When I arrived at Crockett’s side, she whipped around and stared at me with annoyance in her eyes.
And pain.
Yes, there was pain there, too, and I definitely didn’t like seeing that.
“What happened?” I asked as I reached for her hand.
She grumbled under her breath, and I pulled back the paper towel to see her thumb splayed open.
Obviously, she’d split it open with a knife when she was cooking, and now it needed stitches.
“I was cleaning up the mess that was left over from cooking,” she admitted. “And sliced my finger open on the knife that was under the sudsy water.”
I winced.
“Come on,” I said, wrapping the thumb back up. “I have a kit inside my saddlebags. I can get this cleaned up for you.”
And by kit, I meant whatever I would need that would get a wound fixed up long enough for me to get back to the rest of my medical supplies that were at my house or Lynn’s.
Today, I wouldn’t need more than that kit, however.
Wrapping my hand around her good one, I tugged her toward my bike, stopping only long enough to grab my kit.
I had to push past Juniper who was still standing there, only this time with a lot more anger on her face, to get up the porch steps.
And when I got inside, it was to see everyone eating and laughing and carrying on.
I bypassed everyone for the back room, gesturing toward the counter.
“Come here,” I urged.
She walked carefully to the counter and stared at it with thoughtfulness.
Seeing her dilemma, I picked her up and put her up there myself, causing her to gasp.
My hands on her luscious hips only stayed there for a short time before I let her go.
Placing my kit on the counter next to her hip, I opened it up, laid out what I would need, then washed my hands.
Slipping on some gloves afterward, I opened shit up and laid it all out before once again reaching for her hand.
“I can’t do this without some sort of numbing…” She paused as I reached for a bottle of lidocaine. “You have access to medicine still?”
I grinned. “There are a lot of things you can do when it comes to medicine nowadays. And, just sayin’, but Hunt is a damn genius when it comes to fake identification. He ordered this all under a board-certified doctor. Something of which I am not anymore. But this fictional guy is. I have everything I could ever want or need at my fingertips.”
Her brows rose. “Wow. That’s cool, actually.”
“Umm, Zach?”
I didn’t bother looking behind me at Juniper. “What?”
“Can we talk?” she pushed.
I gritted my teeth and said, “This is going to hurt. Just a prick.”
Then I went to numb the area around the cut.
Crockett hissed.
Juniper growled.
I rolled my eyes and patted Crockett’s thigh. “Let that work for a second. Let me deal with this.”
Crockett started to slide off of the counter, but I stilled her movements. “Stay.”
After giving her a look that clearly meant ‘stay or else’ and she shot me one back that just as clearly said ‘okay, but you better deal with this,’ I turned around to find Juniper at the door.
“No, Juniper. We cannot talk,” I told her honestly. “The time for talking was a long time ago.”
Her breath hitched. “But I made a mistake.”
I tilted my head.
“I know that you did,” I said. “But I’ve finally moved on. I’ve made it to where I can function without you.”
A breath hitched in behind me, and I knew that though we were being quiet, it obviously wasn’t quiet enough because she’d heard.
Which, in all honesty, wasn’t surprising. I was being quiet. Juniper was not.
Which pissed me off because she’d come in here with a group of my friends in attendance, and she’d thought to what? Reconcile after she’d done her worst to me? Yeah, no. I wasn’t about that life anymore.
When I’d first gotten out, I might’ve been able to reconcile with her after the words that she’d said. But after getting out? After months had passed? After I’d finally started to have feelings for another woman—even if I wouldn’t act on those feelings thanks to the woman who’d broken me?
Yeah, I was done a really long time ago.
“You’ve moved on,” she said. “So why is it all you do is work, go home, and come here. If you were truly with her, I think you’d spend more time with her.”
I gritted my teeth, then a thought occurred to me.
“How the hell do you know where I am?” I asked.
She bit her lip. “You still have that app.”
I cursed and pulled out my phone, making quick work of deleting her from my phone, blocking her number, as well as turning my locations off when it came to that stupid app. An app that she’d asked me to get a long time ago that tracked my movements because ‘she could never tell when to turn dinner on’ because I was always working.