He looked over at Lev. “See how she talk to me?”
Lev’s eyes moved from Marvelous back to me. “Sound like you probably need somebody talking to you like that.”
“Man, fuck you.”
I shook my head and tried not to laugh again because the last thing I needed was both of them getting comfortable with me. Marvelous was already too observant for somebody recovering from being shot and Lev had the kind of eyes that made me feel like he was taking in more than he let on. Even standing there calm, there was something serious about him that made the whole room feel different from the second he walked in.
I turned toward the door, but Marvelous called my name before I could make it out. “Navy.”
I stopped and looked over my shoulder. “Yes?”
“You ain’t forget what I asked you, right?”
I frowned because for half a second my guilty conscience made me think he was talking about his belongings again. “What did you ask me?”
“To request you.”
I released lightly exhaled and gave him a look. “That is not how staffing works.”
“It should be.”
“Well, it isn’t.”
Marvelous smiled like he had already decided he wasn’t taking no for an answer. “We’ll see.”
I looked at Lev, mostly because I could feel him watching the entire exchange, and our eyes met again. Up close, he looked even more familiar than he had in that hallway, but it wasn’t only because I’d seen him before. Something about him reminded me of the man lying in the bed. They didn’t look exactly alike, but they carried the same darkness in their eyes, which was the same way of watching people without making it obvious. The difference was Marvelous had a playful energy even while laid up in ICU, and Lev looked like a man who didn’t waste too much time playing about shit.
“Excuse me,” I said, slipping past him.
He stepped to the side and opened the door wider without saying anything. As I walked by, his cologne hit me all over again, and I hated that I noticed it because I had more important things to be worried about than how good some man smelled. Especially a man connected to fifty thousand dollars that used to belong to the patient I had just left behind.
The door hadn’t fully closed before I heard Marvelous speak. “She fine as fuck ain’t she. She look like one of those sneaky females, but she fine though.”
I stopped walking for half a second, then forced myself to keep moving because standing outside his door listening would’ve looked guilty as hell. I didn’t know what exactly Marvelous meant by that, but my mind immediately went to the worst possibility. The nurse who had his money. The nurse who handled his clothes. The nurse he remembered from the ER? What looked sneaky?
I made it to the nurses’ station and sat down hard on the chair, causing Kendra to glance over from the computer beside me. “Everything okay in 814?” she inquired.
“Yeah.” I unlocked the screen and tried to make myself look busy. “He’s fine. He has a visitor now.”
She smiled. “The handsome one?”
I looked at her. “Which one?”
Kendra laughed. “Please, you know exactly which one. The tall one with the waves who walks around here looking like he owns the building. He looks like he has big money and a big you know what.” She winked.
I tried to keep my face neutral, but she was looking at me like she had caught something. “I wasn’t paying attention.”
“Sure.” She smirked.
“I wasn’t.”
“Right” She turned back toward her computer. “Well, his name is E’Levyn. Everybody calls him Lev. That’s Marvelous’s cousin and he’s been here practically every day since they brought him in. If it’s not him, it’s the grandmother we call BJ.”
My fingers stopped over the keyboard for a brief second with something else clicking inside my head. If Marvelous was carrying that amount of cash and Lev had been up here every day, there was a real possibility Lev already knew the money wasmissing. I had no idea if the cash belonged to Marvelous alone or if it had something to do with the rest of them, but either way, I didn’t like how close the situation was getting to me. I guess it was written all over my face because she questioned me again.
Kendra looked over again. “You sure you’re okay?”
I forced a small smile. “I’m good, just hungry.”
