Chapter 1 #4
Even if I thought he was being a giant idiot and there was a chance he could die from his injuries.
I couldn’t keep my mouth from opening one last time, anxiety riding me hard. “You really should go get checked out.”
“I don’t need to get checked out,” he insisted in what was the rudest tone I’d ever heard.
You tried, Di. You tried.
There was a metal security door blocking a regular wooden one, and my neighbor reached out to open the first and then the second, going inside with me following after.
All of the lights were off as he stumbled in, him grunting in the process.
I couldn’t see a single thing as the drunk and beaten-up man stumbled forward.
My bare feet were on carpet, and I prayed he didn’t have needles lying around or anything.
A few seconds later, there was the sound of a thud and then a double click before a side lamp flickered on.
It was one of my worst nightmares.
His house was a mess .
There were piles of clothes that may or may not be clean on the couch and two recliners in the living room.
A giant television was mounted to the wall, lines of cables dangling out from the bottom, linking it to two gaming systems I recognized.
Cans of soda and beer were all over the side tables; balled-up napkins, receipts, socks, wrappers for fast food, and who knows what the hell else covered the floor.
He was huffing in pain as I kept looking around, catching sight of a baseball in a dusty glass case and an equally dirty trophy on the console table to my left.
This whole place reminded me of the first apartment I’d had with Rodrigo.
We’d been pigs after we had moved out of our parents’ place, but that was because our mom was a clean freak, and for once in our lives we didn’t have to pick up after ourselves religiously.
Nowadays, with two boys and a job that was over full-time hours, I was pretty lenient with what I could live with.
But this place had me side-eyeing everything, scrunching up my toes.
The guy— man —let out a long groan as he slowly lowered himself onto a recliner, one hand gripping the side arm.
“Are you sure you don’t want me to call an ambulance?”
He let out another “Uh-huh” as he laid back, his head dropping against the headrest, his colorful throat bobbing with a swallow.
“Sure?”
He didn’t even bother replying.
I hesitated as I took in the red stains on his clothing and the swelling spots on his face, and thought about him getting kicked again. “I can take you to the hospital. I’ll just need a few minutes.” The idea of waking up Josh and Louie was an awful one, but if I had to do it, I would.
“No hospital,” he murmured, swallowing hard again. His eyes were shut.
I stared at him for a minute, taking in the sharp lines of his profile. I hated feeling useless, I really did. “Is there anyone I can call for you?”
My neighbor might have shaken his head, but the movement was so restrained it was hard to be sure. “No. I’m fine.”
He didn’t look fine to me.
“You can leave now,” he muttered, those hands of his gripping his thighs so hard the knuckles turned white.
I didn’t want to be in his house with him, but I knew I couldn’t just skip on out either.
The idea of being in a strange man’s house at night alone sent about a thousand alarm bells ringing in my head.
This was the kind of stupid shit women in movies did that got them dumped into a deep hole in some psycho’s basement.
But bailing wasn’t the right thing to do, and if it made a difference, people didn’t usually have basements in the Texas Hill Country.
I looked around and kept my question about whether he had a first aid kit or not to myself.
“Do you have anything I can use to clean your cuts?”
The man’s eyes were closed, and from his lap, a couple of his fingers on his left hand wiggled in a dismissive gesture that had me narrowing my eyes.
“Do you know how many germs people carry around on their hands?” I asked him slowly.
I wasn’t a fan of the look he slid my way with only one opened eye.
And he wasn’t a fan of my persistence. “I’m not joking. Do you have any idea?”
He stared at me for all of maybe a second before closing his eyes and making another dismissive gesture that insisted he was going to be an idiot about this. “I already said I’m fucking—”
“What the hell is going on?” an unfamiliar voice spoke up out of nowhere, just about scaring the shit out of me.
Standing in the space where the living room transitioned into what was either a hallway or the kitchen was a half-naked man. A half-naked man rubbing at his eyes and frowning.
“Nothing. Go back to sleep.” The grumpy idiot on the chair couldn’t even talk without groaning.
