Page 45 of Reckless
“It’s really…oh. Okay then.” Zoe’s protest faded as he levered them both to a sitting position in her bed. Reaching through the shadows, he clicked on her bedside lamp, not even pausing to blink before returning his fingers to the buttons on her shirt.
“Alex,” she started, her voice still thick with residual sleep. “I’m just a little sore. The doctor at urgent care said I probably would be, remember?”
“I remember.” He scooped up the hem of the quilt, tucking it over her chest to keep her covered and warm before sliding the shirt from her arms.
It took every last ounce of his willpower not to swear out loud.
Alex forced a deep breath down his windpipe. The finger-shaped imprints on Zoe’s upper arms were bad enough. But the purple bruise blooming like an angry, softball-sized starburst across the back of her shoulder made him want to find the guy who had muscled his way through Hope House and give him a taste of his own fucking medicine.
Not wanting to freak her out, he dialed back his expression even though his chest felt like it was chock-full of razor wire. “I’m going to get some ice from your freezer. That should help the soreness.”
“If you give me just a second, I’ll come with you.” Zoe reached for her discarded jeans, and instinct had Alex in motion before he could fully register his hand on her quilt-covered knee.
“You need to rest, Zoe.”
She shifted from beneath the covers, putting on first her panties, then her jeans before grabbing a tank top from the nearby dresser. “What I need is to eat something, and you probably do, too.” A smile flitted over her face, but her slow, clumsy movements as she worked the tank top over her head canceled the humor right out. “So, can you please do me a favor and stop going all Cro-Magnon man for just a couple of minutes so I can finish getting dressed and make that happen?”
GoodLord,this woman was stubborn. “You’re not cooking,” Alex said, but the lightning-fast lift of Zoe’s brows had him rephrasing just as quickly. “What I mean is, if you’re sore, you should take it easy. Especially if you want to make it through your day at Hope House tomorrow without that shoulder locking up.”
Zoe paused, a frown unbending on her lips, and he took the ball and ran like hell. “Why don’t I help you get dressed, and then we can order something for dinner? In the meantime, you can ice that bruise. Fair?”
She reached for the hoodie draped over the chair at her bedside, her frown intensifying as Alex slid out of the bed to guide it over her hurt shoulder before letting her do the rest. “You’re lucky you know how to talk your way into getting what you want.”
“And you suck at letting me have your back.” Okay, so he hadn’t really meant to tease her—it had just slipped out. But Zoe laughed, and the sound scattered the tension pulling tight at Alex’s muscles.
“All right, all right. Chinese or pizza?”
He followed her out of her bedroom and down the narrow hallway, shouldering his way back into his own T-shirt as he went. “Pizza. I can call my buddy and have it here in twenty minutes, tops.”
Zoe laughed again. “Of course you can.”
Five minutes later, he’d put the call in to his friend who owned the pizza place and filled a bag with ice from Zoe’s freezer. Turning toward the spot where she stood on the threshold, he nodded her into a kitchen chair. “You know your father’s probably going to hear about what happened today.” He met her partly panickedyou wouldn’t dareexpression with raised palms. “The paramedics who responded to check Damien out were from Station Four. Your father is pretty tight with Captain Lewis. There’s no way the dots won’t connect if your name got mentioned somewhere down the line.”
“Lovely. Just what my father needs is another reason to hate my job.” Zoe slumped, the bag of ice she’d propped between her shoulder and the back of her chair crinkling.
Alex’s gut dipped, but not enough to keep his words at bay. “You can’t really blame him for wanting you to be safe.”
“I can when his desire for that safety is a double standard,” she said, her light brown eyes flashing beneath the glow of the kitchen lights. But her fire didn’t last. “Ugh, I’m sorry. I’m not trying to be a pain in the ass. I know my father wants me safe, and I get that—after all, part of why I’m so mad at him is because I don’t think he’s being smart about his own self-preservation. But I’m not a kid anymore. We should be able to at least talk about it without fighting, but every time I try to explain that Hope House isn’t some death trap, and that he risks his safety at every shift, too, he just argues and then clams up. Keeping all this tension inside makes me so…ugh!Frustrated.”
“I’m not sure I’m an unbiased ear,” Alex admitted, dragging a rough hand through his hair. As much potential as this conversation had to turn sticky, that didn’t mean they shouldn’t have it. “Look, Zoe, I have a zero-tolerance policy for bullshit, so I’m going to be honest. I didn’t intend for this to happen between me and you. I’m not saying I didn’t want it,” he qualified, straightening his spine against the back of his chair. “Because I did. I do. It’s just?—”
“I’m still my father’s daughter.”
Her words stopped the rest of his in his throat. Damn it. The him-and-her part of the conversation, Alex could have, no problem. The chunk that involved the history between him and her father? Not so freaking much.
Not that his silence stopped Zoe from pushing back. “Alex, you and I are adults. We mutually agreed to have sex. Together. The two of us.”
A muscle pulled tight across his jaw. “There’s more to it than that.”
“But there isn’t,” she countered. “Look, I understand your sense of loyalty. But I’m twenty-seven years old. At a certain point, that’s got to factor in.”
“Of course it does. But your father has been my captain for eight years, Zoe. That makes things complicated.”
Zoe paused, and for a minute, he thought she’d let the topic drop. Part of him was relieved—he might not tolerate a whole lot of runaround, but there was a difference between saying what needed to be said and airing out too much. The past was the past, over and done. Nothing could be said or done to change it.
So why were the events he’d tried so hard to leave behind still burning to come out?
“Okay,” she said. Only instead of changing the subject, or lapsing into silence, or doing any of the other things she could’ve done to let Alex off the hook, Zoe slid into the chair next to him to scoop up his hand.
