13. Reid
Reid
Lifting Everly out of the passenger seat of my truck, I carried her toward her apartment. We’d already argued about where she was going to stay while she was recovering. I wanted her upstairs in our bed. She wanted to be close to her sister.
Our compromise was that I would sleep on their couch until she felt better.
Whatever bullshit I’d missed while I was off dealing with MC business with Max, Jack, Elias, and my dad, it must have been heavy.
When I’d first seen her in the hospital, she’d had a haunted quality to her face that quickly morphed into something that broke my heart.
I wasn’t sure who was responsible for all the pain my woman had released when I’d pulled her into my arms, but they sure as hell wouldn’t get the chance to cause her more hurt.
Behind us, Evie gathered her sister’s things from the back seat of my truck.
Once she had everything, she ran ahead of us to unlock the apartment door.
I followed her inside, carrying Everly to the couch and carefully setting her down.
Grabbing a soft throw that was folded on the opposite end, I draped it over her lap.
“Are you hungry? Thirsty?” Her doctor said she needed plenty of fluids over the next few days, along with regular doses of antihistamines.
Knowing I was the one responsible for her allergic reaction killed me. It had been made worse because of it being her first time, on top of how many times I’d fucked her. From what the doctor explained, it wasn’t a life-threatening allergy, but I couldn’t imagine how uncomfortable she’d been.
Her sister was already in the kitchen, grabbing a can of Diet Coke and filling a glass with ice.
Without a word to me, she brought them over and pushed them into my hands before going back to the kitchen and extracting deli meat and vegetables.
Everly smirked up at me as I frowned at the glass and can.
“I’m very thirsty, actually,” she said after a moment of my just standing there with my hands full.
Popping the top of the can, I poured it over the ice and offered it to her like a sacrifice. Laughing, she took it from me and gulped down half the glass. “That’s the good stuff,” she said with a satisfied sigh.
“Ham or turkey, Reid?” Evie called from the kitchen.
“Let me help you.” I started to join her, but she pointed the knife she held in her hand at me, shaking her head. I immediately held up my hands in surrender. “Okay, then. Both if you have it.”
Hiding her grin behind her glass, Everly patted the cushion beside her.
Not needing another invitation, I dropped down close enough to snuggle into her.
She rested her head on my shoulder, her eyes drifting closed with a soft little sigh.
Kissing her forehead, I took her glass from her in case she fell asleep.
A sharp knock on the front door had her head jerking up and Evie yelping in surprise from the kitchen.
I kissed Everly again and shot Evie a look that asked if she was okay, but her eyes were on the door as she sucked her index finger into her mouth.
She must have cut it while she was slicing tomatoes.
Another knock came, followed by the door opening without anyone giving permission. I wasn’t surprised to see Chance walk in. He’d been pissed about something when we’d left the hospital earlier, but Evie wouldn’t even look at him as she’d climbed into the back seat of my truck.
“We need to talk, peaches,” he gritted out. “Now.”
She dropped her hand to grip the counter as she glared at him. “You don’t get to walk in here and make demands. I don’t care if you do own this building, we pay rent like everyone else, and that makes this our home.”
His face darkened. “Peaches?—”
“You didn’t even ask if my sister was okay.”
“Is your sister feeling better?” he amended.
“She’s right there, Chance. Ask her yourself.
” Evie picked up the knife again and started chopping a bell pepper.
I settled into the couch a little deeper, getting comfortable to enjoy the show the two of them were putting on.
No woman outside of our family had ever put my cousin in his place before.
Being an asshole attracted the opposite sex like moths to a flame, and he’d always been eager to take whatever women were ready and willing to offer, but no one had ever lasted past a single night.
He never had girlfriends, only hookups. With Evie, however, everything was different.
He didn’t know what to do with her and all the emotions she had unleashed in him.
Jaw turning to granite, he reluctantly shifted his gaze from her to the couch. I lifted my brows at him, and he muttered a curse under his breath before flicking his eyes over Everly for less than a second. “How are you feeling, Everly?”
“Much better, thank you for asking.” Everly glanced from him to her sister and back again. I could feel the tension radiating off Chance in waves, while, from the kitchen, all I got was coldness. “We’re about to have a light dinner. Evie is making sandwiches. Would you like to join us?”
I wasn’t sure who was more surprised by the invitation, my cousin or me.
“Love to,” Chance said at the same time Evie made a cute, growling noise.
“He’s busy.”
He flinched at the frost in her tone. “Peaches.”
“Thanks for stopping by to check on Evy, but my sister is tired. Bye.” She gave him one more hard look before turning her back on him to take plates out of the cabinet.
“Please, just talk to me.”
“Go talk to your mother,” she spat at him over her shoulder.
Ah, shit. Apparently, I’d missed something, and it obviously involved Rory.
At the hospital, I had been so focused on Everly, nothing else had penetrated.
Not that I was surprised Rory was causing trouble.
I loved my aunt, but there wasn’t a more overprotective mother than she.
It was borderline unhealthy and something that she and Matt had always argued over.
Even with Chance being in his thirties, she was like a freaking bulldozer, moving anything she considered detrimental to her son’s happiness out of the way before it could touch him.
For all the complaining she’d done over her son not settling down, now that he was interested in someone for more than a quick fuck, she didn’t appear to be thrilled about the possibility.
But then again, she’d already found the person she thought Chance should be with.
“Fuck,” he groaned, squeezing the back of his neck in frustration. “Don’t be like that. Ma doesn’t know you yet. Once she does, she’ll come around.”
