Paisley smiled, but just barely. “Come on, Hansen, give me some credit. Had it been a woman trying to beat the shit out of me, I’d have already dragged her in here by the hair.” She chuckled, but I couldn’t find enough humor to laugh. I wanted to kill whoever had hurt her; I wanted them dead.
“This isn’t a goddamn joke, P,” I growled, and her grin quickly vanished as she winced, one arm wrapping automatically around her abdomen. “We need to get you seen.” Guilt tugged at me. A pang of powerful, painful guilt ripped me open from the inside and clawed its way to the surface. I couldn’t help but wonder if this still would have happened had I let her in before…the moment I broke up with Julia, instead of putting it off to sort out my feelings. Could I have protected her from whatever this had been?
“No,” she said. “We don’t.”
“This isn’t up for negotiation.” I reached for the cell phone in my pocket and unlocked the screen to dial 911, but Paisley grabbed it from my hand—with surprising speed for someone who could hardly move without wincing—and tossed it aside, out of my reach.
“You know what will happen if you call.” She cleared her throat, taking another breath to ease the pain. “Our crew is going to respond, and there’s going to be an uproar. We don’t need it. Not with everything that’s been happening with the fires. The media will be all over this.”
“I don’t care.” I reached for the cell phone, but Paisley grabbed my hand, squeezing it between her fingers. Her eyes met mine, burrowing into me.
“I do,” she said. Her grip relaxed, and one side of her mouth twitched into a tiny smile. “Besides, I have a medic right here.”
“Paisley, you need to tell me what happened. All of it. Everything.”
“Now is not the time or the place.” She leaned back in the booth seat, pressing the damp napkin against her swollen lip.
“Is anything broken?”
“I doubt it. Just bruised.”
“What are you doing here anyway?”
She looked at me for a brief second before taking a sip of water. “I’m not allowed to come here and have a drink?”
When I didn’t answer, she shrugged and sighed, wincing as she did so. “Finn is taking over my apartment with video games and empty pizza boxes,” she said. “I needed some adult time.”
“By yourself? Or—with a date?”
“What does it matter?”
“Are you meeting someone here? Is that who attacked you?”
“No. Okay? No, I’m not.” She sighed and rested her elbows on the table. “Why do you care so much, anyway? You’ve barely spoken to me after the last week in the gym.”
“I know, and I’m sorry. “I rubbed my temple, feeling an oncoming headache. What a shitty thing to do, leave my ex hanging while I went off with another girl so quickly. The douchebag of the year award went to me. But even then, even as I thought of Julia, I couldn’t bring myself to care. I was furious at myself for letting this happen to Paisley; the what-ifs of my life swirled around in my conscience, and all I could think about was how to fix this. “I had to make sure things were okay with Julia.”
Much to my surprise, Paisley smiled and reached her hand out to rest it on top of mine. “You’re a good man for that. Is she okay?”
“She got plastered tonight and screamed about how much she hated me.”
“Ouch.
I shrugged, taking my second hand and placing it over hers. “I’m just glad it’s done. Because I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you, P.”
“Even now?” she asked and popped out her bottom lip, swelling to twice its size. “My sexy has run out for the week. Sorry.”
I reached over and touched her cheek with my fingers, and she leaned into me, closing her eyes. I wanted so desperately to know what had happened to her, what kind of secret she was keeping from me, one she didn’t want me to know. I hated that. I wanted to bring justice to whoever had felt it was okay to beat up a girl—or anyone, for that matter.
“Paisley, it wasn’t—Jeremy, was it?”
To my relief, she chuckled and shook her head. “Jeremy might be unable to keep his dick in his pants, but he’s never laid a hand on me. Besides,” she tossed back the shot of whiskey and grimaced. “I haven’t seen Jeremy since we broke up. I imagine he spends his time frolicking through campus with his understudies.”
“Too bad for him.” I signaled for two more drinks from the bartender and then paid the tab.
“Are you leaving?” Paisley asked, looking alarmed as I stood up and shrugged on my jacket.
“Yes,” I said. “But I’m taking you with me.”
