Chapter 32
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
NORA
One second, José is pulling me outside, saying he wants us to talk to the Twenty-Seven Flavors guy, and the next, he’s admitting it was a ruse so Pansy could apologize to Cormac.
“I don’t think that’s necessary.” I send an anxious glance at the swinging doors leading inside. Cormac is not a man who enjoys an apology, let alone an insincere one. He’s probably dying in there.
“Yeah, it is. She was acting crazy.” José hesitates, his gaze flicking to the vending machine next to us on the covered porch. It’s completely empty except for two items: breath mints and low-fat popcorn.
I wait, even though I feel a pull to go back inside, and finally he admits, “I’m going to break up with her. It’s been all wrong between us lately. She’s…she’s not who I thought she was. She’s completely changed.”
Those are the words I’ve wanted to hear for over a year, so I’m surprised when I don’t feel an immediate sense of relief. Instead, I’m exhausted.
I search his face, taking in the circles under his eyes. “Are you okay?”
His eyebrows lift to his hairline as he says, “I was expecting an ‘I told you so.’”
“You don’t think very highly of me anymore, do you?” I ask as sadness swells inside of me. “You see me as some shrew who only cares about being right.”
He puts a hand on my shoulder, and I feel the immediate urge to shake it off.
“It’s not like that.” He takes a step forward. I take a step back and nearly fall off the little lip of concrete leading to the door.
“So what’s it like?”
He flexes his hands a couple of times, clearly working through something. “I think we made a mistake breaking up so soon. It could have been something special, the two of us working together. Being together.”
Shock arrests me and leaves me utterly still. “You…you don’t really mean that,” I say, finding my voice. “You’re just saying that because you don’t like seeing me with Cormac.”
He lets out a frustrated grunt. “No, I fucking don’t. But—”
Before he can finish that thought, the door swings open so violently it clips him in the back. He turns, bristling, and Pansy bursts out of the bowling alley. She grips his shirtfront, her eyes suddenly so big they look like they’re going to pop out of her face.
I glance beyond her, but there’s no sign of Cormac.
Her gaze darts to me, and she bites her lip. “Cormac…he…he hit on me. I told him no, and he kissed me anyway. He—”
“You’re a fucking liar,” I say.
José shoots me a murderous look before kissing her forehead as gently as if she were tubercular. “Go wait in the car, sweetheart.”
As soon as she steps away, I say, “José, she’s lying. You know she’s a liar.”
But he rips the door open and storms through it.
Fuck. Fuck.
I don’t even think. I charge in after him, running as fast as my short legs will carry me.
José almost slips in his bowling shoes, but he still reaches Cormac way before I do. He lifts a finger to poke at Cormac’s face.
“You hit on my fiancée!” José shouts.
“What?” Cormac asks, his gaze flitting to me as I get closer. “No. She hit on me.”
I throw myself at José’s back, ready to pull out my patented Nora pepper spray if I absolutely need to—but I’m too late.
Because the second before I land, he punches Cormac in the face. In the glasses.
So I do the vindictive-girlfriend thing and punch José.
Cormac had shatterproof lenses, thank God, but his frames broke, and there are profusely bleeding lacerations around his eye, plus an injury to his cornea.
We’re in a patient-care room in the ER, waiting for a doctor. Cormac is going to need stitches. Possibly eye surgery.
He looks so vulnerable on that hospital bed, with a huge bandage over his right eye and his left one bloodshot, his curly hair a mess.
It’s all my fault this happened to him.
José said the same thing—which was accurate in a literal sense—after he discovered that Pansy had “borrowed” his car, leaving him stranded.
Not that I give a damn about Pansy at this point, or José’s attempt at an apology. I told him I wasn’t ready to talk to him yet and left him at the bowling alley to “smooth things over with the manager,” a.k.a. try not to get arrested.
Because, yeah, he may very well get arrested, seeing as he started the whole fight. There were dozens of witnesses who can verify that I only hit him after he started it.
It also bears saying that I did more damage to my fist than to his face. My hand is bandaged up, but I deserve worse.
So does José.
If he’s arrested, I’ll bail him out, but I don’t know where he and I will go from here. It’s hard to imagine we could continue working together, even though this whole mess was concocted so I could keep The Ginger Station.
What happened to Cormac may have been my fault, but José’s the one who hit him. He hit the man I…
The man I love.
Yes, fuck. I love him.
I didn’t mean to like Cormac, and I definitely didn’t mean to fall in love with him. But it happened. Maybe it was inevitable, because he’s so good, and funny, and smart. How could any woman who spends time with him, who gets to know his soul, avoid falling in love with him?
