Chapter 18
EIGHTEEN
Conrad
I sat in the bedroom while Tav called Lary. He was short but assuring, letting his friend know that he was safe and healing, and that he’d see him soon.
After that, even though it was against my instincts, I gave him some privacy.
I worked at my kitchen island on my laptop instead of my office, because from there, I could hear where Tav moved about in the apartment.
For a while, he stayed in the bedroom, and then his footsteps traveled down the hallway into the spare bedroom, where I heard him shuffling boxes around.
If he came out of that bedroom with the boxes repacked, I wouldn’t be held responsible for my actions.
But eventually, he emerged from the bedroom and padded into the kitchen with untied sneakers on his feet, wearing nothing but a pair of compression shorts and a T-shirt with large arm holes cut out, exposing his bruised ribs.
His knuckles were taped. He spotted me and stopped, chewing on his lip.
“Is there a gym in this building that I can use?”
I shook my head.
“No?” He raised an eyebrow. “No gym in this fancy-ass place? You’re getting robbed.”
I snorted. “There’s a gym, but you’re not going.”
He stiffened. “You can’t just keep me here under lock and key.”
I gave him a look. “You’re not a prisoner, but you aren’t allowed to exercise a day after your brain got sloshed in your skull.”
He didn’t like that. His arms twitched at his sides, and he rolled his neck, visibly uncomfortable like a Golden Retriever needing a walk. Or more like a Rottweiler. “I need to do something.”
“You can walk on the treadmill.” He rolled his eyes, and I held up my hand. “Sorry, but I’m not budging. I like your brain and would prefer it heals.”
He clenched and unclenched his fists before agreeing with a sigh. “Fine.”
I made to stand to show him the gym, but he took another step forward, his palm out.
“So, it’s not that I don’t believe you. I do. But can you tell me where my sister and nephew are? Are they okay? I just… I need to know.”
I immediately snatched my phone off the counter beside me and pulled up the reports from my men with constant streams of encrypted messages letting me know every movement his sister and his nephew had made since I’d assigned the jobs last night.
He held my phone like it was made of crystal, cradling it in his calloused palms as he read about Amara’s personal day today that she’d taken from her job in order to attend Holden’s preschool assembly on dinosaurs.
One of my men had even pulled up the livestream hosted by the school.
In the grainy video, Holden sat in the front row wearing a stegosaurus costume, his short legs swinging below his chair.
When he grinned, the green and black painted stripes on his face shifted.
His classmate was currently at the mic, telling the crowd a fact about pterodactyls, which she pronounced like terkadils. “Terkadils had wings.”
When Holden took his place at the mic, Tav let out a strangled sound.
His thumb pressed the volume button repeatedly, until Holden’s voice filled my kitchen.
“Stegolasauruses—” the boy paused and frowned, and I had to cover my mouth not to react, because he got the same furrow between his brow that Tav did.
He started again. “Stegosauruseses ated plants.” He beamed a smile full of self-pride, gave a little hop in his light-up sneakers, and plopped back down in his seat.
Oh fuck me, he was cute.
Tav handed the phone to me, his head bowed. He didn’t speak for a long moment, and I held my breath waiting for his reaction. His body trembled so much so that I could hear his uneven breathing, but everything told me to wait this out. To give him time.
And then he lunged at me. His long arms caged me against his body, wrapping around my ribs.
He hugged me so tight that I could barely breath.
His heart pounded against mine, and he still shook as he ducked his head into my neck.
I hesitantly hugged him back, closing my eyes as I sank into the realization that Tav gave great hugs.
I’d never been a hugger. I didn’t get the fuss, and I didn’t like to feel trapped.
But I’d happily stay like this forever, wrapped up in Tav’s strong arms.
Eventually he pulled back, and his eyes met mine. I didn’t see tears there, but I saw enough emotion that warmed me from the inside out. “Thank you,” he said simply.
I brushed the hair at his temples, and he leaned into my touch like a cat. “Of course.” I motioned to the stool next to mine. “Tell me about your sister. Then I can show you the gym.”
