Page 69 of The Fix

“Yesterday was all it’s fine and she spends all her time in the room. But today, you’re calling me—after not talking to me for almost a month!—to bitch about doing nothing. C’mon, Tob.”

I shake my head and take another drag, letting the nicotine calm my system. “Still don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Let’s see,” Mac mumbles. “Toby spent yesterday fine with Anna taking the only bed for the last few weeks. And today, he’s called me moping about doing nothing last night. What’s that sound like to you?”

I hear another voice muffled over the phone, and I growl into the receiver. “That better not be your bodyguard you’re talking to.”

“Oh, it’s not.” His resulting chuckle tells me he’s lying out of his teeth. “He’s not on duty until I leave this house in ten minutes.”

“Why the fuck did you answer the phone, then?”

“Um, because my brother, who’s stuck on a mountain with a witch, called and demanded my attention.”

“Watch it, Mac.” The growl is automatic. The defense is like a stronghold I can’t hold back the moment my best friend calls her a witch.

“Ohhh,” Mac calls over the line. “I fuckin’ knew it.”

My stomach flips.

“You were so expecting the prune to sleep with you and she didn’t. Now you’re moping.”

Mac’s laughter only fuels the anger building in my chest. Because while he’s not entirely correct, he’s not fucking wrong either.

“Pay up, Tyro!” he calls into the background of his side of the phone.

“Goddammit, Mac.”

“Okay, okay. I’m here. Tell me what happened.”

“No,” I growl into the phone and lean back against the tree a few feet from my chopping station.

I should just hang up. Disconnect the line and move on with my life.

But the thought triggers a gnawing in my gut, an urge that’s too hard to ignore on my own.

“No?” Mac seems taken aback, and I hear a rustle that leads to a groan before his end of the line falls silent except for a light tapping. “Okay, it’s just you, me, and my sticks, Tob. Promise.”

I grumble into the phone, toss the cigarette into the snow, and then light up a new one. “Nothing to talk about.”

“Bullshit,” Mac responds.

“If those fuckers hadn’t gone all fucking domesticated on me, this wouldn’t be happening,” I snarl into the receiver, and that feeling in my gut churns some more.

What the fuck am I doing?

The leather hanging off my shoulders becomes too hot, the sweat on my brow beading up all over again despite the low temperature around me.

“Toby,” Mac starts, his tone too calm. Too collected. Too much for me to hear. “There’s nothing wrong with—”

“Just fucking stop, Mac. Not everyone can be like Rex. O-or fucking Fin, okay?” I know I’m attacking the wrong person. Deep down, I recognize it. But I can’t stop the train from rolling right over me and barreling out of my mouth. “Leave me the hell out of it.”

My breath is heavy and my feet have pushed me from my lean on the tree and into a pace around the little clearing.

“Toby, I didn’t lump you in with anyone.”

The realization has my boots halting in the snow and my stomach rolling over itself.

I hate this. I don’t want to feel this feeling of my guts twisting and my chest collapsing in on itself.

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