“Yeah, no. I’m not subjecting myself to that ugliness.” She slammed the plates down on the counter hard enough to crack them, causing Everly to jump. “Sorry if I have more self-respect than the other whores you fuck around with.”
“Christ, Evie. You have to give me a chance to?—”
“I don’t owe you anything, least of all a chance to let your mother degrade me more than she already has. It’s not worth it.” She stared right at him, her eyes cold. “You aren’t worth it.”
“Evie,” Everly whispered, shaking her head as if to warn her sister.
But whatever she was trying to relay to the other woman was lost on me because I was too caught off guard by the way Chance shut down right before my eyes. His throat worked, his hands flexing at his sides.
“What? You didn’t expect me to have a backbone?
” she demanded. “No one expected the broken girl to stick up for herself. Well, joke’s on you, because I’m done letting people stomp on my heart.
Just because I once tried to kill myself doesn’t mean I don’t love myself enough now to demand that the people in my life treat me with basic human decency.
The fact that you would let your mom talk about me like that without speaking up is all I need to know about you, Chance Reid. ”
It hit me at the same time it did him. Those words that caused Everly to shudder had the blood draining from my cousin’s face.
Evie had tried to take her own life. It felt like a physical blow that knocked the air out of me.
My heart was with Everly—I had no doubt about that—but she was my sweetness’s sister.
I cared about Evie because she was important to the woman who owned my heart.
A hundred questions flooded my head, all of them demanding answers, but I couldn’t voice them because Chance stumbled toward her.
“Peaches, please.” He rushed forward, but she backed away from him, her glare never once softening. “Evie, fuck , please!”
“Goodbye, Chance.” Without sparing him another glance, she went into the bedroom and shut the door.
Chance rubbed his hand across his chest. “No. No, she didn’t say that. It’s not goodbye. I just found her. I’m not losing her.”
He started to follow her, but Everly made a noise that had me on my feet, blocking him. “I don’t know what went down today, but give her a minute. She’s upset over what Rory said to her.”
“They didn’t even talk!” Chance argued, trying to get around me. He shoved me. “Reid, man, get out of my way. I need to fix this.”
“I can’t let you in there, cuz. She wants a moment.” He snarled something to himself and charged at me. Catching him around the middle, I tackled him to the floor.
“Let me up, motherfucker!” he roared in my face.
“She’s not going to listen to anything you have to say right now,” Everly reasoned. Her stark-white face was full of her own pain. “Evie’s hurting. Today was a lot for her. Give her a little time to digest everything that happened.”
“Evie, it’s me.” Knocking on the door, Everly waited for the quiet answer before opening it and stepping inside. I held off until I heard the click of the lock engaging before I released Chance.
Getting to my feet, I offered him my hand, but he slapped it away. “She has to listen to me,” he rasped, stabbing his fingers through his hair. “And what the fuck did she mean about the whole…”
He didn’t need to finish the question for me to understand he was talking about the bomb she’d dropped about almost ending her life.
“Dude, you know her better than me. Ev hasn’t given me many details about her sister, or her life in general, other than that they were separated for most of their childhood.
This is all as new to me as it is to you.
We haven’t had much time together to get to know each other yet. ”
Groaning, he scrubbed his hands down his face. “Mom went to WomanLand today. I guess she thought Everly was Evie. Things got heated. Your girl attacked my mom.”
That had me fighting a grin. My sweetness was a little bit spicy too. Fuck, I loved that. “Unprovoked?”
“According to Mom, it was unprovoked. From what Sammy, Jos, and Mila all said, Everly showed restraint.”
“Damn.” I was pissed I hadn’t been there to see it.
Chance parked his ass on the couch. “Ma keeps saying she’s going to file assault charges. She showed me the bald spot on the back of her head that Everly caused.”
“What are you going to do about that?” I walked into the kitchen to finish putting the sandwiches together.
I hadn’t eaten all day, and both girls needed something in their stomachs.
The thought of Everly being hungry and going without caused that freshly released monster inside me to rattle around.
“I’ve already told her to chill out. She’s got all the women in a tizzy. Mila told her she’s not allowed back in the boutique until she apologizes to Everly. On top of that, Mom and Jos are arguing, but that’s nothing new. They never could get along.”
I grunted in agreement. Our moms were always civil to each other, but that was about it.
From what little I knew about it, Rory had been grumpy ever since my mom had shown up with me back in the day.
Like everyone else, Rory had thought that I was Matt’s son, not Tanner’s.
No one talked much about that era in our lives, though. Too many bad memories.
“Only this time, my dad doesn’t have Mom’s back. He’s just as pissed at her over what she was saying and the way she acted as everyone else.”
“That tells you right there that she’s in the wrong on this, Chance. Matt worships Rory, but if she fucks up, he tells it to her straight.” I stacked the sandwiches high before cutting them into triangles.
Was I trying to impress Everly with a sandwich? Without a doubt.
“Everly shouldn’t have put hands on my mom, Reid.”
I shrugged. “Sammy saying she used restraint is one thing. Her moral compass is broken. Mila is a completely other thing. If that girl says Everly felt like she was in a position where she needed to protect herself in any shape or form, I’m not going to question that.”
“Yeah,” Chance muttered.
“Regardless of whether she should or shouldn’t have, I stand with Ev.”
“Blind loyalty?”
“There’s nothing blind about it. If you understood that, your woman wouldn’t be in the other room crying right now.”