“Guest bedroom in my rental.”
“Thought you were staying in a hotel.”
“Got sick of housekeeping coming in and out all the time, so I got something longer-term. Can you get up?”
Yes, but not without cursing myself and every person who’s been involved in my continued existence.Especiallythe guy who taught me to box. Fuck you, Eddie. If I’d been less good at it, Mountain Man would have taken me out early. I wouldn’t be this fucked up. I wouldn’t be banned.
I put my hands to my face and discover that it’s better if I don’t touch it at all.
“Here.” Sinclair holds the glass out. “Drink this. It’ll help.”
I stare down into green mush. “No, it won’t.”
“It’s a kale smoothie.”
My stomach lurches. “Then it definitely won’t help.”
“Trust me.”
It pisses me off enough that I grab the glass out of his hand and swallow an inch or two of the smoothie.
Swallow? Jesus. It’s more like biting through it. Turns into choking it down. And then it turns into kale-flavored acid in the back of my throat.
“Fuck off with that.” I shove the glass into Sin’s hand. “Jesus Christ. Youdrinkthose?”
He peers at me like I’m not kale-heaving on the bed. “You look like absolute hell.”
“Thanks.”
“You want to tell me why you almost got yourself killed at an illicit fight club last night?”
I stand up in an effort to get my stomach to settle down, which doesn’t help. I’m wrecked from head to toe. “Is that what Bristol told you?”
Not sure how she’d know, but anything’s possible.
Sin points into the next room. I hobble in that direction and find a huge, overstuffed sofa with an ottoman. It’s marginally better with my feet up.
My brother takes the cursed smoothie into the kitchen and puts it in the sink. Then he comes back and sits in a chair across from me, his feet next to mine on the ottoman.
“No.Youtold me about it after I collected your concussed ass from her apartment.”
I frown at my feet on the ottoman. I remember Sin driving an SUV and a bunch of bright lights, but no conversation. “Who told you I had a concussion?”
“On-call doctor from a cute little medical boutique. She came with a leather doctor bag and everything.”
“What the fuck, Sin.”
“It was that or the ER. And you were a picky bastard who didn’t want to be seen at a hospital. The doctor was good, anyway. She gave me a list of instructions. By the way, you can’t go back to that damned warehouse for at least a month.”
I laugh, which hurts, too. “I’m banned for a month.”
Sin arches an eyebrow. “Because you got your ass kicked?”
My fist, cracking against the bones in Mountain Man’s face. Again and again and again. I flex the bruised knuckles in my left hand and think of arms dragging me away andnot a chance, hellionand Bristol’s voice.
“I wasn’t supposed to win the match. But after I got the guy on the ground, I couldn’t stop.”
Sin nods sagely. “Turned into Dad, didn’t he?”