by Jill Shalvis
He arched a brow.
Ignoring this, because they so weren’t going there, she gestured that he should stand back because it was her turn at the vending machine. She pulled a wrinkled dollar from her pocket and tried to shove it into the slot, extremely aware of the weight of his stare. He wanted her to recognize him. She was still going with no thank you.
The machine spit her dollar back at her.
“You have to straighten it out first,” Eli said.
Grinding her teeth, she slapped the dollar against her thigh and ironed it flat with her hand before once again attempting to thread it into the machine.
And . . . once again, the machine immediately refused it.
Seriously, was it a Monday? Was the universe out to get her? What?
Eli gestured to her dollar bill. “Can I . . . ?”
When she nodded, he took it and calmly fed it into the machine.
And, of course, it was accepted.
Eli started to say something, but she held up a finger to stop him, then punched in the corresponding letter and number for the candy bar she wanted.
Nothing happened.
Oh, for God’s sake— Gripping the machine the same way Eli had, she shook it.
Nothing.
So she kicked it.
Her audience of one smirked. “Missy Judgerson goes to the dark side.”
Brynn shocked herself by laughing. It was her first laugh in . . . well, she couldn’t remember. Life hadn’t exactly been a pocket full of pilfered goodies lately.
“Here.” Her pretend stranger pulled two fistfuls of goods from his pockets. “You look far more desperate than me. Take your pick.”
She took a candy bar. And then on second thought snatched a bag of gummy bears as well.
He gave her a look.
“Hey, I’m a pint low, okay?” She stretched out her arm, revealing the Band-Aid in the crook of her elbow where they’d taken blood.
His smile faded. “You okay?”
Physically, yes. Mentally, the vote was still out. She tore into the candy bar. “I will be.”
His eyes were still the most unusual shade of gray, which should have meant they were cold, but they weren’t. They were actually very warm, and curious. And maybe she’d feel warm and curious about him too, if she hadn’t made a fool of herself with him by sporting a big, fat crush that clearly had not been returned. Add to that, he’d fooled her into thinking they were friends when they’d been nothing of the kind because he’d been part of a group with Kinsey Davis—Brynn’s arch nemesis.
Yes, apparently she could hold a grudge for years. Maybe it’d stuck with her because she’d written about the two of them often enough in her long-ago camp journal. They’d all had to write in one every night. She actually still had hers, shoved somewhere deep in her duffel bag. She used it as a reminder of the her she used to be, Past Brynn, who’d been too gullible, too loyal, too forgiving . . . She’d practically been a golden retriever.
But she’d learned. She was tougher now. Present Brynn was a German shepherd.
Eli’s phone pinged. He grabbed for it, stared at the screen, and looked stricken. “Gotta go.” He took the extra few seconds to empty his pockets, shoving his entire loot into Brynn’s arms. “In case you need another fix.”
And then he was gone, leaving her torn between the humiliating memories of the past and the hope that whomever he was here for would be okay. She started with the pilfered gummy bears. The sugar began to work its way through her system, giving her the courage she needed to go out and face her moms with the truth.
That, once again, she’d failed at life and let down the people she loved.
Chapter 2
Kinsey hated hospitals with the passion of a thousand suns. No, make that ten thousand suns. Yet here she sat in a hospital bed, wearing a washed-so-many-times-it-was-practically-sheer hospital gown.
Damn, some days life sucked more than others. She’d received the call late last night. There was a kidney, and she needed to be at the hospital by five A.M.
She’d gotten here at four thirty, because she was a lot of things, most of them not especially complimentary, but she was never late.
Especially for her own kidney transplant.
It was now late afternoon, and she was tired of cooling her jets, tired of hearing “the doctor will be here shortly to fill you in” but getting no further explanation.
If there was one thing she knew from years and years of waiting on a kidney, with a whole bunch of false starts and even more false hopes, it was that if it didn’t happen when she was told it would, it wasn’t going to happen at all.
But since that was a far too depressing thought to contemplate, she focused on things she could control. She was so hungry that it felt as if her organs were starting to eat each other. Hopefully not her one working—barely—kidney, though. She’d received it fourteen years ago at age fifteen, and her body had decided it wasn’t a good fit and was slowly but surely rejecting it.
A nurse entered the room and smiled as she began to check Kinsey’s vitals. “How are you feeling?”
“Oh, just peachy—” She broke off as the only person she trusted more than herself rushed back into her room.
“Where were you?” she asked.
“Moving the car,” Eli said.
He’d been doing this every hour or so all day long and it was driving her nuts. To be honest, life was driving her nuts. “I told you not to park in the drop-off area or you’d get a ticket. Did you get a ticket?”
He smiled. “Nope.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Why do I feel like you’re lying?”
“I’m not. I got there just in time.”
“Let me guess,” Kinsey said. “A female cop was about to write you up and you flashed that annoyingly charming smile and got out of it, even though I’ve never once managed to talk anyone out of giving me a ticket.”
“Because you don’t even try to use charm. Ever.”
This was true. “It’s false advertising.”
He smiled. “Not in my case.”
Also true.