He chewed his lip and then sank down onto the stool next to me. I shoved my laptop away, wanting to give him my full attention. He didn’t speak for a minute, but when he turned to me, his eyes light in his unguarded face, he unleashed.
It was like he’d been holding in his love for his sister for years, and he likely had.
But now he told me everything, about how he and Amara were only a year apart and merely toddlers when their single mother died of a drug overdose.
How the foster system thankfully kept them together as they entered their first foster home where they stayed before moving on to another.
“It was okay,” he said. “They had a lot of foster kids, so we weren’t special, and it never felt like a family, more like a group home. But Amara and I took care of each other.”
“What were you like as a kid?” I asked.
He shrugged. “I was big even at a young age, and I had a lot of energy. So I got into a lot of trouble when I just couldn’t sit still.
There was a gym near us that held free jiu jitsu classes to kids who qualified for assistance.
My foster parents put me in it, hoping to wear me out, I think.
” He rubbed his knuckles on his thigh. “I liked it, and I was good, and then the instructor Raph took an interest in me, so much so that he invented some scholarship thing so I could get free classes with the rich kids. The parents hated me because I crushed their princes.” He grinned at that.
I returned his smile and rested my hand over his on his thigh. “Good boy.”
His quad muscle jerked under my touch. “Yeah, I was. Or I tried to be.”
“What was Amara like?”
His eyes lit from within. “She was so smart, Con. Really smart. School wasn’t my thing, but it was hers.
I used to help her make flashcards so she could memorize math problems or history facts.
She came to every practice of mine she could, and she attended every single fight.
She used to make signs to cheer me on and gave me a nickname—Tavin ‘The Gavel’ Ridley because I was good with my elbows.
The red ribbon I tie on my arm when I fight?
That was from her. I still wear it every time, even if she isn’t there to see it.
” He blew out a breath. “She’s everything to me.
And I was everything to her.” His eyes squinted as pain bled into his expression.
“But she liked boys a lot. Then men. She just… she wanted to be loved so badly, and not in the way I loved her.” He glanced up sharply.
“But she wasn’t weak. She wasn’t at all. ”
“I believe you.”
He swallowed. “By the time she turned eighteen, she had met Dennis at one of my fights.” His fingers curled into a fist under my hand.
“And he was such a smarmy fucker. Charming and fake as fuck. Lured her right in, knocked her up, and then didn’t even have the decency to break up with her. He was going to kill her, Con. He was.”
Dennis had always been a piece of shit. I knew exactly the charm he held, and I’d seen plenty of girls and women fall to his seduction only to find out too late that he was the worst decision of their lives.
“I’m never going to judge you for what you did, you understand that, right?
” I gripped his chin lightly, so he was forced to look in my eyes.
“You don’t have to explain yourself to me. ”
“Okay,” he whispered. He blinked, and his lips curved into a soft, sad smile. “Amara was so happy when she got pregnant. She always wanted a family. She started calling me Uncle Tav the day after she saw two lines on the test. And I wanted it too, that family, even if I had to tolerate Dennis.”
I was going to give him his family back. I was going to give him everything. I rubbed my thumb over his bruised bottom lip. But for now, I made him a promise I knew he could handle. “I’ll keep her and Holden safe for you.”
His eyes searched mine, and I knew he didn’t quite believe it yet.
I was ninety-nine percent sure he trusted me, but I didn’t think he trusted life.
So he didn’t respond, and that was fine.
Words didn’t matter anyway. Actions did.
My next question felt invasive, but I wanted to know where his head was at. “Do you resent her at all?”
He chewed the inside of his cheek. “I did at the beginning. I was so angry then. But Devlin held all the cards. Dennis had talked him up to her, so she trusted him. And he…” he swallowed.
“He showed her pictures of me passed out in his basement with a needle in my arm. Fake, of course, but she didn’t know that. ”
“Was that when he—?” I could barely say it.
