Page 59 of Bent, Not Broken

“Really?” He laughed, but it was mocking. He dropped to his knees beside the massive tub. He reached out to touch my hair, brushing his fingers through it. “Are you jealous?”

“No.” I blew out a long breath.

“I’m a lawyer, I read people for a living.” The smug smile was back.

I heaved a sigh. “Maybe. You’re a good fuck.”

“Thank you.”

As if the asshole needed reassurance on that. I leaned in and he met me halfway, kissing my lips gently.

“Give in, Evan. Tell me you like me again.”

“Never.” I smiled. “I’m a cop. I don’t do things the easy way.”

“Yeah, well, I’m coming with you to your physical therapy. I’ll get my revenge when I see you in pain.”

“Cruel,” I laughed.

“Lawyer.”

“Yeah, that you are.” I kissed him again, and even though it hurt like a bitch, I grabbed him by the arms and dragged him into the water. He let out a yelp, and then splashed when he hit the surface. The pain throbbed in my shoulder and collarbone and down my arm, but it was worth it to see him looking like a drowned rat in his expensive clothes, and double worth it when he laughed so loudly that I had to join in.

“Mean,” he said, shimmying closer to me.

“Yeah, I am.”

Chapter 16

Madden

My briefcase was on the floor beside me, and I was on my knees in front of the glass-topped beechwood coffee table in the waiting area. The woman at the welcome desk laughed a short distance away as she chatted with someone on the phone, and I tried to tune out her conversation about last night’s dinner. My suit pants were probably getting scuffed at the knees as I rocked back and forth, but I didn’t care much. I glanced at my watch and it wasn’t even six thirty in the morning yet, so I had time to solve this.

Nearby, an elderly woman, Mrs. Todd, waited for her husband, who’d had a hip replacement, and she glared at me as I twisted and turned the wooden brain teaser puzzle in my hands. When the pieces were put together, they formed a pointy star, but right now I held two useless brown sticks that wouldn’t stay joined, no matter how I poked them together. The rest of the puzzle was scattered around me.

“You shouldn’t have taken it apart,” Mrs. Todd said harshly, her voice a dainty scrape through the room, and I laughed. She was maybe four and a half feet tall, and she and her gray curls weighed about as much as a feather, soaking wet, even inside her bulky sweats and layers of shirts. Ignoring her pessimism, I studied the pieces. The box that held the rest of the puzzles, five more that I’d solved during the last few weeks, was to my left with the lid off.

“I can do it.”

“Not today you won’t,” she said sagely with a headshake.

“Maybe.” I beamed at her. “But I’ll give it my best shot.” I felt like I said revoltingly optimistic things, or something like them, a lot these days. I hadn’t been one-hundred-percent on task anywhere lately, except for when I took care of Evan. He got most of my energy.

“How long has it been?” she asked, and I didn’t need to wonder what she meant. Everyone who came here talked about their injuries, or those of their loved ones, almost exclusively.

“He got shot eight weeks ago, and we’re three weeks into his full-time physical therapy.”

Mrs. Todd grunted and settled back with a novel open in her hands, and a man without a shirt on the cover stared out at me like I was in trouble for something. I was curious about the title, Paradise Bang, but not enough to go over there. She nodded at me like we’d just solved a world crisis. I picked up another piece of the puzzle from the table and tried to fit it in with one of the ones I already had in my hands. My tongue sneaked out of the corner of my mouth when the pieces refused to cooperate.

“You know, they said this was Pandora’s box, but I thought it was supposed to be hard to open her box, not put it together.”

Mrs. Todd laughed.

“Fuck this.” The bellowed words carried out to where we sat in the waiting room, and I snapped my head up to meet the wide eyes of the skinny girl sitting behind the welcome desk across the room. “I can’t. I can’t now. I won’t ever fucking be able to.”

Damn it, those were definitely Evan’s furious shouts. I hopped to my feet. The therapy area was semihidden by a privacy wall behind the desk, but the room spread off on either side behind it. I headed toward the desk and smiled at the girl there before I veered off to the left.

“Mr. Polunin, you shouldn’t technically be back there,” she said, but she made no move to stop me. I smiled over my shoulder at her, a big one that had her lips lifting in my direction, and continued to rush through to the back anyway. I’d been in here plenty of times already, and the therapy room was a strange mixture of gym equipment and heavy-duty tables set up in a line down the middle that reminded me of a spa set. The floor was layered in tough bright green carpeting that brought to mind springtime grass, and my feet ate up the distance to get to Evan in the corner where he sat on a weightlifting bench next to a wall of dumbbells.