Above and Beyond (Twist of Fate 4)

“Safe. Stay inside. Safe.”

Fuck me.

Of course he hadn’t been asking me to stay and keep him company. He’d been asking me to stay where he could keep track of me. Like a babysitter.

Min came in and saw Zach’s hand covering mine and his other hand resting on my leg. I quickly jerked out of his grip and reached for the washcloth she’d brought. The look on her face made it clear I was in for some serious words as soon as I was done playing paramedic.

I turned and placed the cool cloth over his forehead, hoping he wouldn’t need ice pack and heat pad therapy. If he did, I’d bet a million dollars he’d throw a fit and storm out, even if he could barely see straight.

But he seemed to doze off just fine, most likely half-numb from the medicine. When I finally joined Min in the kitchen, I noticed her girlfriend was there. The two of them stopped talking abruptly when I entered the room, so there was no doubt who they’d been talking about.

“Hey, Leah,” I said, reaching past Min to get the water pitcher from the fridge.

Leah glanced at Min before smiling at me. “Minna says you picked up a stray hottie. Does that have anything to do with what happened to your car downstairs?”

Min didn’t give me a chance to answer before poking me in the chest with a stubby finger. “When were you going to tell me about that, huh? What’s going on? Did Davis do that?”

The reminder of my car had a lead weight landing directly in my gut.

Leah put a calming hand on Min’s shoulder. “Lucky, you need to call the cops. That’s serious shit.”

I blew out a breath, thinking of Davis and how much he claimed to care about me. Even though he had a girlfriend and had totally lied to my face about everything, the man didn’t seem like someone to go psycho with spray paint like that. And so far, his harassment of me had been of the “please give me another chance so we can keep fucking in secret” variety rather than the “die bitch” attitude that vandal seemed to display.

“I don’t think it was Davis. I think it was simply the wrong car,” I explained. “You know how many students live around here. It could have been someone’s jealous girlfriend or boyfriend.”

Min’s eye-roll was epic. “Yeah, like Davis’s jealous girlfriend maybe? Wake up, Lucky. Jesus.”

I shook my head as I reached for a glass in the cabinet. “She doesn’t know about me. That was the whole point. He’s terrified about anyone thinking he’s gay. He claimed he kept dating her to keep up appearances to his family and friends because he was scared of coming out. No one in his life knows.”

“Then who could it be?” Leah asked. “Have you gotten any other weird messages or threats?”

I focused on pouring the water so I didn’t have to make eye contact when I lied. “No. That’s why I think it’s simply a case of mistaken car identity.”

“You still need to call the cops,” Min insisted. “Think of the intended victim, Lucky. They need to know.”

She was right, but it was too late to report something that wasn’t an emergency. I knew firsthand how crazy this time of night could be for first responders, and a spray-painted parked car wasn’t 911-worthy.

“Fine, I’ll call in the morning. But I’m sure it’s nothing.” Even as I said the words, I was trying to figure out how I would keep all this from my fathers. The car was in my name but they paid the insurance on it. Not to mention the elephant in the room… or the other room, rather. And it wasn’t as much an elephant as it was a big, hunky soldier hell-bent on completing his latest mission… me.

After ignoring the pointed silence that followed, I put the pitcher back in the fridge and made my way to the hall closet to grab my jump bag. As long as Zach was sleeping, he wouldn’t notice me taking his temperature and listening to his heart and chest just to be sure there wasn’t anything else going on.

When I entered the room, the light from the hallway spilled in enough to show me he was still out. From what I could tell, his color had improved a little, but I still wished I could take his blood pressure without waking him up.

I walked to the foot of the bed to remove his boots and was surprised to feel a thick scar on his calf. Without much light, it was hard to investigate, so I used my hands. The touch was way too intimate, too much like my fantasies of having permission to touch Zach’s body the way I really wanted to. I tried desperately to remind myself this was purely medical. I needed to know what his physical situation was so I could properly treat him.