Page 10 of Keep You Close

“It’s no big deal,” I rushed to insist, even as pain seemed to ping off of every nerve ending just sitting there.

“No big deal?” he repeated, jaw getting tight. “It looks like you fell off of a cliff.”

“You’re close. Down a mountain,” I corrected, shooting him a smirk, wanting to lighten the mood.

“A mountain?” he repeated. “Right. You were skiing. What happened?”

“Other skiers,” I said, shaking my head. “We crashed. I kept crashing and crashing until… I blacked out,” I admitted.

“You blacked out?” he asked, his keen gaze moving over me.

“Woke up to my bone sticking out of my leg,” I admitted.

“Oh, God,” AJ groaned, making us both glance over, finding her looking a little green. Her free hand was even pressed to her mouth.

“Concussion, compound fracture, couple broken fingers, bruised ribs, and strained rotator cuff,” I told him. “I was lucky,” I added.

“Lucky,” King scoffed.

“People die on that slope every year,” I said, shrugging off danger the way I always had.

If anyone understood me, it was Kingston.

The big brother who had plucked me off of the ground when I’d built a makeshift ramp in the street, then flown over it on my bike, only to crash. And crash hard.

He was the one who’d been there during my brief stint at amateur street racing, pulling me out of a wrecked car.

He was no stranger to my stunts or the injuries I got because of them.

The difference was here, that in the past, he was always my first call. Even when our ma was still alive, it was him I called out for, or rang on the phone.

This was the first time I’d been injured, especially seriously, without so much as shooting him a text.

And, judging by the look on his face, that hurt.

“Why didn’t you call me?” he asked, voice low, the pain clear in his voice.

“I didn’t have my phone at first,” I said. Which was true. But an admittedly shitty excuse. “And then I was just trying to get home.”

“Yeah, and I could have helped with that. I could have at least picked you up at the airport. How did you get home?”

“A ride-share,” I admitted.

“How’d you get in the house? Doesn’t look like you can walk.”

“Had the driver come in and get me the chair,” I said, nodding to it, even though I knew each word was just digging my grave deeper, making him feel even worse, given the lengths I’d gone through not to call him.

It wasn’t personal.

Not really.

I honestly hadn’t been thinking clearly with the pain screaming through every inch of me. All I could think about was getting home and sleeping.

“Christ, Atlas,” King said, sighing, his gaze moving away, trying to think of something to say that wasn’t going to make this whole thing worse.

Not wanting to talk about it anymore either, I went ahead and changed the subject. “So, who the hell is the woman and the dog?” I asked.

I watched as King’s face scrunched up, looking guilty as fuck, as he looked toward AJ.

---