Chapter 15
FIFTEEN
Tav
My eyes wouldn’t open. I tried and then gave up, assuming they’d been stapled shut. That was rational, right?
Sure it was.
There was a buzzing sound, and I tried to lift my arm to swat it away, but I couldn’t really do that either. So maybe my arms were stapled to… I didn’t know. Something.
The buzzing kept going and after a while, my brain processed them as voices. Oh, that was right. Voices. Humans.
Con.
Con.
“Con?” That was a different voice, and damn if it didn’t take me a good minute until I realized it was mine. At least my lips weren’t stapled.
A hand touched my forehead, fingers tangled in my hair, in my scalp. I loved that, his hands in my hair. My sister had done that. “Like your fingers in my hair,” I mumbled.
“I know,” Con’s voice said from over me.
I still couldn’t open my eyes. “Can you get the staples out?”
“The staples?” He was confused.
“Yeah, fucking staples.”
There was another voice. Female. “…concussion. No need to keep him awake.”
“So I can let him sleep?” Con again.
“Yes, I wrapped his ribs. Just bruised. He might want stitches on that eyebrow if he doesn’t want it to scar.”
Scar? Who gives a fuck. “No stitches.” I mumbled. “Did you take out the staples yet?”
“Why’s he talking about staples?” I didn’t think Con was asking me.
“I have no idea.” The lady sounded amused by that.
I moved my fingers. Okay, so those weren’t stapled. I knew this fabric, this sheet. I was in Con’s bedroom. It smelled like him.
Con’s voice filtered in an out. “…blood. I want all the tests. Every test. Full panel.”
There was a pause before the woman spoke again. “Of course, Conrad, but he should agree—”
“I don’t give a fuck. He’s in my home. He’s in my care. And he’s mine. Now take his damn blood.”
My arm moved, something tight wrapped around my bicep and then a needle pricked the inside of my arm. The blood flowed, Con’s hand combed my hair, and I drifted off.
When I woke again, the staples had been taken out.
Or, at least, I could open my eyes. They were still heavy as hell.
My whole face hurt, which wasn’t unusual.
That fight had been particularly hellish.
My head hadn’t been in it, which was half the problem.
The other half was that Shock was a damn good fighter.
I blinked at the ceiling, my left side heated by the sun filtering in through Con’s bedroom windows. There was a heat at my other side too and when I rolled my head, I met Con’s eyes where he sat against the headboard. He held a paperback in his hands, but he was watching me. “How are you feeling?”
“Like I was in a fight.” It hurt to talk. I raised my hand and fingered a cut on my bottom lip.
“Ah, yes, I was there.”
I didn’t remember much from last night, but I remembered the fight. And I sort of remembered Con. “You saw the fight?”
A muscle in his jaw ticked. “Yes.”
I felt bile rise in my throat. Fuck. Why the hell had he been there? He’d seen it all. He’d seen Husk. I lowered my hand back to the bad, wincing as a pain radiated into my side. I tried to smirk, but it hurt my lips. “So did you see the other guy?”
His mouth was set in a firm line. “It’s not funny.”
“It’s a little funny.” Because really, if I didn’t try to find amusement right now, I might crack.
Con’s stormy expression didn’t change, and I hated it.
I wanted him to call me Tav. I wanted him to reach down and touch my face, run his fingers through my hair.
Did he still want me? Refined, sophisticated, suit-wearing Conrad had seen me scrambling in an underground fight in a squalor of a dirty warehouse.
What the hell could he still see in me? He wasn’t kicking me out though.
That had to mean something that I was here.
What a fucking embarrassment. He probably felt some sort of obligation to make sure I wasn’t permanently injured.
He was a good guy, after all. As soon as I healed up, he’d find the quickest way to get me out of his door.
And then he’d move so I wouldn’t find him again.
My life was a fucked-up mess. Con wouldn’t want to deal with that bullshit.
It was time to toughen up. I had to move on once Con kicked me out.
After this, I still had to fight if I wanted to keep my sister alive.
I still had to be Husk.
The tide had shifted a little though. It was harder and harder to find Husk and easier and easier to recall Tav. I was fucked if I couldn’t get my head on straight.
Con sighed and rose from the bed. “I don’t think you remember, but Nik and I got you into the tub last night and cleaned you. I’m going to go get you some breakfast.”