The sleepy man kept frowning and blinking, still obviously out of it. He reached an arm out toward the wall behind him, flicking the overhead fan light on.
And God help me.
God help me.
The new guy, the not-beat-up dumbass, was only in black boxers.
It was obvious even from the ten plus feet between us that he was tall, maybe even taller than Beat-up Dumbass.
His hair was cut nearly to the scalp, his face was stubbled but not really bearded, and he was built like those long-limbed male models with brawny chests, six-packs, thighs for days, and a giant brown and black tattoo that seemed to cover everything from his upper arms, across his pectorals to the notch at his throat and continuing to arch up above his trapezius muscles, disappearing somewhere on his back.
He was built like a porn star. The really attractive, muscular porn stars.
Or I guess a male calendar model.
I’d obviously been watching too much guy-on-guy porn lately for that to be the first kind of body I associated him with.
I knew the exact moment his tired eyes noticed I was there because he stood straight up and all of those muscles went tight. “Who are you?” he asked slowly, dryly, his voice rough with sleep.
Dropping my hand from where it was over my heart—I didn’t even remember reaching up—I caught the ragged breath in my chest and held up my palms so that they faced toward him in surrender, taking in his features that weren’t from the neck down.
His face was all angles and sharp lines like a gangster in a Russian mafia movie.
Not exactly handsome but there was something about it…
I coughed. Focus. “I just helped him outside,” I explained, standing there like a deer caught in the headlights.
Wasn’t that obvious? The beat-up guy was bleeding. Why else would I be standing there?
The half-naked stranger stared at me, unblinking, unmoving before his gaze switched back to the man on the recliner. “What happened?”
Beat-up Dumbass shook his head and lay back against the couch, waving his fingers dismissively. “Nothing. Mind your own fucking business and go back to sleep.”
Was I…? Should I…? I should go. I should probably go, I decided. I cleared my throat and luckily neither one of them glanced at me. “All right, well, I’m going to head out now—”
“What happened?” the half-naked man asked again, and it didn’t take a genius to know the question was directed at me… because his gaze was locked on mine, all hooded eyelids and a frown that made me uncomfortable.
“I already fucking told you nothing!” Beat-up Dumbass hissed, raising a hand to his eyes and draping it over them.
The not-beat-up guy didn’t even glance at the other man.
I was pretty sure his nostrils had flared at some point, and I could definitely see his loosely hanging hands were opening and closing into fists.
His voice was low and almost hoarse. “Can you please tell me why the hell he’s on the chair, looking like he just got his ass beat? ”
Because he had? I opened my mouth, closed it, and mentally shrugged.
I wanted to get the hell out of there, and it wasn’t like I had some allegiance to the beat-up guy.
“He got jumped, and I helped him. I didn’t want to leave him out there.
” My eyes bounced back and forth between the chair and the muscles—I mean, the guy in the boxers that only covered about a third of his thighs.
“Jumped?” One of the man’s thick eyebrows seemed to creep up a half inch on his broad forehead.
I’d swear his chin jutted out as he picked at my words to repeat. I’d had enough experiences pissing people off in my life—specifically my mom—to know those three traits were a sign of someone who was angry but trying not to be and failing miserably.
I probably made it worse by adding, “On the lawn outside.”
The width of his shoulders seemed to double, bringing attention to bulky biceps flexing to life with the hands he was fisting in pretty obvious anger. I couldn’t tell how old he was… but it wasn’t like that mattered.
“He got jumped on the lawn outside?” the newest stranger asked stiffly, his shoulders rolling back, his stubble-covered chin inching out a little more.
Why did I feel like I was tattling to Dad? “Uh-huh.”
The man on the recliner groaned in exasperation.
I would have been worried about being a big mouth except Beat-up Dumbass didn’t look like he’d make it five feet on his own.
The half-naked man’s biceps became even more bunched as his hand—a large one—went up to grip the top of his buzz-cut dark hair. “Who?” the man asked in that raspy, deep voice of his that had nothing to do with a head cold, like mine did. I had a feeling it wasn’t a sleep-induced voice either.
