Unlovely Things (Love By Design 2)

“I know it does–let me look.” Gently, Chase makes me let go and he touches the skin of my arm pressing around looking it over, a serious expression mars his face. It hurts worse. “I can feel a bump, we need to get you inside and get ice.”

“Please don’t call mom. She’ll be mad I fell.” Whispering I choke the words out.

“Kristen, it’s bad. I think you need to go to the hospital.”

“Mom has her case.”

“I don’t care. Don’t make me call an ambulance.” I knew my brother was right but our mom was going for a judge appointment or something important. She was going to be pissed.

“What if I can’t cheer in the game?”

“Kristen, I think your arm is broken, let’s not worry about the game right now.” Chase helped pick me up and put me down on the couch calling mom. My arm wrenched at a weird painful angle. I could hear him arguing but not what he said. Our dad had a coaches meeting at the high school. I was lucky Chase was even home from practice right now.

“What did mom say?”

“I’m calling Mrs. Bryant to come over.”

“Taylor’s mom?”

“Yeah, mom can’t leave the office.”

“Oh.” My heart deflated. I kind of wanted my mom to be there but work kept her busy. It always kept her from being home when I needed her. Crying wouldn’t fix this and I began to feel numb.

“Hey, hey, it’s okay. I’m here and Mrs. Bryant is coming right over, maybe with Taylor. I promise you’re going to be okay.” Chase hugged me and kissed my forehead. We hadn’t shared that in a long time because, well, boys had cooties, and it wasn’t very grown up to do, but I had the best big brother ever. When Chase made a promise, he followed through.

A knock on the door interrupted us, “Hello? Chase? Kristen, honey, I’m here.” Taylor’s mom was the best. The moment she stepped inside and took charge nursing my hurts I felt whole again. I also felt this incredible guilt because I wanted to feel that with my own mother, a woman who was emotionally divorced from her own family.

We drove to the hospital emergency room and they brought me in for x-rays. The entire time Mrs. Bryant is patting my leg or holding my hand when Chase and Taylor aren’t. They gave me medicine for the pain which made me loopy. I was scared, but Mrs. Bryant held my hand, Taylor played with my hair to distract me, and Chase prowled the hallway like a grumpy bear. By the time my dad got the call and my mom got there I was waiting for the doctor to review my x-rays and decide what to do.

My arm needed surgery for two pins and a cast. I wasn’t going to school this week and I wasn’t cheering any time soon. As they were putting me under for surgery to set the bones I thought about how much my feelings for Damien had changed. If he was going to kiss other girls, I was going to kiss as many boys as I wanted, maybe more than he was kissing French hussies.

Waking up they told me that I broke the bone badly in two places. The pins in my arm would scar the surrounding skin and I would need rehab if I was going to do school sports. My mother clucked and went back to work in her home office as soon as we got home leaving a bag of pain killers on the kitchen counter. Dad left for the gym and Chase offered to sit with me. My family wasn’t horrible but breaking my arm was a monkey wrench in their carefully laid out plans. My cheerleading scholarship was probably on the line if I couldn’t cheer. The marks reminded me how this was Damien’s fault. I would never forgive him as long as I lived. In my pain medication induced dreams all I could see were his lips touching hers and he turned into a demon for real

. I ditched the meds and went with feeling the pain instead because it gave me something concrete to focus on.

17

Damien

“Okay, mission kidnap the Cunt-Hunter is commencing. Over and out.” I clicked the radio off listening to static for a few seconds when it beeped back to life with a response. I tugged my hat down lower on my head getting into the game. This entire planned hinged on a few things–namely my accomplices not screwing up.

“Damien this is the single handedly worse thing you’ve ever done.” Whit clicked the radio off and I’m annoyed buzzing him back over the com radio. What was he doing communicating outside the plan?

“Dude, you fucking code.” I had been over this numerous times and Whit was not following the plan. I swore if he ruined this I would kick his ass.

“D-man, Hunter is never going to go for this. Remind me again, why, am I crouched down outside his window.” Said Whit as the radio clicked and buzzed again.

“Because I have the bum knee and I’m apparently only good for driving the getaway van and funding this operation.” Chase growled sounding peevish. I couldn’t help the ex-football star and his career ending injury but he was right, someone needed to drive the van.

“Because we are kidnapping him for his bachelor party.” Duh? What part of this did my accomplices forget? We had this planned for weeks since he told us he proposed to Little T-Rex. I had duties to follow, expectations to uphold and Whit was becoming the weakest link in my plan.

“Stupid shit.” Stupid was going to be when I smacked Whit upside the head inside my plumbing van I cleaned out specifically for this task hiding my tools at my dad’s house.

“Just distract him so I can go in, bag him and grab him.”

“You make it sound like we’re going to kill him.”

“Stop being a pussy and get with the program Jones.” The second my best friend and cousin decided he was getting married I had this bachelor weekend planned out, with a little help from Kristen of course, and no one, not even Whit, Chase or anyone else was going to take this from me. It was a best man’s duty, even if the fucker hadn’t asked me yet. We’d get there. He’d see reason after this awesome weekend. At least, that was the part I kept telling myself since I promised Taylor it wouldn’t be anything illegal or straight out of The Hangover movie. I was miffed she prefaced this with no tigers or high speed chases in stolen cars. It’s like she knows what goes on inside my head. Women. Pfft.