Page 88 of Ice
Doc moved to the edge of his seat.
“Brother, you’re in agony, I can see it, so tell me. You don’t have to suffer unnecessarily. Let me help.”
Could I? Could I let him in on it, or would he shop me to Reacher, and lead me to lose everything.
I relaxed as the spasm eased.
“How confidential is this chat, Doc?”
He stood up, shoving my hand away from my shoulder.
“Fuck’s sake. There’s only two of us in the room, man. That’s the entire audience for whatever you tell me.” He rested a hand on my shoulder, and I jerked away, and then cursed again asanother wave of pain rippled through my nerve endings, lighting fucking fires along the way.
“Please, don’t make me move it right now.”
“So tell me.”
“Spasms, okay? It’s fucking spasming right now.”
He backed off, thank fuck, he backed off, and sat back down.
“Okay, so how long has it been doing that?”
“Today? Or overall?”
He dug out his tablet, and started fussing around with it.
“Don’t write this shit down, Doc. I can’t have this on record.”
He read something on the screen and lifted his head to look at me.
“You had x-rays twice over the last couple of years, but the notes don’t make sense. Why didn’t you flag this up with me? I’m your doc. You’re supposed to share this shit with me, so I can help you. You know I don’t look this stuff up unless it’s relevant. It’s part of our whole ‘I try not to know everything about you assholes unless it’s necessary for patching you all up’ thing we do.”
I stared him down, and he glanced back at his tablet.
“This shit all looks like they don’t know their asses from their elbows. Jesus, is this from that tumble you took way back then?”
I nodded slowly, and he cursed.
“You’ve been putting up with this since then? Just suffering through endless fucking pain?”
“No, I mean, it didn’t do this at first, so I didn’t get it checked out. By the time it was doing this, it was like they all couldn’t figure it out. They gave me a list of fucking exercises to do, but…”
“They don’t help, or you don’t do them?”
Asshole.
Lissa
Aliciaendedupsittingwith me for hours, confiding in me about her fears for Reacher’s health, without actually telling me there was anything wrong with him, but I suspected there was. How hurt she was about their club voting against her. It sounded like it was a numbers thing. One or two guys voting against was enough to put a stop to things, because it had to be a unanimous yes. What a load of bureaucratic bullshit.
It made me wonder though, even if Reacher let me back, what if the same happened with me and Ice? With the exception of, maybe Has-Been and Ryder, would any of their brothers even think we were worth voting for? If just one of them decided we weren’t, then it would all have been for nothing anyway. So, colour me surprised when my next visitor later that day was even more unexpected than Alicia. The Club President himself, Reacher.
He looked awkward as hell as he stood on my doorstep, hands twitching by his sides, his gleaming motorbike parked outside.
“Hi.”
I glanced around behind him, but there were no other bikes, or brothers, anywhere.
