“Answer the fucking question,” he growls.
I exhale, exhausted by his seeming inability to feel remorse about what he did. “I have no idea where I got the bruise. I was cleaning my dad’s house yesterday. I probably walked into something.”
He studies me, his eyes dark and riddled with doubt. Which makes sense—I told him a lot of lies about bruises in the past. The way he once worried about me was like this warm blanket. Even though I continued lying to him about my injuries, I liked that someone cared enough to ask.
And here I am with butterflies again, which means I still like it, and I probably shouldn’t. I’m way too old to need his care, or anyone’s.
“You still haven’t told me why you’re down here.”
He bites his lip, so engrossed in his own thoughts he barely seems to have heard me.
“I had a favor to ask,” he says, after a moment.
I sigh. “I’m not sure you’re really in the position to be asking favors. You’re the one in the doghouse, not me.”
“Yes, Easton, thanks for the hundredth reminder. I almost forgot.”
“I’ll never let you forget.”
He laughs low in his chest, a quiet rumble. “I assumed as much. Anyway, my mom was sort of right yesterday and having someone in the car know what to do if shit goes wrong would really take the weight off my shoulders.”
Fuck my life. How fast could they possibly get from Key West to New Orleans? His grandmother also doesn’t like me. Never has. Anytime I walked into the cottage during one of her visits, her mouth would purse as if my poverty carried an odor she shouldn’t be asked to bear.
I raise a brow. “Above and beyond the fact that I have no desire to drive all the way to Key West, which must take a million hours?—”
“It’s eleven hours, max.”
It could be two hours. It would still be too long.
“Whatever...Like I said yesterday, I don’t have a medical license. It would be illegal for me to assist.”
Elijah gives me his sternest face. “That hasn’t stopped you in the past.”
I freeze.He doesn’t know. He couldn’t possibly.
My shoulders settle. Yes, back in the day, before I distanced myself from my brothers, I got roped into helping them and their friends—a dog bite, a laceration—but everything Elijah knows about is minor, so why’s he even bringing it up?
“I have no idea what you’re referring to, and I’m sure as shit not doing it for your grandmother. She’s always been awful to me.”
“Even having someone there who can explain what’s wrong would be a start,” he says. “If we rush to some random hospital and they send us to a waiting room for ten hours, you can go drop the Harvard thing on someone and I bet we get a little attention that we wouldn’t have gotten otherwise.”
Unless some new concern has emerged, I can’t imagine what changed so drastically since yesterday, when he suggested he wouldn’t even stop the car for me.
I pull my knees to my chest. “If she’s so sick that she’s likely to need a hospital visit on the way, she just shouldn’t be going.”
He shrugs. “She really wants to be there. Kelsey is her only granddaughter, and you know how close they always were. I’m not going to be the one who tells her it can’t happen. I just want to know that I have a little backup.”
He’s doing it whether I agree or not. And if something goes wrong and Kelsey’s wedding is ruined, I’ll feel guilty, regardless of whether my presence might have helped. So I’m going to say yes, but he needs to beg a little more.
I frown at him. “What would be in it for me?”
“Experiencing the joy of giving? Getting in touch with your long-lost empathy?”
I dig my feet into the wet sand and pat it down over them. “No, I meant something I actually care about.”
He laughs, and then I do as well. This is always how it was with Elijah, that back-and-forth, the way one of us would try to be a hard-ass and crack up, unwillingly. “So what is it you care about these days?” he asks. “You need a TV show like the one your boyfriend is on?”
Ex-boyfriend, but that’s not relevant here. “No. I have no desire to be on TV.”
