Jaxon shrugs his shoulders and adds, “You look better than last week.”
“Right,” I mumble. I want to be strong enough to push back, something to keep me from thinking too hard about the hollow under my eyes and the bruises that will never really fade, but small steps.
I snatch the little clutch from Jaxon just before the elevator comes to a stop. “I’ll try to make it better,” I sigh and search for a mirror. My eyes catch something new, a pocketknife. I peek up at Jaxon and he winks at me.
“It matches the knuckle buster,” he whispers and a faint smile draws up my lips.
“Thank you,” I mumble and snatch up the mirror from my clutch.
We walk out together, heading to Knox’s car. The sunlight is cruel, showing every flaw in my coverage, and I hate it. “I’ll fix it,” I whisper to myself as I stare at the small mirror in my hand.
Dimitri slides into the driver’s seat as Knox opens the back for me.
His hand covers the mirror. “You have nothing to worry about. They will all fade with time.”
I swallow through the tightness in my throat and nod. I slide into the backseat and expect Knox to follow but it’s Jaxon who snatches the spot. He slides in beside me, practically taking up the whole seat, his thigh heavy and warm against mine.
I roll my eyes but still, my lips twitch as a smile threatens.
Knox turns in the passenger seat and fixes his eyes on me, his stare a challenge. “If you don’t want to go, you tell me now. We’ll head back inside.”
I hate myself for hesitating. It’s not just Carpenter’s questions. It’s everything beyond the walls of Knox’s apartment. The world looks sharper these days, like if I step wrong, the ground under my feet will crumble.
“Let’s just get it over with,” I say, and my voice is disappointingly small.
“That’s our girl,” Jax mutters, and for a second his smile is almost gentle.
Theirgirl, right.
I stare up at Jax, and for the first time I see how tired he looks, how the lines in his brow are starting to cut deeper, how his jaw is always locked. My eyes shift to the rearview mirror and Knox holds my gaze, and for that moment, I see it: the worry, the maybe-regret, the ache that’s so unfamiliar on him. It makes my chest hurt and I twist the hem of my sleeve until the tears in the fabric go straight through to my skin.
“Seatbelt on,” Knox orders, and Jax groans but snaps his buckle, then reaches over me with a hand so solid and sure I don’t even flinch. He does mine too, slow and deliberate, knuckles grazing the dip in my collarbone before the buckle clicks. “There,” he says, but his hand lingers, thumb drawing a lazy circle on the fabric of my shirt. I almost miss it when he finally lets go.
The car pulls away from the curb and no one speaks. Dimitri drums his fingers on the wheel. Jax opens his window enough to smoke, and the wind whips his hair up and blows half the cigarette out before he can light it. “Fuck this wind,” he mutters and I want to ask why he started smoking again. I thought he quit in high school when my dad…
I sigh, not daring to think back, and let my head rest on the seat and stare out the window.
The drive isn’t too long and we’re about halfway when I meet Dimitri’s stare in the mirror. There’s something he’s keepingfrom me, some kind of angry energy. I can’t tell if it’s about me or about what happened.
If I don’t know then I can’t fix it. Some part of me wants to, even if we don’t have the best history, I don’t want to lose any of them. They’ve been trying so hard, taking such good care of me.
Jax proves that by helping me out of the car. Knox stays close as we walk into the facility. Even Dimitri holds the door for us, refusing to go far. His expression slips back into his normal calm as we walk into the workout room, but I still feel the tense air around him.
I nibble my raw bottom lip and try to avoid the gazes of the guys around me. They welcome Knox, Dimitri, and Jaxon back, wanting to loop them into everything they missed.
Knox plays the role well, that there’s nothing’s wrong, nothing happened, that I was in an accident and there have been a few sleepless night, but nothing else out of place. Jaxon’s on the quieter side but dismisses his own exhausted face with jokes. Dimitri is quiet.
His quiet is loud. So loud that it distracts me. I don’t notice anyone talking to me until Carpenter waves me into his office. He looks me over, studies my face, then clears his throat. “We have a therapist on the payroll, Hope.”
“Yeah, me,” I answer.
He shakes his head. “No, like a counselor. If you need to talk about anything. If you need more time…”
I know where he’s going, the words he doesn’t want to say. I’m betting he can see through the bullshit excuse of me being in an accident. I don’t know if the guys told himwhatkind of accident it was. The bruises on my neck prove that it was definitely on purpose, but I’ve covered those so thoroughly, I wonder if Carpenter thinks I’m covering hickeys.
“As much as I appreciate that, I need to come back to work. I need to keep moving forward,” I say with strength I don’t feel.Ineed to be normal;the words don’t make it to my lips, which is a gift.
“Alright. Well, I’m not going to say no to having you back. We’ve had two twisted ankles, and one guy has a sprained thumb he’s pretending doesn’t exist. They listen to you more than me,” he says, putting on a smile. “Honestly, I’ve missed you.”