His face has become dear to me, and now it’s probably going to be scarred because of me.
I hurt the people I love, just like my father.
I can’t let this go on, but I have to take care of him before I figure out what happens next.
“Stop looking at me like that,” Cormac says with a groan. “I’m not dead. I just feel dead.”
“This is all my fault,” I insist, giving voice, again, to the words echoing through my head on a loop.
“I’m pretty sure it’s José’s fault. Pansy’s too, probably. You know, she might have taken the car so she can ransack his apartment.”
“Probably,” I say. “Do you have a headache?”
“I think I might have two.”
The nurse who patched him up earlier comes back in, dressed in black scrubs. She has black hair, brown eyes, and thick black lashes, and her name tag reads “Bianca.”
“The doctor will be back here in just a few minutes,” she says.
“And he’s going to stitch up the lacerations?” I ask.
Her mouth twists to one side. She glances at the open door, shuts it, and says in an undertone, “He would, but between you and me, you should go somewhere else to get him stitched up. You’re going to look like Frankenstein’s monster if you let old Doctor Rollins do it.
His vision’s been going. I don’t think he’d choose himself to stitch up someone he loves, but he’s too much of a stubborn donkey to admit it’s time to retire. ”
“Jesus Christ,” I say, probably too loud.
“It’s okay,” Cormac mutters. “They say women like scars.”
“It is not okay.”
“Maybe you could drive him back to Asheville?” Bianca suggests.
I rub my forehead, trying to think past all the noise in my head. “I’ve heard the hospital there sucks too.”
“You could try Pardee?”
“Musical chairs to the hospital,” Cormac murmurs.
“How much of that pain medicine did you give him?” I ask.
She smiles and pats his hand. “Just the right amount, it seems.” After casting another cautious glance at the door, she says, “You give it a think, and if you want to go somewhere else, I’ll get you discharged.”
She leaves, and I immediately turn toward Cormac. “Where’s your phone?”
“Don’t call our parents,” he says with a groan. “I don’t want to explain why your ex-boyfriend attacked me in a bowling alley. They’ll have too many questions.”
“I wasn’t going to. I’m going to call Kenji.”
“You know Kenji?” he asks, giving me a dopey grin.
“Yes, we all went to school together, but no, I haven’t spoken to him in twelve years. He can help you, though. He has resources. He can have you medevacked to, like, Switzerland, or whatever, to have some celebrity’s plastic surgeon fix your lacerations.”
He laughs, then groans. “Nora, I don’t have to go to Switzerland to get my lacerations sutured. I’m sure there’s someone in the tristate area who could handle them to your specifications.”
I stomp my foot. “No, you’re going to get the best damn care on the planet, and I’m going to pay Kenji back for it. Every penny.”
“That’s not necessary. As Pansy pointed out a couple of hours or possibly an eternity ago, I have plenty of money.” He smiles. “Did I tell you she tried to seduce me?”
My nails bite into my skin, and I realize I’m making a fist. “I’d like to punch her in the face.”
“I wouldn’t recommend it. José must have hurt his hand worse than you hurt yours.”
“Good.”
He smiles and then winces. “That’s good news. I think he’s probably in love with you. I honestly don’t blame him, but I was worried you might change your mind about him. He has really nice hair. I can’t do that floppy thing with my hair.”
“I’m not the least bit interested in him. Right now, I’m incredibly pissed at him. You should press charges.”
“Nah, I won’t do that. He’s probably having a bad enough day.”
“You should think about it. Now, where’s your phone?”
“It’s in my pocket, Nora. So if you feel something hard in there, don’t worry. Just this once, it’s not because I’m happy to see you.”
“You’re loopy.” I run a finger over his lips, my heart hurting. It hurts worse when he kisses my finger, and I feel those banked tears again.
He can’t be mine. I can’t let him be mine.
“I’m loopy for you,” he says.
“I’m loopy for you too,” I admit as I reach down and grab his phone. “What’s the passcode?”
“My face ID probably won’t work, huh? It’s 1002.”
I give him a sharp glance. “That’s my birthday.”
“Sometimes I forget things I should remember if I don’t drive them into my brain. I knew it was coming up in a couple of months, and I didn’t want to forget.”
Those stupid fucking tears are pressing at my eyes again, insisting that I let them out. “Why are you so good to me?”
“I love you, Nora.”
He says it so easily, so naturally, as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world, and then he flinches and lifts his hand to his mouth. “I wasn’t supposed to say that yet. I didn’t want to scare you off.”