“Okay.” I paused. Then added, surprising myself, “Love you, Thea.”
“Yeah, me too.”
Then she hung up and left me holding the phone against my face, frowning over our conversation.
What the hell had that been about? Thea and I had always had the rockiest relationship. We had never been as close as Lily and me, or in her case, as close as she was to Kyra. But… I still loved her. I always would, regardless of the things she had said or done.
The car hit a speed bump right then that sent Rip’s elbow straight into my thigh.
“Your sister?” he asked quietly, forcing me to swing my eyes to him.
“Yeah,” I told him, leaving out the part where I thought something was off because… well, why wouldn’t I? I didn’t need to ask his opinion to know that he probably didn’t have good thoughts about her in the first place. Honestly, if our roles had been reversed, I wouldn’t have thought well of his family member if they had done to him what she had done to me.
But I wasn’t going to worry about that.
Instead, I looked over and slanted him a look. “And back to our conversation, I’m not letting you take me to the doctor, boss, but thank you again for offering.”
Chapter 17
All my hopesand dreams failed me the next morning.
I had told myself I was going to be better.Waybetter by the time I woke up the following day. Maybe I would have still been in a little bit of pain, but nothing I couldn’t have handled.
At least that’s what I had genuinely believed.
In reality, everything hurt even more. All it took was about five seconds after my alarm went off to realize just how much more. “Shit,” I muttered to myself as I laid there, wanting to reach up to massage myself and then stopping because lifting my arm would more than likely only make me choke up.
And I didn’t really feel like finding out for sure.
I was never going to tell anybody how loud I moaned as I rolled onto my side and then forced myself to sit up. Then I peeked out the window to make sure there wasn’t a black truck parked in my driveway. There wasn’t.
After he’d dropped me off at home yesterday evening, I had told Rip that he really didn’t need to pick me up. He had settled for giving me a look, then lifted a shoulder and said, “’Kay.” I still didn’t totally believe him that he wouldn’t come by, but at least his truck wasn’t there.
It took a long time for me to shower and stiffly pull on clothes; there was still no truck when I peeked out, and then it took even longer for me to make breakfast and fill a Rubbermaid with another serving of lo mein that somehow managed to look even mushier. I hadn’t thought that was possible.
It was thirty minutes later than I usually left when I opened my front door, juggling my things, and found a black Ford F-250 there.
Sure enough, through the windshield, I spotted a familiar dark brown head of hair attached to a massive body behind the driver seat.
In the minute it took me to lock my door and head down the steps, my boss was out of the truck and already holding the passenger side door open, all the while giving me a look that said “shut up, Luna.”
“Morning, boss man,” I called out as I walked in his direction, feeling pretty resigned.
He had his sunglasses on again, and his voice was just as low and hoarse as always. “Morning, Luna.”
I stopped right in front of him, noticing that he didn’t have on a compression shirt. Instead, in the middle of June, he had on a thin long-sleeved white T-shirt that ended right at the notch of his throat, showing off a whole lot of thick neck.
I met his gaze and raised my eyebrows. “Whatcha doing here?”
“Picking you up,” he answered, even as his hand took the bag from me.
Could I have held on to it? Sure. But I wasn’t going to.
But still…
“You don’t need any of this though,” Rip told me.
Now that had me hesitating and narrowing my eyes. “Why?”