“And I’d park in the visitors lot if there were any open spots, but there aren’t.”
The nurse looked up from the chart to eye Kinsey. “Your husband reminded me that you haven’t eaten anything today. Is that correct?”
“Yes, during the preop, I was asked not to eat twelve hours before surgery. And Eli’s not my husband. He’s my . . .” She hesitated, because it was hard to describe the person you loved like a best friend, but also often wanted to smother with a pillow in his sleep.
Eli raised a brow.
She rolled her eyes. “Annoying-as-crap life mate.”
He’d been her best friend since third grade, from the day Kinsey had pushed bitchy Donna Morgan into the mud for saying that Kinsey was trailer trash. Eli had taken the blame so she wouldn’t get in trouble, and they’d been BFFs ever since. Actually, more like brother and sister, because it truly was a sibling-like relationship, right down to bickering being their favorite pastime. Together, they’d been through thick and thin, and there’d been a helluva lot of thin. Her health issues. His family issues. Her utter failure to let people into her life. His inability to trust people to love him. And so on.
Though they were both pretty messed up, they’d become a family of sorts, and she knew no one had her back like he did. Just as she also knew she’d do anything to protect him.
Still, he managed to drive her insane on a daily basis. Like right now. “Why do you smell like chocolate?”
“Because I made a pit stop at the vending machine.”
She sniffed him like a police dog on the scent of drugs, and her stomach growled. She might’ve growled too. “Oh my God, you had a Snickers,” she accused.
“Yep.”
She wanted to kill him on sight, and was glad to see the nurse step out of the cubicle so there wouldn’t be any witnesses. “Are you kidding me?”
He didn’t even ha
ve the good grace to look guilty as he came to the side of her bed and took her hand. His eyes were guarded. Worried. “What did the doctor say?”
“Haven’t seen him yet.”
Eli let out a breath. “Your text scared me. I rushed back.”
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.” She paused. “Were you really just moving the car and getting a snack?”
“What else would I be doing?”
“Calling Deck.”
There was a beat of disbelief, during which Eli apparently absorbed the fact that she hadn’t called Deck.
Deck, short for Deckard Scott, was the guy Kinsey let into her bed on the nights they were both free. He was big and built, tough as nails, sexy as hell, and best of all, didn’t have any need to fill a silence with words. She could love him for that alone—if she was free to love anyone.
She wasn’t.
She’d grown up with chronic renal failure, and after her first transplant at age fifteen, her body had switched things up for shits and giggles to a new problem—transplant rejection. This meant she was literally a walking, talking expiration date. She didn’t know when, but she knew it would happen. Eventually she’d run out of luck and her kidney would give out. So falling in love and letting someone fall for her in return was selfish. And she might be a whole bunch of things she wished she wasn’t, but selfish wasn’t going to be one of them.
“You should’ve called him,” Eli said finally, clearly trying to keep his tone even, but also just as clearly thinking she was an idiot. “He’d want to be here.”
Yeah, but . . . Deck was supposed to be just her fun-time guy. A year ago, he’d agreed on that term with a rough laugh and a dirty gleam in his eye.
She loved when he had dirty thoughts. It always worked to her benefit. But she’d never imagined him sticking around for a whole year with no sign of wanting to kick her to the curb. Which meant she’d have to be the one to kick him to the curb. “Don’t start.”
Eli shook his head, but after all these years, he knew how to pick his battles. “Fine. So what’s the news?”
“The nurse said the doctor will be in anytime.”
“They’ve been saying that for eight hours.”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” she said, as her stomach growled again. “Has it been hard on you eating your favorite food group all day while I sit here in a stupid hospital gown with nothing to eat but ice chips?”
He scooted his chair closer and took her hand, and she had no idea how the hell he did it, but he eased her blood pressure with every single economic movement he made.
“You’re going to get through this,” he said, his voice quiet steel. Everything about him was quiet steel. If Deck was a bull, Eli was a cat. A feral mountain lion, deceptively playful, strong inside and out, intelligent and capable of getting shit done with quiet and deadly finesse. Sometimes she thought maybe he’d kept her alive with nothing more than the sheer force of his personality.
But she’d leaned on him enough. His face was drawn. His hair was even more wild than usual around his face, framing those stormy gray eyes that could be cold as slate when he was pissed, or warm as a summer storm. “Go home,” she said softly. “I’ll call you when I know what’s up.”
“I’m not leaving you,” he said.
“Eli—”
“You going to call Deck? Cuz unless you do—and you know you damn well should—I’m not leaving.”
“Okay, then, how about a favor?”
“Anything,” he said, so easily she knew it was true. He’d proven it over and over again. But . . . she needed him gone to ask the doctor the kind of questions she wanted to ask. “Go home and get me my favorite comfy wrap, the soft black one? And a couple magazines to read?”
His eyes narrowed. “You’re trying to get rid of me.”
“No, I’m cold and tired of my ass hanging out.”
He sighed and nodded. Bending over her, he brushed a kiss to her forehead and vanished.
Not five minutes later, her doctor finally strode into her room, his expression inscrutable. But in that moment, Kinsey knew the answers to all her questions and she closed her eyes.
