Page 111 of Dead Serious with Benefits
“Of course he did,” she said with a twist of her lips. “He never...in any case. If a truce is all that is required, there isn’t much more for you or me to talk about. However, in the future, perhaps you should avoid bringing your parents to any gatherings that involve me. I’m quite sure your mother would love to get her hands on me, but for all my strength, I am not a fighter. Tell her I won’t hold her responsible for the damage to my art.”
“Your...art?” I asked, bewildered as she stood up.
“Yes, she dented a one-of-a-kind sculpture,” Amelia said. “In truth...I like it as it is now. With the blood removed, the dent adds unique character.”
Dent?
Oh.
“What she used to fend Devon off me,” I said in realization.
“Fend him off? She quite literally cracked his skull. He’s still in intensive care and isn’t looking to get out anytime soon; they’re not even sure he’ll wake up. That’s hardly something as simple as fending someone off.”
“I now understand why you wouldn’t want my mother near you.”
“Indeed,” she said as she walked to the door. “Call me when he’s awake and ready for my company. We have a few things todiscuss, it seems...and if you think for one moment I would ever cut him off, you clearly have no idea how much I treasure him even as I rue the day I gave birth to him at times.”
I listened to her heels as they rounded the corner and took her out of sight. It was only when I could no longer hear them that I finally muttered, “I can’t tell if that was sentimental and sweet on her part or the most toxic thing I’ve ever heard.”
Ward’s eyes opened, and he smirked. “For her that was positively weeping at my bedside and proclaiming her love for me to the world.”
“I’m not going to say I don’t understand why you decided to hide from your mother, but couldn’t you have at least ‘woken up’ and asked for the doctor? I didn’t need to go through that whole conversation with her,” I said with a weary sigh. Of course, that didn’t stop me from reaching out, taking his hand, and smiling when I felt him return the grip.
“I might have...but you two were having such a...nice conversation,” he said with that same smirk.
“That is certainly one way to describe it, not an accurate one,” I said with a shake of my head. “And I see you’re choosing to use it.”
“Well, it sounded like a conversation that needed to happen,” he said with a shrug and winced. “Ow. No amount of pain medication is going to stop that.”
“You should have seen their faces when they looked at your tox screen.”
“I haven’t been on anything in ages!”
“Some of that stuff stays in your system for quite a long time, Ward. They asked me when the last time you took anything was, and I said that as far as I knew, it had been at least three weeks. So, you’re not on strong medication for fear of a reaction with something still in your system.”
“Lovely. My life of hedonism and fun is finally catching up with me.”
“Well, that’s what happens when you throw yourself into the path of a bullet,” I told him wryly.
His smile faded, and he stared at me. “What was I supposed to do? Let him shoot you? I took it in the chest, but he was going for your head.”
“As your mother said, and I can’t deny it, you saved my life,” I told him with a smile.
“And you saved mine, just as she said,” he said with a chuckle. “I was conscious the whole time until partway through the ride here. I remember most of it, though there are some fuzzy parts. My favorite is the barbaric rage you went into. His two buddies just stood there in shock when you two disappeared. They weren’t ready for that level of resistance, at least not from you. Your ‘I’m so laidback and cause no trouble’ demeanor worked.”
“Apparently,” I said, because I knew full well I had no business surviving like I had. Maybe I could have made it as far as the hallway with Devon in tow, but everything after should have resulted in me either being dragged off him or shot on the spot.
“And...there’s a bonus to all this,” he said, his expression brightening again.
“What could be the upside?” I wondered.
“Well, I didn’t die, so that means your little ‘curse’ isn’t working like it was supposed to. And we know it wasn’t some mystical power of death trying to hunt me down, it was him.”
“You do realize that in each of those cases, I was the one who took the hit, right? So my ‘curse’ still works.”
“Nope.”
“No?”
