“How are you feeling?” he asked, hooking his arm around my shoulders, and I tugged the man’s phone out of my pocket and wiggled it around in his face.
“Super.”
He hugged me tighter. “I want to get Nick to look you over. I texted him.”
My head pounded harder and I sighed in irritation. “I can still breathe, so I’m fine. No more hospitals.”
He glared. “That’s what you said before they had to put your ass in a coma.”
Fear slithered through me. “I’m fine, Aspen.”
He didn’t say anything else, but he didn’t let go of me, either. He opened the back door for me as we got to Mickey’s car and took the phone to tuck it into his own pocket. I slid inside, and he shut the door behind me, so I glared at his door until he got in, then switched to staring out my window. I wasn’t sure how I’d gone from such a good mood to a seriously shit one, with my head pounding and heart racing, but I was ready to yell at him for no reason at all that I could come up with. I didn’t want to go back to the hospital, though, and Nick might say I should.
We rode in complete and total silence to the Hamptons, though for a while Mickey tried to talk to us. That effort died quickly. I was seething by the time we got back, not quite sure why. Sweat dripped from my forehead, and I pulled the tail of my baggy shirt out to wipe at my face. I was barely paying attention when Mickey turned the car on to the winding cobblestone lane that led to the boss’s mansion. The driveway ended in a circle around an elephant fountain that I normally liked, but today I couldn’t work up the energy to care about it. The wide home, which was situated in the middle of an estate, seemed bleak. The outside walls were covered in white shingles and the peaked roof had the same style as a lot of the other houses in the area, only Sloan’s mansion was a fuck of a lot bigger. Since I’d stayed here in the past, I knew the balconies that dotted the front were attached to bedrooms, and as usual during the colder months, a gray ribbon of smoke curled from the decorative brownstone chimney. Normally a sense of wonder struck me when I arrived here, but not today.
“Are you okay?” Aspen asked as Mickey pulled to a stop. I shoved open the door almost before the wheels had stopped and stomped to the front entrance, my ribs aching, eyes twinging, and head pounding. My teeth clenched and my jaw ached.
“Fallon?” Aspen wasn’t very far behind me, and a hand landed on my shoulder.
“What?” I snapped.
He shook his head as we walked through the door that was already open. The boss’s butler directed us across the blinding white marble floor that reflected the chandelier light from overhead to the split staircases with their intricate black iron railings that came back together on the second floor. The butler led the way up the left side of the stairs and along several hallways to a room we often spent time in when we came over so Vail and Conall could hang out. It was a man cave with three couches surrounding an obscenely huge TV set into the wall, and there was a coffee table in the middle of it all that usually held snacks when we visited, although it was empty at the moment.
Vail jumped out of his seat beside Conall—who it seemed he’d been worrying over as hard as he could—and rushed toward us in his adorable brown tweed suit. He hugged Aspen first, then came over to me with his arms out. I couldn’t even bring myself to flirt with him like I’d planned to earlier. I’d been dead set on pouting and trying to get Vail to baby me while Cillian huffed and sighed and glared, and Rowen shook his head at us.
Instead I just collapsed into his arms.
“Are you all right?” he whispered into my ear and held me tight. It hurt, but I didn’t want him to stop.
“Yeah.”
He nuzzled his cheek against mine and his afternoon stubble scraped my skin. “I was so worried. And your eye.” He leaned back and winced before he kissed all around it, then sealed his lips over mine. I wanted what he was doing so much, but no one spoke as he kissed me, and I had a feeling I’d interrupted something. When he was done, he leaned back and cupped my cheeks, frowning at me. “With your diabetes, do—”
“Fuck my diabetes,” I muttered.
His eyes widened, and Rowen let out an unhappy sound from where he was sitting nearby on a couch beside Lor and Cillian.
“Where’s the boss?” Aspen asked.
“Here.” We turned as Sloan came into the room behind us, and I blinked at his blood-spattered suit. He hadn’t changed or taken a shower yet, which was unlike him, so he was covered in grime, too. Aspen handed him the phone I’d snatched from the men on the roof and murmured about the rifle bag he’d seen, along with a very brief and to-the-point retelling of what had happened.
“One of the guys had a crown tattoo on his neck,” I added, around the headache pounding behind my eyes.
Sloan frowned at that info and handed the phone off to one of the other men I didn’t know very well who hung around the mansion. He seemed to already understand what the boss wanted him to do with the phone, though, because he didn’t wait for instructions, simply walked out the door at a fast clip. “Describe it.” His bright blue eyes focused on my face, and it felt like his gaze was scalding as I cleared my throat.
His eyebrows went lower as I did what he said, remembering every detail I could about the tattoo. He ducked his head, swearing under his breath, something I hadn’t seen much of, then sighed and shook his head as he tugged out the front of his shirt and stared at the blood on it. “The lower ranking men of the Reyes Cartel have crown tattoos.” He appeared to be talking to himself more than any of us.
“Yeah, I’ve heard that,” Conall said.
“How are you, Conall?” I asked, partially to be polite, but also because I liked him.
Vail went back over and sat near him, and a hot streak of anger hammered me. Shouldn’t he be hugging me? I was fucking hurt, too.
“Broken arm,” Conall said, giving me a sad smile. He didn’t have a cast yet, only a sling, which made me wonder what they’d been up to while we were gone.
“Yeah, I know that feeling. Sorry,” I said, and he nodded, though he furrowed his brows at me. I sounded like an asshole. I wasn’t sure what the fuck my problem was. My stomach growled.
Lor leaned forward and squinted at me. Normally I liked him, thought he was cute, but right now his attention hit me the wrong way and I crossed my arms. “You don’t look so good.”
