The door swung open and my gaze stayed on my coach and the two team doctors that followed him into the room, with my agent trailing behind. Whatever those men had to say would change things for me. And it was up to me to figure out what to do with that change when it came.
You kill your darlings
Because it is easy.
Because you like the bristle of sabotage.
Because you hurt yourself
Wanting only the solitude that you
Pray
Breeds absolution.
In the end
There is only
The sinner you made of yourself.
Ten
“So Kiki Jefferies works at Tulane now. Admissions.”
“The redhead with the…”
“The one and only.”
“And?”
“And what?” My cousin didn’t bother hiding his smile. Even with the quick shrug that was supposed to make me believe he didn’t care about running into his freshman year crush, the knucklehead grinned like an idiot who had never heard of subtlety. “I’m busy as hell.”
“Man, you should never be too busy for that.”
He stopped rolling the wrap around my ankle to shift his attention to my face. There was too much shock, too much humor staring back at me. “Says the man that hasn’t had any in how long?”
A quick lift of my middle finger and that asshole laughed. Tristian hadn’t aged much, despite the hectic schedule he kept, working through his internship. There were no lines around his eyes, even at twenty-six, even though I knew he didn’t get more than four or five hours of sleep a night. He still had way too much energy and even when he wasn’t running around like a dog at the hospital, that insane man was at the gym exerting himself enough that he could manage to get his brain to switch off and land a few hours of sleep.
The grin stuck on his face and I got that he had more to say, many more jokes at my expense that he wanted to toss my way, but another headache was starting at the base of my skull and my ankle throbbed and ached without the wrap on it. “Are you done yet?” I asked, nudging him with my good foot.
“Deflection. Man, you’re never gonna change.”
“Has the swelling gone down?”
That made him refocus, moving my foot to the left, easing his thumbs against the tendons in the back along the ankle. “Down enough. We can try walking on it in a couple of days.”
It didn’t matter really. I was stuck in New Orleans, away from my team indefinitely. It had been a week and the doctors had insisted. Rest. Heal up and come back in a few weeks when my thick head and my busted ankle were better.
IR until then. Fuck me.
“Whatever, man.” I sounded useless, pointless. I sounded, as my father had reminded me this morning when Koa and Mack kept screaming at each other during a game of Mortal Combat, like a whiny old man wanting a couple of rowdy kids off his lawn.
“You know,” Tristian started, looking down at my foot and busying himself with the wrap, moving it over and over my ankle. “This attitude…”
“Tristian, don’t start. I hear enough of it from my dad.”
My cousin paused, sliding the Velcro clasp closed. “He giving you shit?”
“Isn’t that what they all do?”
“Dude, I have no idea.” Tristian’s grin widened and I had to fight the mild urge to smack him around a little. “Remember I was the overachiever. Did absolutely nothing to piss my folks off.”
“What the hell ever. Please. I could give them a list.” Tristian hadn’t been a good kid whatsoever. He was just oddly efficient at covering his tracks. There were many times we’d gotten into shit so thick I was convinced we’d be stuck in it until we were old men. But Tristian, slick bastard that he was, always found a way to wiggle out of the messes we made.
“Nah, they’d never believe you.” He looked up at me, smirking, an expression he generally reserved for women he was trying to do very filthy things with. “This face, dude, please, like a damn angel.”
The house had been mostly quiet the whole time Tristian wrapped and iced my ankle. We hadn’t moved from the sofa as Dad and Mom corralled Koa and Mack into doing their chores so it was a little bit of s shock when Makana thundered through the room at the sound of the doorbell chiming.
“I got it!” she screamed, elbowing Koa out of the way when he tried to beat her to the door. “I said I got it.”
“Whatever, lolo. Damn,” Koa muttered, quickly disappearing onto the patio when I shot a glare his way.
My mother joined Mack in the foyer, holding the door open a bit wider and I felt the blood draining from my face as she ushered Aly inside. “Shit.” The word was spoken low enough that only Tristian heard it over my mom and Aly’s friendly conversation and Mack’s insistence that Aly help her with some new bracelets she wanted to make.
“Please,” my cousin started, sitting on the edge of the sofa glancing between me and Aly’s profile as she talked to my little sister. “Like you aren’t happy she’s here.”
“I don’t need anyone’s pity.”
Tristian whipped his gaze to me, head shaking. “Maybe not, but you’re a fucking liar if you say you don’t need everything else from her.”