“Yeah, that was right after Dennis died. When he locked me up for a week.”
I tamped down the surge of rage that threatened to burn my insides.
“Because of how our mom died, that was the ultimate betrayal to her. Not that I can explain to her. Devlin forbids me to contact her. And even if I could tell her the truth, then I’d have to explain that the father of her son was a piece of shit.
That the kid she loves so much carries the blood of a man who had planned to murder them both.
What kind of brother does that make me?” He shook his head.
“I don’t know if I can put her through that. ”
He had a point, but I had to believe his sister would rather know the truth about the brother she loves. I knew she had to still love him. Tav was lovable.
He winced. “Do you get where I’m coming from?”
I didn’t have a sister, or any siblings for that matter, so it was hard for me to be empathetic about his situation.
I still couldn’t reconcile the way he’d sacrificed his life the last five years, but I did understand Tav’s heart now more than I had before.
And his decision made sense, as much as I wanted him to be more selfish.
That was okay. I’d be selfish for both of us.
A loud buzz filled my apartment, and Tav jerked in my hands, head immediately whipping down the hallway in the direction of my front door. I glanced at my watch. “I’m sorry, I forgot. You have a follow-up doctor appointment.”
“I have a what—?”
I was already down the hall to buzz the doorman back and tell him to let up Dr. Samantha Rosen. The only person I trusted to touch Tav other than me. And maybe old man Lary.
Dr. Rosen was at my door in under a minute, smiling at me as she placed her dark-skinned hand in mine to shake it. “Hey there, Mr. Stafford.”
“You know not to call me that.”
She wore her hospital scrubs and white coat with a stethoscope around her neck and a pair of gray On Cloud sneakers on her feet. She had a book bag strapped to her shoulders. “And I told you not to call me Dr. Rosen but you do it anyway.”
“Because you’re the best and deserve respect.”
She stepped into my apartment, and I shut the door behind her.
She patted my shoulder. “This is why you’re the only person I make house calls for.
” She started down the hall, and I followed her to find Tav standing at the island with his feet braced apart, arms loose at his sides.
But I knew him well enough to know that he was well on his way to panic as his gaze tracked Sam’s every move as she approached him.
Sam, however, didn’t blink at his intense scrutiny. “Hello there, I’m Dr. Rosen. You can call me Sam. I take it you don’t remember me?”
His nostrils flared, and his gaze shifted to me before snapping back to her. “No.”
He needed to chill. I took his arm and led him over to the couch. Sam walked beside us, and Tav watched her the whole time. I pushed on his shoulder, and he sat on the couch cushion stiffly. Sam sat on the coffee table in front of him, still with that easy smile as if he was a spooked horse.
“I was here last night,” she explained. “You were out of it, and I wasn’t able to speak to you or let you know what I was treating. Would you like me to explain everything I did and what I told Conrad?”
This was why Sam was the best. She was giving Tav back some control over his own body when he’d been too out of it to consent to medical treatment. I hadn’t felt bad about it, but then I hadn’t taken a medical oath like she did.
“Con said you bandaged me, checked me for a concussion, and drew my blood.” He glared at me out of the side of his eye. “Was there anything else?”
“I checked for broken bones, and you fortunately didn’t have any. But your pupils were dilated, and I’m going to go out on a limb and say this wasn’t your first concussion?”
Tav stayed quiet, and his gaze shifted over and down as if he suddenly found the pattern on my rug interesting.
Sam took that as a yes. “That was what I thought.” She dropped her book bag on the ground and gripped the stethoscope around her neck.
“I’d like to follow-up and check your injuries to make sure everything is healing, and to ensure I didn’t miss anything yesterday.
Would that be okay? I can touch you as little as possible, and I’ll let you know where I’m going to touch before I do it. ”
Tav’s shoulders had begun to drop lower and lower as she spoke, the tension easing out of him. “Yeah, okay,” he murmured.
She patted the couch. “Can you take off your shirt and lay down flat on your back?”