Zip, Zero, Zilch (The Reed Brothers 6)

I hadn’t planned on seeing him again at all. Ever. Not after the way we ended things.

“Can I call you?” he asks.

Best if you don’t, I sign.

He looks everywhere but at my face for a second. But then his blue eyes meet mine. “Why not?” he asks softly. He stares into my face.

I don’t answer. I see that the car door is open and I get in, still holding my wrist. The driver closes the door, and I fall back against the seat.

Emilio and Marta ended up in our car, and I’m glad of it. “M-melio,” I say. I try to move my wrist and gasp as pain shoots up my arm.

“What?” Emilio asks. He sits forward.

“I th-think I h-h-hurt my wr-wrist,” I finally get out.

He tells the driver to take us to the hospital.

I lay my head back and look out the back window. I can see Sam Reed standing in the street watching the car until it’s out of sight. He’s standing apart from his brothers and their wives, all by himself.

“I’m glad those boys were there,” Emilio says. “I’ll have to buy them a beer to say thank you.”

Marta clucks her tongue. “They’re going to get swamped themselves, if they don’t get out of there.” The Reeds are local celebrities, ever since their reality TV show started.

I touch the top of my head where I lost a lock of hair.

Marta leans forward and pulls my head down gently so she can look at it. “I think you’ll be okay,” she says. She pats my hair down flat. She leans close to my ear. “At least your head and your hand will. Not so sure about your heart.”

She turns to look back at Sam, but he’s a speck in the distance now, and that’s how he needs to stay.

Sam

I try not to wince as I hitch my crutches under my arm and make my way back to the sidewalk.

“You hurt yourself, didn’t you?” Pete says. He glares at me.

“I’m fine,” I say, but my leg hurts like a toothache, and pain shoots through my leg with every beat of my heart.

“Why the fuck did you do that?” Paul asks, shoving Pete out of the way as he comes toward me.

“I couldn’t just let them walk all over her,” I murmur, more to myself than to him. I saw her go down and I knew I had to get to her. But I don’t know how to tell them that.

“Do you need to go to the doctor?” Matt asks.

“No. Let’s go back to work.”

Matt shakes his head and blows out a breath.

“Did she look hurt to you?” I ask Pete. “She was holding her wrist.”

“And she skinned her forehead.” He looks at me and shrugs. “You didn’t see it?”

“No.” If I’d seen it, I would have done more than just help her up. I would have knocked the person who tripped her in the fucking face. I turn to walk back toward the crowd of teenagers but Paul steps in front of me.

“Oh no.” He stands there in front of me and it’s like going up against a bull. I might try it, if not for the crutches.

“But—”

He points toward the car.

Damn it. I fucking hate it when he acts like he’s my father. I fucking love it, too, but still. This isn’t a great time for him to do it.

Paul raised me. Well, he raised the four of us. He was barely eighteen when our mom died and our dad left. He took over, and I love him like crazy, but right now I want to trip him and then run from him. Only I can’t.

I was in a car accident a couple of months ago, and I broke my tibia, and I got a concussion from a nasty bump on my head. The wreck wasn’t my fault. I was in a cab and, in a nutshell, I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

My accident and surgery mean that I’m in the city with my family, when I should be playing ball. I play for the New York Skyscrapers, and I got drafted into professional football after college. But right now, I’m benched. And I hate it.

For the first time in quite a while, I feel like a boat without a rudder. Like a balloon without a string. Like a…nobody.

Of course, I can work at Reeds’ Tattoo Shop, and I have been. I enjoy it just as much as I used to, but I’d rather be playing ball. By playing ball, I make enough money to take care of things, and I get to do something I really like, even if I don’t love it.

We go back to the shop, and Friday looks up from where she’s inking a guy’s forearm. “Uh oh,” she says. “What happened?”

I wince as I sit down, and I pull a bottle of pain pills out of my pocket—pills I try not to ever take—but my leg is hurting like a son of a bitch right now.

“He tried to play knight in shining armor,” Pete says with a laugh.

Friday sets her machine to the side. “Who needed saving?”

“No one,” I say loudly, talking over Pete, who had just opened his mouth to say Peck’s name. I can see the “P” on his lips. “There was a mob outside the funeral home. That’s all.”

“See,” she says, her voice getting louder, “I told you guys you should have taken security.”

“They weren’t after us.” Paul kisses her on the forehead and she tips her face up so he can kiss her for real. He tucks a piece of her hair behind her ear, and she smiles at him. “They were after his girlfriend.”

Her brow wrinkles. “Whose girlfriend?”

“Matt’s,” Pete tosses out. Then he laughs, because everyone knows that Matt would never have a girlfriend. Ever. He’s way too in love with his wife.