never admit it in a million years.
When I finally got to the restaurant, Tate and Cam were already seated. “Sorry I’m late,” I said as I took off my coat and hung it and my purse on the back of the chair before taking a seat.
“About time,” Tatum said with a playful glare.
“You can blame Will. You know what a big baby he is about paperwork.”
“How’s he doing?” Camden asked. In the time he and Tate had been friends, he’d managed to firmly engrain himself in our little tribe. My brother was thrilled to finally have another guy in the circle, and those two would cling to each other and talk sports or cars or other dude crap whenever we all got together.
“He’s good, but I think he’s missing his bro. You two need to get together to hang soon or I’m gonna be forced to murder him for annoying me.”
Camden hit me with that smile of his that graced countless magazines. “I’ll give him a call tomorrow, set something up.”
“I’d appreciate it.”
“Okay, okay.” Tate clapped, demanding our attention. “Now to the good stuff.” Oh no. “There’s this guy I want you to meet. I really think you two would hit it off.”
I dropped my head back on a dramatic groan. “Not this again.” She’d been trying her best to set me up for the past three months. I might not have told her about that night, but I’d filled her in on all of Daniel’s verbal and mental abuse, and she’d been desperate to set me up with guys she thought would treat me right ever since. “No blind dates!”
“Oh come on!” she cried. “This guys is great! He’s twenty-five and owns his own gym. He comes into the bar every now and then with some of his employees for happy hours, and he’s really nice and super cute.”
I tried my hardest not to let my frustration get the best of me. I’d just gotten out of a long relationship where the guy treated me like trash. I wasn’t ready to jump into something else any time soon. “For God’s sake, I’m not even divorced yet.”
“Semantics,” she scoffed, waving my statement off.
“No, not semantics. It’s actually a pretty big red flag to most guys when they date a woman.”
“She’s not wrong there, babycakes,” Cam interjected. “If I took a chick out for dinner just to find out she was still married, divorce pending or not, I’d bail before dessert.”
“Thank you!” I declared, reaching over to give him a high five.
Tate shot him a sour look. “You aren’t helping.”
He shrugged carelessly, already used to Tate and her redheaded fury. “Sorry, honey. Just stating the truth.”
But Tatum would not be deterred. Acting as if Camden hadn’t just spoken, she turned my way, her expression absolutely pathetic as she begged. “Pleeeeease. Pretty please? Just one date. Not even a real date! It can be coffee or something like that. Just meet him. That’s all I ask. And I swear to every god in existence that I’ll never bug you or try to set you up on a blind date ever again!”
I highly doubted that, but when she looked up at me with those big, baleful puppy-dog eyes, it was damn near impossible to deny her.
“Fine,” I relented, then quickly added, “But only this one time, and only coffee. Got it?”
You’d have thought she’d just been informed she won the lottery with how loudly she squealed. The few patrons in the restaurant who weren’t already gawking thanks to the famous Camden Knight being in their midst quickly turned to stare.
“You won’t regret it,” she declared, hopping in her seat. “Donovan is the best!”
“Donovan?” Camden asked, his lips curling up in a sneer. “His name’s Donovan?”
“It’s a perfectly good name!” Tate exclaimed defensively.
“Yeah, if you’re a douchy actor in soft-core porn flicks.”
She plastered an acid frown on her face and sniped, “Why are we friends again?”
To which Cam answered, “Because I complete you, babycakes. Now where’s our waiter? I need a drink.”
<
br /> I stifled a giggle as I sipped my water. Man, I love my friends.
Chapter Thirteen
Lyla
Two weeks later
Sweet merciful hell. What was Tate thinking?
It was the day of my coffee date with Donovan. I’d decided to make it even less romantic by scheduling during my lunch hour, and arrived at the coffee shop five minutes early. Then proceeded to wait an additional twenty.
When he finally showed up, I spotted him instantly. He was impossible to miss; in fact, he caught almost everyone in the coffee shop’s eyes. He was maybe five-foot-eight, and every single inch of him was bulging with muscles. Don’t get me wrong, I liked muscular guys, but the dude’s arms were so big he couldn’t rest them casually at his side. His thighs were as thick as his waist, and he had no neck whatsoever.
He was apologetic for making me wait, claiming a training session had run long. Deciding to give him the benefit of the doubt, I brushed off his late arrival and tried my best not to hold it against him. At least he’d apologized right?
Unfortunately it only went downhill from there when he looked at my blueberry strudel muffin and white mocha and informed me that I really shouldn’t consume so many calories in one meal. Asshole. And to prove his dedication to fitness and healthy eating, he even brought his own nasty-looking green protein shake—made with kale and avocado, blech—to the coffee shop.
“So… you run your own gym? That must be pretty cool.”
“I don’t run it,” he stated condescendingly. “I own it. Huge difference. I mean, sure, I work too. My schedule’s crazy busy with people wanting me to train them personally, but I don’t blame them. I’m the best personal trainer in northern Cali.”
Dear Lord, this guy is full of himself.
Listening to him rant on and on about how wonderful he was made me want to scream.
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