Chapter 6 Keeley #2
“Dignity left the building around the same time I pulled on someone else’s pants,” I say back. “But sure.”
I keep my gaze anywhere but on Nic when I lift the hem of my shirt and slip the waistband of my joggers down.
My gaze automatically drops to the bruise. Purple, mottled, swollen.
Nic pulls in a breath through his nose. “Shit, Keeley. You should’ve said somethin’.”
I want to bite back at him with the twenty reasons I couldn’t say anything, but my words die on my tongue at the look on his face. It’s not as dramatic as homicidal fury or pure devastation, but it’s not nothing either.
It’s somewhere between the two. He’s not supposed to give a shit. I don’t know why he does. And I don’t know why I want him to.
I stare at a spot on the wall in front of me like it holds all the secrets of the universe, but I can feel Nic’s gaze still locked on me.
“It looks worse than it is,” I mumble, trying to defend myself or diffuse the growing tension.
It does neither.
Nic scoffs, but it’s Spencer who answers. “Yeah, well, it looks nasty.” I glare at him. Traitor. He doesn’t even twitch. Bastard. “Sorry if my hands are cold.”
Shit the bed, he’s not lying. His hands are fucking ice and his touch is not gentle. It feels like he stabs me. I hiss, twisting instinctively away from him as hot pain spreads through the area.
My eyes water, my throat tightening.
“Careful.” Nic’s threat makes us both freeze.
I have a split second insane thought where I’m convinced I’m about to watch Spencer die. I glance at Nic, but the sharp edge of his anger dulls as soon as he locks onto my face.
Okay, that’s different and concerning. He’s not allowed to look at me like that.
“Sorry.” Spencer automatically apologises like a man who knows his life was balanced on the edge for a second. When he resumes his exam, he adjusts the pressure to something more bearable.
It still hurts and I grit my teeth through it, mostly so I don’t get Spencer buried under the floor of the bar.
Every poke and prod lasts too long and my jaw aches by the time he sits back on his heels to pull his gloves off.
“I don’t think anything’s broken,” Spencer says. “It’s most likely soft tissue damage.”
Wait? That was a possibility? It hurt, but I didn’t consider I might have a fracture.
Relief hits me so fast it’s dizzying. “Thanks. That’s good.”
“You think,” Nic asks sharply, “or you know?”
I freeze. Spencer freezes too and his shoulders inch up a fraction as the temperature in the room plummets.
Oh… this is awkward.
I purse my lips together, glancing between the two men. Nic looks like he’s contemplating strangling Spencer with his own stethoscope. And Spencer’s clearly dissecting every life decision that led to him being in this room.
“She’s been walking on it, Nic.” Spencer cuts a glance over his shoulder. “It a reasonable assumption there’s no fracture.”
Nic folds his arms and tilts his head. That, I’ve learnt, is dangerous. “People walk on broken bones all day long. Shock, adrenaline—pain doesn’t mean shit when those things are doin’ the heavy liftin’.”
I keep quiet, but I’d be lying if I said Nic’s defence of me didn’t feel good. No one has ever advocated like this for me before. No one has cared this much. I don’t know why he does.
Is this some kind of reverse Stockholm thing?
Spencer hesitates, looking at me with a helpless expression. He’s expecting me to do something? Say something?
Buddy, I’m sitting here in borrowed clothes behind doors I can’t open. You’re on your own.
“X-ray is the only way to rule it out,” Spencer says finally. “You want imaging?”
“I want you to do your fuckin’ job, Spencer.” Nic isn’t loud or aggressive, but somehow that’s worse than if he’d yelled. “Is it broken or not?”
“He’s right, Nic,” I say before Spencer can answer and Nic tears his head off. “I’ve been moving around on it since I got here. It’s sore, yeah, but it’s not broken-sore. And it’s not like I can just walk into a hospital, is it?”
After our conversation yesterday, there’s no way in hell he’ll even entertain the idea of sitting in a waiting room and truthfully, I’m not sure I want to risk it either.
He scared me half to death, and I don’t even know what I’m meant to be scared of.
I watch as a thousand scenarios run through Nic’s head in a matter of seconds. He processes every single one between one beat of my heart and the next.
Then he mutters, “You need an x-ray, you’ll get one.”
“I don’t,” I say firmly. Nic stares at me, fighting a war behind his eyes that I don’t even understand. I drop my voice to something soft. I don’t understand that either. “I’m okay. I promise.”
It feels right to assure him. It works too. The tension slowly bleeds out of Nic. Not all the way, but enough that he takes his metaphorical boot off Spencer’s neck and doesn’t make it a real one.
Interesting.
And definitely not my business.
Spencer packs up his things in silence and leaves me with some pills in a small plastic baggy. I raise a brow at him, but he just shrugs and gets out of there as fast as he can.
Nic tracks him to the door and only looks back at me once Spencer’s gone.
It’s just him, me, my gnarly hip, and my bag of pills.
The room feels different now it’s just the two of us. The way Nic’s looking at me is so intense I don’t know what to do with myself.
So I do what any rational woman does when she’s being eyeballed by a man like him. I fill the silence with passive-aggressive sarcasm.
“You that rude to everyone in your life?” I focus on dragging my joggers up over my hip bone—anything to avoid looking at him too closely.
“How was I rude?”
I drop my voice low, mimicking him. “People walk on broken bones all day. Do your fucking job, Spencer.” I raise a brow, finally looking at him.
It’s a mistake because my heart does that unsteady thump that only seems to happen around him. I almost press my hand to my chest to calm it.
“You don’t think that was obnoxious?” I continue, forcing myself to keep eye contact. I will not wilt. “The guy was just trying to help, and you were snarling at him.”
It’s supremely unfair how good he looks even when he’s scowling. “I didn’t snarl, and I don’t do guesswork, Keeley. I wanted him to be sure of his assessment. Ain’t riskin’ you walkin’ around on an untreated fracture ‘cause he can’t be fucked to do the work-up properly.”
The bluntness of that knocks the air out of me. He was supposed to throw a joke back. Deflect. Tell me to shut my mouth and be grateful. He wasn’t supposed to fight my corner or care about my pain.
I stare at him, trying to process and make sense of this. Of him. I can’t. I don’t get it.
“You say that like I matter.”
I instantly regret those words coming out of my mouth. His expression makes the air feel suddenly thin. He’s pissed. Furious actually.
“You do matter.”
That’s not what I thought he was going to say. I matter? To him? To society? To the universe?
Say something back. Something smart or funny. Hell, just say any words, Keeley.
Neither of us moves, and the silence stretches until it itches under my skin.
Finally, Nic clears his throat. “Get some rest. I’ll be down the hallway if you need anything.”
He walks backward toward the door and lingers for a second like he’s memorising every inch of me. And then he leaves and in the silence of the room all I can think is what the hell just happened?