“I’m sorry,” he said quietly.
“It wasn’t viable.”
This was what, the fourth time? The fifth time? God, she was tired of this. So tired . . .
Her doctor was still talking, giving her the usual spiel, not to give up, blah blah blah . . . when Eli walked back in.
He had his head down, reading a Cosmo magazine. “Hey, did you know there’s a hundred and one ways to jack a guy off?”
At the awkward silence, he lifted his head and shut the magazine when he saw the doc.
“Interesting,” the doctor said with a small smile. “The benefits of staying well read, I suppose.”
“Thought you were going home to get my stuff,” Kinsey said tightly.
“Saw the nurse on my way out, she said your doctor was heading in, so I came back.” He studied Kinsey’s expression and then the doctor’s, as always sharply intuitive. “Someone needs to tell me right now that today wasn’t another false alarm.”
Kinsey looked into his eyes, and even though she knew that she was losing hope, he never had. But he had to eventually realize the thing she was slowly coming to terms with—that she wasn’t going to get a kidney in time.
Chapter 3
From nine-year-old Brynn’s summer camp journal:
Dear Moms,
I’m supposed to be writing in this journal for myself, but that seems dumb, so I’m writing to you. I miss you.
Wish you could come get me.
It’s very dark here. Everyone goes for a long walk before bed, but I had to stay because I can’t see good at night. Which I get is hereditary, but it’s annoying. Why couldn’t I get something good passed down, like pretty hair?
Also, they make us eat our veggies. Peas, gag. I almost threw up on the mean girl sitting next to me. She yelled at me. She’s also in my cabin. She didn’t feel good and had to stay in from the hike too. She told everyone that I lied about having two moms.
I don’t like her.
COME GET ME!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Love,
Brynn
ELI FOUND HIMSELF in the waiting room, his gut in knots, while Kinsey dressed and was discharged to go home. Realizing he was still holding the stupid magazine, he tossed it down onto a pile of others on a side table. In what world did people think a magazine could offer hope to anyone in this place? Hope was elusive, and a total bitch.
His phone buzzed with an incoming text from work, asking if he was going to make it in today. He was a marine scientist for a nonprofit out of Morro Bay, and on most days it was the best job in the world. He got paid to study and report on sea life, which involved a lot of boating, scuba diving, endless studies, and meetings. But today his job was the last thing on his mind. He returned the text, saying he’d be in as soon as he could. His stomach growled loud enough to rival Kinsey’s, making him regret handing over everything he’d had in his pockets to a woman who hadn’t even remembered him.
But damn. He’d seen her standing there and his heart had actually lightened in his chest. Fate, he thought. It had to be fate that Brynn Turner had shown up now, today of all days, and for a minute he’d felt such relief he’d nearly hugged her.
But she hadn’t remembered him.
The story of his life.
Shaking his head at himself, he pulled out his phone and googled black market kidneys for what had to be the millionth time in the past decade. There was actually a horrifying array of opportunities to buy an illegal kidney. Yeah, he’d have to mortgage himself to his eyeballs, not to mention break the law, but he’d do it in a heartbeat.
Except that Kinsey flat out refused to let him—or anyone—buy her a kidney. No one was allowed to get tested for a match either. And he got it, she’d already taken a kidney from someone, and to say that hadn’t gone well was the understatement of the year.
So he kept googling
.
The last false alarm had been eighteen months ago, and it had nearly broken her. This time, she’d seemed . . . resigned.
That scared the shit out of him. He didn’t have many fears. Growing up the way he had, he’d conquered just about everything bad that could happen to a person and was still alive. As a result, he had only a precious few people in his life who mattered to him, and Kinsey was one of them.
He refused to lose her.
Slowly, he became aware of sounds outside his own thoughts. A quiet murmur, and someone crying nearby. He lifted his head. There were two women, mid-fifties, one dressed as if she were about to attend a board meeting, the other looking like the original flower-power girl. She was sobbing into the other’s arms.
“Raina, honey, this isn’t helping.”
“Our baby could’ve had a heart attack, Olive!”
“But she didn’t. You heard the doctor. He said it was a panic attack, that she’d be out shortly and we can take her home.”
Raina let out a long, purposeful breath, bracelets jingling as she straightened. “Clearly something terrible happened to her in Long Beach,” she said tearfully. “If he hurt her—”
“Then we’ll kill him together.”
Raina sat back in her own chair. “I’m sorry. I just had to let that all out. I can’t hold it inside or it eats me up.”
“I know.”
“You should let it out too.”
“I have,” Olive said.
“No, you haven’t. You’re sucking it all in and holding on to it, and next time it could be you in there.”
Olive shook her head. “I’m too stubborn.”
This got her a snort from Raina, who wiped her eyes and looked around, her gaze landing on Eli.
“Raina,” Olive said softly. “Stop staring at him.”
“I can’t,” Raina whispered. “I can feel his sad energy.”
“I can hear, you know,” Eli said. And what the hell? He didn’t have a damn “sad energy,” but Raina was already scooting over several chairs until she was only two away from Eli.