Quit Bein' Ugly (The Southern Gentleman 3)

With my arm around her shoulders, I looked at Alfie and narrowed my eyes.

“Alfie, what are you doing here?” Carmichael tried to pull away, but I leaned on her harder, letting her know without words that I wanted her to stay where she was.

That, and my shoulder throbbed like a motherfucker, and if I kept her where she was, that ache eased.

She looked at me, seeing the strain on my face, and didn’t fight me.

“Umm,” Alfie said as he looked from me to Carmichael and back. “You weren’t at school today.”

Carmichael smiled sadly. “This one was hurt the day before yesterday. He needed some help. I’ll be back to work Monday.”

“Oh,” Alfie winced. “I was worried.”

“Nothing to worry about,” Carmichael shrugged. “Anything fun and exciting happen at school today?”

Alfie shifted restlessly from foot to foot, his eyes focusing on everything but me.

“No,” he answered. “School was fairly calm for a Friday. No fights broke out, and barely anyone stepped out of line. It was quite peaceful, really.”

“Dang,” Carmichael snapped her fingers. “They always have good days when I’m not there.”

I squeezed her shoulder, not liking the way her voice dipped, and a little bit of sadness entered her voice.

“Probably because you weren’t there to shake everyone up,” Alfie teased. I narrowed my eyes, and Alfie took a step back. “Well, I better go. Um, uhhh, see you around? You still going to the Trades Days this weekend?”

“No,” Carmichael sighed. “I think it’s going to be a lazy weekend on the couch.”

She looked at me as she said it, and I felt something warm inside my chest at the thought of her spending a lazy weekend on the couch with me.

It sounded… magical.

I hadn’t had a weekend like that in a really long time.

“Oh, well okay.” Alfie walked toward his bike, and I narrowed my eyes.

There was a report of a bike speeding out of the area yesterday after my shooting, and I studied it hard.

“Have a good one,” Alfie called as he fitted his helmet into place.

“See you Monday.” Carmichael waved with her free hand that wasn’t wrapped around my waist.

Then he rode off, leaving us both watching him go. Me likely for a different reason than her.

“My place or yours?” she asked just as another car pulled into the driveway.

My parents.

Another car followed it closely.

Ezra and Raleigh.

Son of a bitch.

That ‘nice and quiet weekend’ was about to take a flying leap right out the window.

“Oh, boy,” Carmichael whispered when my sister got out of the car and all but flew her way toward me.

“You got shot, and you didn’t call us?” she screeched, waving her hands.

She tripped about halfway toward me on a rock in the yard, and she went down. But she was back up and still waving her hands like a lunatic seconds later.

Ezra, not as annoyed, followed with their son on his hip, eyes on me, assessing.

My mother wasn’t far behind, her eyes moving over the length of my body as if she could calculate my injuries through my clothes.

“Wow,” Raleigh continued. “You get shot. Shot! And you don’t tell us a word. Flint does! How the hell do you get off thinking that we wouldn’t care?”

I waited until she was close to me before I let Carmichael go and pulled her into my arms.

“I’m okay,” I assured her, squeezing her as tight as I dared.

She promptly burst into tears.

I looked at my mother over Raleigh’s head, seeing tears in her eyes, too.

“You shouldn’t have kept this from us,” she said to me softly.

“I didn’t so much as keep it from you as wait to tell you until you could actually do something about it,” I admitted. “You were on a four-day cruise. The boat was out in the middle of the ocean. It wasn’t like me telling you would’ve made it get back here any faster.”

They knew I was right, but still it burned.

“Plus,” Carmichael said softly, “you would’ve just worried. He was just fine. Had it been more serious, I would’ve called myself.”

My mother’s eyes turned to Carmichael.

“Carmichael, dear.” She smiled. “How are you?”

“I’m okay, Mrs. Crusie,” Carmichael replied. “How was your trip?”

“Overall,” my father said as he came up to join the circle at the same time that Ezra did, “it was a good trip. Could’ve done without finding out my boy had been shot on the four-hour ride home.”

Carmichael snickered.

“That could’ve been done a little better, I’m sure,” Carmichael agreed. “How’d little J do on the trip?”

Ezra hiked his kid up higher on his hip.

“Did you know that my kid pukes like his mother?” Ezra groaned.

At that, the tension released and I gestured for them to all follow me over to Carmichael’s house.

“We have to let Lion and her new rescue dog out,” I said to the group at large. “Follow me over there.”