I look to Nix, to mybaby sister, for help. But she sucks in her lips to hide a smile and shrugs—as if she wasn’t just crying with me.
“I’m going to go continue to eat,” she says, skipping toward the door. “Did you know this level has its own cafeteria? And that everything is free?”
Before I can protest, she’s gone.
Bitch.
Without her, the room turns to static. The air is completely different, sucked out by Jax’s presence and the looming word ofwifeand the knowledge that the last time I saw him, he was inside of me.
I was so hell-bent on finding Marshal’s teeth that I was able to overlook it up at the Bluff, but now the mere inches between us feel… softer. Less hostile. And I don’t know what to do with it. It’s kind of hard to snap at someone when you know you’ve let them inside you.
I avoid his gaze. I know he’s taking me in. I can feel it. Especially since I’m in an ugly hospital gown. I feel painfully beneath him, and I hate that every time I see him, I seem to only get lower.
Before Marshal, I would have had no problem putting Jax Landon exactly where he belonged. Money and looks don’t mean you get to be a smug, cocky bastard. But this makes how many times he’s saved me? It’s annoying. And it’s annoying how not annoying he’s becoming. I mean, at some point, I have to be honest, don’t I?
If Jax hadn’t shown up that night when we pulled Marshal from the trunk, what would have happened? Would Nix and Caleb have been able to handle it without me? Because I was obviously no help. And I’m pretty sure that, based on the number of wires hooked up to me right now, I wouldn’t havebeen able to get myself off Horizon Bluff for help. I most likely would have died out there.
So,maybehe gets to be a smug, cocky bastard.
But I still hate it, and I don’t need to be on the upper echelon of Memorial Hospital.
“I shouldn’t be here.” I keep my eyes trained on my lap, on my hands that twist like a child’s. I know I should saythank you. I know. But my mouth won’t do it.
“No, this is exactly where you should be,” Jax says with the type of unhurried drawl that proves just how confident he feels. “Where you shouldn’t have been is up at the bluff.”
Ugh. A lecture. As if I didn’t already get one from Nix.
Maybe hiking in my condition was a bad idea, but checking to make sure there was nothing left of Marshal so that I don’t go to jail seems perfectly sane to me. But I don’t expect him to understand desperation. Not with the way he walks on water.
I twist my hands harder and look away. “I can’t afford this.”
He probably thinks my shame comes from a place of being poor, but it doesn’t. I’m used to it. My embarrassment comes from being in his debt—or, I guess,morein his debt. Getting me to the hospital is one thing, paying for whatever this is? It’s too much.
Even when Marshal would bring by a paper bag full of chips and oreos, I had to gnaw on my cheek through the discomfort. And that was only twenty bucks. I shudder to think of the thousands of dollars a room like this costs.
Dragging a chair to sit beside me, Jax rests his elbows on his knees, and—God, he smells good. It’s not fair. Can’t he have anything to take him down a peg? I stay stiff in the scent until he finally speaks, and I have to force myself to look at him.
“Youcan’t afford it?” His voice is light, gratingly soft. “I think you are forgetting the ‘we’ part.”
He says it so endearingly that I immediately snort.Weare partners in crime. That doesn’t extend to footing the bill for my hospital stay. Even if we did sleep together.
“We aren’t together. I’m not your… wife,” I whisper, annoyed that such a notion embarrasses me.
Jax’s jaw audibly ticks. “Would you rather be on the ground floor where the doctors are overworked?”
“Why should it matter to you?” I sound defeated even though I mean for it to sound annoyed.
“Well, you don’t seem to care about your own well-being, so someone has to.”
“Again,” I grit my teeth with newfound agitation. “What should it matter to you?”
He gets up, jaw clenched as if he can barely hold himself together, and starts pacing like a caged animal. I wait for him to storm out—to accept that I’m incapable of believing he gives an actual fuck about me. But he stops at the foot of the bed and turns. He grips the edges of the bed, shoulders flexing under the tight fabric of his shirt.
“Who is Robert Matthews?” he asks.
His question throws me. “What?”
“The man who drove you to the scene of a fucking crime, Kira.”
