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“Yeah”—still whispering—“but the medicine is kicking in, so I can hang.”

I push up from the floor, move over to her, blinking until I can see her face—or the outline of it, anyway. “You look like shit,” I tell her. “And you’re still hurting.”

Even amongst the shadows, I can see that.

A wince, but this time it’s not pain related.

“What?” I ask softly.

Silence. Her eyes sliding closed.

“My hair is too tight,” she admits.

I’m moving before I really process the action, slipping my hands beneath her head, finding the band holding her hair back. It’s harder than I would expect to remove it, and I have to force my fingers into the elastic.

“You don’t have to be gentle,” she murmurs.

“So says the woman with the migraine,” I mutter in reply, finally getting my fingertips beneath the band, tugging it free from her hair.

Which barely moves.

“There are pins too,” she says.

Pins. Jesus Christ.

I start carefully moving my fingers through the strands, searching for—and finding the pins that are apparently restraining her hair. Pins as in plural. Pins as in seriously plural.

“For fuck’s safe,” I snap, dropping the pile on the bedside table and going back for the rest. “How many of those fuckers do you have in there?”

“Enough to keep my hair up,” she snaps back. “Never mind. I’ll get it myself.” She sits up, nearly hitting our heads together, and then immediately wobbles, like she’s going to fall back down.

“Christ.” I grip her shoulders, barely able to resist the urge to shake some sense into her. “I’m paying you two million dollars to be a stubborn asshole.”

“You’re the stubborn⁠—”

But I’m leaning into her before she can continue the argument, wrapping my arm around her, stopping her from falling back while keeping my other hand free to continue plucking the pins out, tossing them onto the table. “Just shut up for two minutes and let me get these out.”

A sniff, but she doesn’t say anything further, doesn’t move as I run my fingers through her hair.

Then she does, speak that is. “You should have just gone with Elisa, you know that right?”

I lean around, catch her eyes, lifting my brows in question.

“The girl I was going to match you with.”

“I wanted the best.”

She starts to shake her head, freezes with a grimace. “I’m thinking that Elisa wouldn’t have a migraine on day one.”

I shrug, keep pulling pins. “Maybe. But I don’t know if this Elisa you speak of would have handled my mom as well as you did—or my asshole brothers.”

“Easy to do when I have personal experience with asshole brothers,” she says, stiffening enough that I know she doesn’t like this train of conversation even though she’s not shying away from it.

“I suppose you do.” And I know I should let it go, should continue this quiet talk along a different topic. But what she said on the plane is stuck in my head, and I want to know more, want to know why she has shadows in those ocean blue eyes of hers. “What was it like growing up with the Conrads, aside from the asshole brothers part?”

She goes so fucking stiff that I know it’s from pain—just not of the physical variety this time.

I almost expect her to shatter, she’s so rigid.