“Who what?” I asked slowly, trying to decide the best way to bail on this conversation as quickly as possible.
“Who did it?”
Should I have asked them for their names and addresses? I shrugged, my discomfort growing by the second. Get out, Diana , a little voice inside my head warned me.
“It’s none of your fucking business,” Beat-up Dumbass muttered as angrily as someone who may or may not have internal injuries was capable of.
But at the same time as he gave his response, I blabbered, “Three guys.”
“Outside this house?” Half-naked Man pointed toward the floor with an index finger.
I nodded.
There was a moment of silence before:
“I’m gonna fucking kill you,” the man hissed, not completely under his breath, his head swinging over in the direction of the recliner. The hand dangling at his side tightened into a fist that had me eyeing the door and taking a step in reverse.
And it was probably that, that had me blurting out as I took another step back, “All right. I’m going to bounce now. I’d go to the doctor if I was you, buddy. I hope you get better—”
The not-beat-up guy’s attention slid back to me as a shaky exhale left his broad chest, his hand went loose once more at his side, and he blinked. “Who are you?”
I didn’t like telling strangers where I lived, but it wasn’t like I was Batman, saving strangers in the night because I was trying to save the world from crime.
I was just an idiot who couldn’t ignore someone in need if I had the power to help them.
Damn it. Plus, if either one of them—or both of them—lived in this house, they were going to eventually see me around. “I just moved in across the street.”
The man with the hard face and tiny boxers seemed distracted as he looked me over, like he was trying to sniff out if I was lying or not.
I’m sure the only thing he would be able to tell was the fact that I was really regretting trying to be a good person and getting involved in this awkward-ass situation.
Glancing back and forth between the man standing there and the other one on the recliner, barely holding it together, I figured I could leave.
I wasn’t leaving the beat-up guy alone, and maybe the other man was pissed off at him, but who the hell knew what the backstory between them was.
You didn’t say you were going to “fucking kill” someone unless they’d pissed you off enough times in the past. I’d been there.
Maybe he was right to be mad. Maybe he wasn’t.
All I knew was that I had tried my best and it was time to get the fuck out.
“All right, well, bye and good luck,” I said.
Before either one of them responded, and later on I realized I hadn’t learned anyone’s name, I was out the door and walking across the street, going home.
That had been uncomfortable and not something I’d want to go through again.
I had tried. I just hoped it didn’t come back to bite me in the ass.
I took my time walking back. The adrenaline pumping through me had disappeared, and I was tired.
I picked up Josh’s bat off the lawn and crossed the street, wondering what the hell that had all been about but knowing my chances of finding out were slim to none.
As I made it to my lawn, I zeroed in on a short, skinny figure standing behind the screen front door in just a T-shirt that was a size too small and underwear, his hands were on his hips.
“Lou? What the fu—dge are you doing?” I snapped, raising my hands at my sides.
The smile that came over his face said he knew exactly what I’d been on the verge of saying, and I wasn’t surprised.
Of course he knew. My brother had thrown around the word “fuck” like it was the name of his imaginary third kid.
Not for the first time, I remembered my parents had never complained to him about how he needed to stop saying certain words in front of the kids. Huh.
“I didn’t know where you went, Buttercup,” he explained innocently, pushing the door open as he used his nickname for me.
And just like that, my irritation at him for staying up crumbled into a thousand pieces.
I was such a sucker. I opened the screen door fully and bent to pick him up.
He was getting bigger every day, and it was only a matter of time before he said he was too old to be carried.
I didn’t want to think about it too much or anticipate it, because I was sure I’d end up locking myself in the bathroom with a bottle of wine, snotting everywhere.
Bouncing him in my arms, I pecked his temple. “I went to make sure the neighbor was okay. Let’s go to sleep, all right?”
He nodded against my mouth, already a mostly limp weight. “Is he okay?”
“He’s going to be okay,” I answered, fully aware that was a partial lie, but what else could I say? I hope he doesn’t die from internal bleeding, Lou? No. “Let’s go to bed, Goo.”