Page 34 of Uppercut Princess

I step back and stand. “What?”

Magnum pulls my shirt away from my skin. The cotton sticks, and he has to peel it away before it finally releases.

“You’re bleeding. I didn’t notice before because your shirt’s black. Why didn’t you say anything?”

“I didn’t notice,” I tell him. Not because I’m trying to be brave because I honestly didn’t notice, but if he’s looking at the area where Johnny shoved me into the concrete blocks, there’s no wonder why I’m injured.

Magnum sighs. “Are you okay?”

“I think so?” I try to look at the wound on my shoulder, but I can’t twist far enough. “It hurts, but I can’t see it, you know?”

Magnum checks over his shoulder. “I can’t go back in there right now to get you anything. Rocket will be pissed if the women find out he hurt you.”

I give him a look.Thelook. The kind that says,Are you fucking kidding me?That is the most fucked up thing I’ve ever heard. Their ideas are warped.

“It’s better this way,” Magnum says. “Get in the car, and I’ll tell him when he comes out. In the meantime, there are cocktail napkins next to the alcohol cabinet. Use those to place on it.”

“I can’t see it,” I hiss. What does he want me to do? Grow a third eye on the back of my head?

We stare at one another for about thirty seconds before Magnum says, “You’re going to have to deal. I can’t touch you.”

“That’s the most asinine thing I’ve ever fucking heard. You do know what just happened in there, right? Johnny and Ryn weren’t just playing hide and seek. They were fucking. And all you would be doing is patching me up.”

“I know,” he growls. He runs a hand over his copper scruff.

God, he’s really good looking. This close, I can tell his eyes are hazel. I thought they were just brown before, but today, they’re amber with green flecks.

“If I touch you, there’s the possibility he’ll kill you and me. Is that what you want?”

I grind my teeth together. The hypocrisy of all this is pissing me off more than anything else. He can’t even touch me to help me? What if I was bleeding out? Would that be a good enough reason for Johnny to allow someone to help me? Do they have to ask permission first?

Hopefully I can persuade Brawler to train with me again, so I can get out all of this aggression I’m feeling, but for all I know, he’ll never want to do that again. After all, he touched me. And it wasn’t just because I was injured. Hetouchedme. Because he wanted to. Because he felt a connection.

Not because I’m his property.

Magnum’s gaze lowers. I can tell he thinks this is nonsense, too, but he’s too worried about Johnny’s reaction to do anything about it. Maybe I should be too.

I blow out a breath. “Fine. I’ll be fine. No one has to worry about it.” I crawl into the car, and after a beat, Magnum shuts the door on me.

I keep my injured shoulder away from the nice leather interior but lean my head back against the seat. After I sit there for a while, the injury starts to pound. The adrenaline moving through me must’ve dulled the pain. That’s why I didn’t realize sooner that I was this injured. It’s probably a scrape. Or a cut. Or both.

Ten minutes later, Johnny exits the shop, the three girls in tow. I sit up. Through the hazy fog of the dimming package in the car, there are a lot more bags coming out than just the one that held my three outfits earlier.

What the actual fuck?

The trunk opens, and minutes later, it slams. The women move back into the shop while Magnum and Rocket talk outside until the door opens and Rocket scoots in next to me. As soon as the door shuts, he turns, his eyes filled with desperate concern. “I’m so sorry,” he says. “Let me see. I didn’t mean to hurt you. I would never do that.”

Someone needs to explain to Johnny that there’s more than one way to hurt people. Not all of it is just physical, it’s mental, too. It’s a good thing I don’t care about him because if some guy I did care about cheated on me like that, I would be devastated beyond reason. I wouldn’t listen to any sick sort of excuses thrown at me to try to get me to understand why it was okay for me to be cheated on.

He turns me in the seat until I’m facing away from him and lifts the back of my shirt. The divider between the front and the back starts to slide down. Rocket yanks my shirt back down over me. “Not now, Mag! Take us to Kyla’s apartment building.”

The divider starts going up before he even gets all his orders. Once we’re hidden away again, Johnny lifts my shirt with a gentle touch. He sucks in a breath once he reveals the injury. He stays there for the longest time, not moving, but bearing a hole right into me.

“I wish you would’ve told me I was hurting you.”

I try not to laugh. Like it would’ve stopped him. He needed to prove a point, and he did.

He reaches over me to grab a stack of napkins next to a bottle of alcohol tucked away in a compartment. He cleans me up, pressing gently against the cut or whatever I have there while I keep my jaw locked down. There’s no way I’m showing any sort of emotion while he’s doing this.

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