The guy doesn’t bother answering, simply carrying me to his apartment instead of my own. I mean, obviously. Rayne won’t be at my place. Maybe that hockey stick really did do some damage after all.
Reaching for the wound, wanting to check if it’s still bleeding, my fingers brush the wet blood still dripping from my head when Baxter opens his door without once fumbling me in his arms. Not sure how he manages to use his keys without jostling me, but I add it to the already impressive résumé of qualities this man seems to possess.
“Hey, Rayne?” Bax calls, carrying me carefully to the couch, lowering me with all the care of a mother hen looking after her young’uns.
As soon as I’m seated, I fall back with dramatic flair, taking up space on half of the couch. I sling my legs over the armrest, because I was raised with manners and putting my sneakers on the couch is a sure sign of disrespect, and I close my eyes against the light that filters in through the large windows that span the far wall much like they do in mine. The only difference is that my windows open out onto a balcony I paid a pretty penny to have designed into the blueprints the architect produced during the building’s early development stages.
“Rayne?” Baxter shouts again, and I wince against the thumping of my head, any sound making the pain worse. I don’t even remember the last time I managed to hurt myself enough to get a headache, but I certainly know it’s the pits and I regret ever opening my eyes this morning.
“Baxter, can we maybe use our indoor voices? I’m one raised voice away from perishing from the relentless headache that wooden stick has bestowed upon me. I’m going to kill my uncle when I can no longer see sound,” I complain, my voice carrying a whine of agony that I can’t disguise.
I don’t receive an answer. Instead, I hear his quiet steps as he walks away from where I’m dying, so I relax against the couch and pray to a God I don’t believe in that the pain disappears sooner rather than later.
Dying in peace isn’t an option, though, because footsteps sound in my ears moments before a finger presses against a particularly tender part of my forehead. The yelp that escapes me is completely unintentional, and so is the sharp swat of my hand that connects with warm skin.
My eyes spring open with a nasty glare, one that goes completely unappreciated, because Rayne is busy inspecting my forehead with the professionalism of someone with medical training.
“What happened?” Rayne questions, those pretty eyes finally meeting my narrowed gaze, his lips twitching as I continue to glare daggers at the beautiful man.
“Today. Today happened,” I answer unhelpfully.
“Her head took a beating from a hockey stick, and her ass took a pounding from the ice she was skating rings around like she was an Olympic figure skater,” Baxter declares, explaining it far better than I would have. “I don’t know how it happened, but one minute she was standing upright, laughing with Mack Brady, and the next she’s flat on the ice with Caiden holding a towel to her forehead.”
Rayne’s fingers pause their painful prodding, and I watch as he turns a baffled expression toward Baxter. “Mack Brady? As in…”
“Yep. Coach of the City Titans. Her uncle,” Bax explains, nodding in understanding as surprise paints Rayne’s face. It only doubles when Bax says, “Oh, also father to none other than Morgan Brady, the center of the City Titans. Apparently, fame runs deep in our neighbor’s family.”
Rayne drops his eyes back to me, and I give him a pained smile and a pathetic wave, right before pointing at what feels like a pretty sweet cut above my eyebrow. “I appreciate the shock, but can we internalize until I no longer have a hole in my head? Pretty please?”
Lips twitching with amusement, Rayne nods once before he stands and disappears, returning a minute later with a first-aid kit, a clean cloth, latex gloves, a clear liquid I instantly recognize as saline after so many trips to the hospital, and a cherry-flavored sucker. As soon as he’s close enough, he kneels beside me once more, unwrapping the sucker before popping it into my mouth.
“Here. That’ll keep you distracted while I fix you up,” he declares, looking a little proud of himself when I hum with approval.
I won’t tell him cherry is my favorite flavor, because he’s a little too smug about distracting me with candy, but I lie on his couch like a good patient while Baxter watches with no small amount of amusement.
Chapter Eleven
Rayne
Caiden walks through the doorway as I’m crouched beside a rambling Maddie, her mouth filled with a sucker I should have known better than to give her, because my mind has been swimming with filthy thoughts I have no business thinking since I handed it to her.
“What’s the verdict? Are we gaining a gnarly scar or what?” he asks as soon as the door shuts behind him, his crossed arms leaning across the back of the couch as he peers down at Maddie, interrupting her stutterless rant aboutTransformers.
I catch Maddie’s gaze as she looks at me questioningly, and I shrug with a nonchalance I hope keeps her calm. “Maybe a small one, but nothing too dramatic. Her eyebrow should cover most of it.”
I’ve never seen a woman pout around a sucker before, but it doesn’t help the situation in my head or my boxers, so I choose to ignore it and focus on my task at hand instead, just as she grumbles, “All that pain just to get a minor mark instead of the badass scar I was expecting. Today is full of disappointments. Next, you’ll tell me I won’t get the bloodstains out of my white shirt.”
Bax, Caid, and I all share a look, one that doesn’t go missed, and the little drama queen actually whimpers and sighs. “My life is in the pits today. I demand a restart. A restart, I say!”
Snickering, Bax takes a seat on the arm of the chair that doesn’t contain Maddie’s legs and soothes, “There’s always tomorrow, right?”
“I have to get through the rest of this shit-sucking day to get to tomorrow. What if things get worse, hm? What if mycar actually does get crushed by robots in disguise?” the injured woman before me argues, and I already know she’s about to fall right into another tangent. I’ve already listened to her adorable rambles while I cleaned the blood from her head, revealing just how deep the cut really is. Definitely a stitches job. Maddie is lucky I’m experienced in fixing people, otherwise I’d be marching her straight to the hospital regardless of her protests. “Or what if the Avengers crash through the city, destroying my building in the name of saving the city? What even is that about, anyway? They’re trying to save the city by destroying it. Have you ever seen them fixing what they broke afterward? I certainly haven’t. Imagine the Hulk cleaning alien debris from the middle of the street. Or Iron Man and Captain America calling the owners of the cars they’ve crushed along the way. What if you’ve just paid off your car and an alien hover-glider falls onto it? That would be a worse day than what I’m having.”
Stunned silence follows, and her pretty blue eyes pop open with confusion. She looks at us all, her unsure gaze gliding over each of us, before she removes the sucker from her reddened lips and blurts, “What? They’re valid concerns.”
“No, they’re not. They’re just as valid as the Autobots or Decepticons landing on Earth,” Baxter argues, sounding like he’s already had this particular debate, and my lips twitch knowing that it’s very likely. If there’s anything I’m learning about this chaos-filled little pixie, it’s that she’s nothing short of surprising.
“You don’t know that. And, you know what, if your car ever gets steamrolled by a crazed sentient robot looking for special Witwicky glasses, then I reserve the right to say I told you so,” Maddie declares, giving Baxter a funny little smile before disregarding him when he laughs.
