Better When He's Brave

Reeve

I HADN’T SEEN TITUS in days. I wanted to go to the hospital but Booker wouldn’t let me leave the condo, and part of me knew that even though I desperately wanted to be there for him, he didn’t need me there. Bax was in bad shape. He hadn’t woken up yet and he had been rushed in for emergency surgery on two separate occasions since they rolled him into the emergency room. He almost didn’t make it through the second one, and from what I heard no one was sure when he would wake up . . . or if he would. He also had a shattered ankle, a broken wrist, broken ribs on both sides, a dislocated shoulder, and a broken jaw. The ER doctors had scrambled to cut him open and operate on his punctured liver before he bled to death. So even when he did wake up he wasn’t out of the woods, but considering he got run over by a twenty-ton truck and was still breathing, everyone was counting it as a win.

Most of my information was filtered through Brysen’s little sister, who seemed to have taken up permanent residence in my living room since Race and Brysen were spending most of their free time at the hospital these days. It didn’t escape my notice that while the young and stunning blonde appeared to be working on her homework or playing around on the Internet, she was actually watching every move Booker made like a tiny and ferocious hawk. She definitely didn’t like the easy camaraderie that I had developed with the brooding and scarred man. Every time I made him chuckle or he reached out to touch me, she flinched and gave me a look like I had kicked her puppy. I wanted to tell her she was too young and too pretty to waste her heart on the kind of man Booker was, but I figured it wasn’t my place and lessons like those had to be learned the hard way. All the important ones did.

It was Friday night and I had sent yet another unanswered text to Titus asking him if he was okay and if he needed anything. I wasn’t surprised when silence was what greeted me but I was hurt. I still hadn’t figured out how to turn that off yet. I was making grilled cheese to feed Booker and Karsen since we were all apparently going to be stuck together for another night when I decided enough time had passed that I could ask the darkly handsome man for the favor I had been working up to since he had gotten saddled with keeping an eye on me. I glanced over at Karsen, who was watching some silly reality show on the flat screen and facing away from us. The last thing I needed was for her to overhear me and rat me out to Race. Not that the golden Adonis would stop me, but I didn’t need him to have something else over my head. He already had too many cards in this tricky game that was playing out between me and Conner.

“Can I ask you to do something for me, Noah?”

His dark eyebrows shot up and the scar that cut down the side of his face pulled tight, making him look menacing and frightening. Race had done well to make Booker his right-hand man. He could stop a person in their tracks with that look alone.

“You can ask.”

I sighed and turned around to flip the sandwiches. I kept my voice low because Karsen was far more observant than I think he realized. “I need a gun. Conner has shown us that he’s ready to make things bloody and I’m not sure how much longer Titus can keep going with this act we’re trying to put on. He’s barely holding it together as it is, and now with what happened to Bax”—I shook my head and looked at him over my shoulder—“I need to be able to protect myself.”

His gunmetal-colored eyes shifted between gray and blue as he considered me silently. The sides of his mouth pulled down in a frown as he leaned on the counter. “You know how to use a piece?”

I snorted and moved the pan off the heat. I tossed my long hair over my shoulder and turned around to meet his steady gaze. “I grew up in the Point. Titus can’t know about it and neither can Race.” I shrugged. “They wouldn’t be on board with you arming the enemy.”

He snorted and took a seat as I pulled out plates to shovel the sandwiches and a handful of chips onto.

“You might be their enemy, but you’ve never done me wrong and I get where you’re coming from. I bet the cop has a clearer idea of how powerful a motivator revenge can be after seeing his brother lie unmoving in that hospital bed for the last week. No man can know the trail of revenge and retaliation until he’s had to walk it himself.”

I bit my lip and set the plate down in front of him. “So can you help me out?” He was my safest option. I had to be ready for Conner, and if Booker told me no, I was going to have to risk hitting the streets to try to find a dealer on my own. That was the last resort but I would do what I had to in order to put an end to this.

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