4
PD
Will wasn’t okay, but what the hell could I do?
I missed him, everything about him.
Fuck, I missed shit that had never even happened, stuff I’d made up in my head and wanted but never got a chance to have with him. But mostly, I missed his scent in our house. I missed hearing him move around in his room. I missed the way he’d bitch about everything and nothing, then wait for me to agree.
I just needed him in my life.
I’d been getting to the Ink Well late nearly every day and leaving early, and everyone there was getting pissed off at me, but I couldn’t bring myself to give a shit. I was the boss, and normally, I didn’t pull rank, but I had to check on Will. For a week, I’d stopped by the clubhouse once in the morning and once at night.
The second I’d realized Will hadn’t taken his meds with him when he’d dumped our house for the clubhouse, I’d brought them, and instead of a thank-you, I’d gotten silence. I wouldn’t lie, no one knew how to work me up—in all possible ways—quite as much as Will. It drove me around the fucking bend. If he didcome down to the bar, he would sit and drink, back facing me if he could manage it, and totally fucking ignore my presence. He shouldn’t be drinking on his meds, but he wouldn’t make eye contact with me so I could bring it up.
Yeah, it was bullshit.
At first, I’d been worried when he’d left, and sure, a little hurt, but I was beyond that now and starting to get pissed off. He might have a brain injury that had changed some parts of him, but this was the same bullshit that he used to pull when we were fighting about something—as rare as that had been.
And it hadalwaysfucking driven me nuts.
He goddamned well knew that.
I preferred punching problems out to ignoring them, but he was deep into treating me like dog shit he’d stepped in.
The worst part? I still wasn’t really sure why. I couldn’t lock down what he was so furious about. I knew he was pissed off that he’d been blocked out of the torture of that Demon asshole, but it felt like him leaving was about more.
This was a nightmare and I had to end it. How could I make him come home?
Scrubbing my hands over my face, I hopped off the motorcycle, and I was so tired that I almost forgot to set the kickstand. I was spending too much time at the club trying to get Will to acknowledge my presence and not sleeping enough.
Yeah, this was all horseshit.
I’d left work early yet again. For what?
I pushed open the glass pharmacy door to stomp inside the local store where Will got all his meds. I dragged myself up to the counter in my riding boots, but Amanda stared me down. She was in her mid-forties, as far as I could tell, with her steel-streaked brown hair chopped off in an undercut and the top part teased up in spikes. Under her white lab coat she always wore some sort of political shirt, and today’s was left over from thefight to legalize weed. She had the hard jaw of someone who had put up with too many assholes in her day.
“Hey, drug wench!” I said, grinning. “Give me the good stuff! Now! I demand service!”
She narrowed her eyes at me. “You here to be your boyfriend’s pill collector?”
The way she saidboyfriendmade my heart clench. My face flushed. The irritation that had been simmering inside me all week shifted to a dull anger, but I wasn’t a total asshole. I wasn’t mad at her. I flashed her my teeth. “You know it! Hand over the goods.”
“He’s got a hell of a guy looking out for him.” She checked her computer screen, tapping away, then blew out a long breath. “That’ll be six hundred and seventy-two dollars and fifteen cents. Look, every time we do this dance, I tell you the generics are significantly fucking cheaper.” She rested her elbows on the counter and glared at me while I slid my card through the reader and hissed out an annoyed sound under my breath at the hit to my bank account.
“Yeah, well, the doc said the name brands are better.”
“The doc ain’t paying for them.” She glowered. “The doc is a fuckin’ psycho.”
“He gets the best,” I said, jutting my chin. “Will isn’t getting some knockoff full of sawdust.”
She hung her head. “They work just as well for most things. Don’t be that way. You should at least try, and if they don’t work as well, then you’ll know. It’s the difference between spending this much and spending maybe a hundred total.” She raised her eyebrows at me, and I stubbornly shook my head.
“Fuck that. If it was okay, then the doc would say it was okay.”
She sighed and held up her hands in defeat.
I liked that she kept trying. It was good to have a hobby.
