“Yeah? Nothing else happened?” she asked, sounding too… different.
I took in the back of the seat in front of me, trying to ignore the unease her tone made me feel. “No, it was only the accident. Just a little whiplash,” I promised her, telling myself not to think this over too much. “Are you all right?”
“Yeah, Luna. Yeah,” my sister replied a little too quickly.
She didn’t sound like it. I lowered my head. “Did you get your rental insurance sorted?” I made myself ask.
Thea made a weird noise I hadn’t heard before, which put me even more on edge. “Um, yes. They’re covering my things.”
“Good.”
“I’m glad you’re fine,” she muttered, sounding distracted then. “Well, that’s all I was calling for. I just… wanted to make sure you were okay.”
In the three years since she had moved out on her own, she had never, not once called to make sure I was okay. I wasn’t much better at calling, but I did text her at least once a week.
“I’m okay.” I lifted my head and stared at the back of the seat, something about this feeling wrong and weird. “Thee, is everything all right with you?”
“I’m fine, don’t worry about me. But I gotta go. I’ll talk to you later,” she answered quickly.
“Okay.” I paused. Then added, surprising myself, “Love you, Thea.”
“Yeah, me too.”
Then she hung up and left me holding the phone against my face, frowning over our conversation.
What the hell had that been about? Thea and I had always had the rockiest relationship. We had never been as close as Lily and me, or in her case, as close as she was to Kyra. But… I still loved her. I always would, regardless of the things she had said or done.
The car hit a speed bump right then that sent Rip’s elbow straight into my thigh.
“Your sister?” he asked quietly, forcing me to swing my eyes to him.
“Yeah,” I told him, leaving out the part where I thought something was off because… well, why wouldn’t I? I didn’t need to ask his opinion to know that he probably didn’t have good thoughts about her in the first place. Honestly, if our roles had been reversed, I wouldn’t have thought well of his family member if they had done to him what she had done to me.
But I wasn’t going to worry about that.
Instead, I looked over and slanted him a look. “And back to our conversation, I’m not letting you take me to the doctor, boss, but thank you again for offering.”
Chapter 17
All my hopes and dreams failed me the next morning.
I had told myself I was going to be better. Way better by the time I woke up the following day. Maybe I would have still been in a little bit of pain, but nothing I couldn’t have handled.
At least that’s what I had genuinely believed.
In reality, everything hurt even more. All it took was about five seconds after my alarm went off to realize just how much more. “Shit,” I muttered to myself as I laid there, wanting to reach up to massage myself and then stopping because lifting my arm would more than likely only make me choke up.
And I didn’t really feel like finding out for sure.
I was never going to tell anybody how loud I moaned as I rolled onto my side and then forced myself to sit up. Then I peeked out the window to make sure there wasn’t a black truck parked in my driveway. There wasn’t.
After he’d dropped me off at home yesterday evening, I had told Rip that he really didn’t need to pick me up. He had settled for giving me a look, then lifted a shoulder and said, “’Kay.” I still didn’t totally believe him that he wouldn’t come by, but at least his truck wasn’t there.
It took a long time for me to shower and stiffly pull on clothes; there was still no truck when I peeked out, and then it took even longer for me to make breakfast and fill a Rubbermaid with another serving of lo mein that somehow managed to look even mushier. I hadn’t thought that was possible.
It was thirty minutes later than I usually left when I opened my front door, juggling my things, and found a black Ford F-250 there.
Sure enough, through the windshield, I spotted a familiar dark brown head of hair attached to a massive body behind the driver seat.
In the minute it took me to lock my door and head down the steps, my boss was out of the truck and already holding the passenger side door open, all the while giving me a look that said “shut up, Luna.”
“Morning, boss man,” I called out as I walked in his direction, feeling pretty resigned.
He had his sunglasses on again, and his voice was just as low and hoarse as always. “Morning, Luna.”
I stopped right in front of him, noticing that he didn’t have on a compression shirt. Instead, in the middle of June, he had on a thin long-sleeved white T-shirt that ended right at the notch of his throat, showing off a whole lot of thick neck.
I met his gaze and raised my eyebrows. “Whatcha doing here?”
“Picking you up,” he answered, even as his hand took the bag from me.
Could I have held on to it? Sure. But I wasn’t going to.
But still…
“You don’t need any of this though,” Rip told me.
Now that had me hesitating and narrowing my eyes. “Why?”
He gestured me to get into the truck. “You’re not going to work. We’re going to the doctor.”
I stared at that handsome face, taking in the fact that he wasn’t trying to avert his eyes or be sneaky or anything like that. He was being serious. “But I don’t need to go to the doctor,” I told him carefully.
“You’re not going to work. Worthless can handle whatever needs to be done.” He motioned inside the truck again. “Let’s go.”
Worthless? Is that what he was referring to Jason as? Because if it was, I could be all about that. Instead of picking at his nickname though, I didn’t move, and he noticed.
And when he noticed, he frowned. “Why you being stubborn? You’re hurting. You were in a wreck—”
“So were you.”
That frown didn’t go anywhere. “I’m not in pain,” he claimed before gesturing toward the inside of the truck once more. “Go to the damn doctor and have them check you out. You could have some other issue later on, and the car insurance won’t cover it if you don’t have a record that you weren’t feeling good from the start,” he explained.
He had a point.
But I knew there was nothing actually wrong with me.
One of those hands went up to his head and he smoothed it over the curve of his skull before letting out a deep breath and saying, calmly, “Get in. Cooper made an appointment for you yesterday for eight in the morning today.”
Mr. Cooper had done that?
I didn’t even need to think about it then. If Mr. Cooper wanted me to go, then… that made this whole thing different. He was only trying to get me to go because he cared about me.
I would have traded anything to have a father who cared about me when I’d been younger. I’d take it now.
“Fine,” I agreed, trying not to sound all put out about it, because I wasn’t, especially now that I knew the entire story. Plus, the only reason I hadn’t gone yesterday was because Jason had almost screwed up, and I didn’t trust leaving him alone. He really was like a little kid I constantly had to babysit, except he wasn’t cute, curious or had the excuse of being a kid.
If he was feeling smug about it, Rip didn’t say anything. What he did do was point at the inside of the truck.
I pointed too, just to give him a hard time. “Give me a boost?”
I didn’t miss his cheek twitching. I also didn’t miss his response, because there wasn’t one. All he did was lower my bag to the ground, come right up behind me, and just straight-up lift me like he had the day before until I could reach the running boards. I got in and watched him put my things on the floor by my feet before going around to the other side and getting in too.
We had barely gotten out of the driveway when Rip asked, “You’re not pissed?”
I glanced at him, taking in the thick ink I could see along the side of his neck that almost looked like… flames? Huh. “What would I be pissed over?”