He cleaned me? I shifted beneath the blanket. Yep, I was naked. The embarrassment truly never ended. I ran my hand over my face, my chest, prodding sore areas. I frowned at a bandage on my arm. “What’s this?”
“Blood draw.”
“What?”
He pulled on a T-shirt. “My doctor was here. She checked you, and I told her I wanted bloodwork done.”
His doctor? Who the hell had a doctor who made house calls? “Why the fuck do I need bloodwork?”
He had that line between his brows, Con’s subtle sign of irritation. “You were in that filthy warehouse. It wasn’t the first time you’d been around open wounds. I want to make sure you’re healthy.”
I stared at him.
He turned to walk out of the bedroom. “I’m going to get you breakfast so you can eat and then rest up. You need sleep to heal.”
I rubbed a particular sore bruise on my face, needing the pain to ground me and wake me the hell up.
I couldn’t lounge in this bed all day. I was on borrowed time so as it was.
Devlin would be wondering where I was. Fuck, had he seen me leave with Con?
Would he retaliate against him? And why the hell was Con at the fight?
I struggled to sit up, grunting through the pain in my ribs.
I ran my hands over the wrap around my mid-section.
“Con, I appreciate this, but I can’t be here all day. I have to get back to my apartment—”
“No.”
I froze, one hand braced on the mattress behind me, the other on my stomach. “What?”
He leaned against his dresser. “You’re not going back to that apartment.”
My mouth fell open. “Excuse me?”
“Nik’s already back from there. He cleaned it out, so all your possessions are labeled and in boxes in the spare bedroom here.”
My head was killing me, my face hurt, my whole body was one mass of agony, and I didn’t know what the fuck was going on. “Con, what exactly are you saying?”
He pointed to the floor, as if that meant something. “You’ll now be staying here.”
I couldn’t process. “…Here.”
“Yes, here. You lived in the slums, and Nik said that apartment was a shithole.”
I deep breathed as my brain began to fit the pieces together.
“Let me get this straight. After the fight—which, we need to talk about why the fuck you were there in the first place—you brought me here, had a doctor check me over, draw my blood. Did she take a fucking DNA sample too?” Con’s face darkened, but I didn’t take the hint.
“Then, you sent your goon to where I live. Never mind the fact that I have no idea how you fucking figured that out. You had him pack up my shit, bring it here, and you’re now declaring this my home.
All without fucking asking me about it.”
Con spoke through gritted teeth. “Excellent summary.”
Excellent summary. Excellent fucking summary.
“You can’t do this, Con!” My voice had risen, something I rarely did but he had to see.
He had to know, goddamnit. “You can’t just take over my life because you want to fuck for a week.
Because after you throw me out of this fucking million-dollar apartment you live in, I still have a life.
It’s shitty, and I hate it, but there are things you don’t know, people that depend on me.
So I still have to come out on the other side of this whole or I’m fucked. ”
I thought he’d back down, or at least compromise.
But no, oh no, not Con. He advanced on me, puffing out his chest, balling his fists, face like thunder.
“That’s what you think?” His tone held an icy warning.
I tried to stay upright, but my neck wouldn’t crane back that far, so I fell to the bed on my back with a groan as he towered above me.
“That’s what you fucking think? That I’m doing all this because I want a fuck?
” His face was red, his entire body pulsing with currents of rage.
He slammed his fists into the mattress on either side of my head and lowered his face inches from mine.
“If all I wanted was a fuck, I’d go out and get one with a hell of a lot less complications, Husk. ”
I flinched. The name felt like punch to my solar plexus.
I reeled with it, absorbing the blow before anger took over, flooding my body like lava until all reason and caution fled.
Every anchor I had that kept my emotions in check was adrift today, just out to sea, so I was completely at the mercy of the frothing, raging waves.
I surged up out of bed, managing to stay on my feet, and Con took one step back as I gripped his throat with my bandaged hand and shoved him against the wall.
He hit it with a grunt and a wince of pain, but the fear and anger were clouding my judgement.
He swallowed against my palm, and I tightened my grip as I leaned in to sneer in his face.
“Don’t fucking call me that. I haven’t told anyone my name for five years.
” My voice was loud, too loud for how close we were, but I couldn’t stop myself as the pain of that name on his lips sliced at my chest cavity.
“But I told you, and that’s who I am to you.
I’m Tav. And if I’m not now that you saw me fight, then let me walk out of here with what little pride I have left. ”