“Involved?” she suggested, nodding her head slowly.
“Yeah, involved. Part of me needs them to be like that, but I don’t know how to cope any other way than how I’m doing it right now.”
“And you think they’d stop you if they saw you like this?”
“No, I know they would.”
Rubbing her lips together, she stared at the hand she’d just bandaged, thinking it over. Finally, she took a deep breath in and blew it out again. “I get where you’re at, and you can stay here and hide, but you need to tell them you’re staying with friends so they don’t panic when they can’t find you.”
“Thank you,” I started, but she held up a hand to stop me.
“And I won’t lie. If they ask me if I’ve seen you, I’ll say yes. Your family are great people, and I consider myself lucky to have them in my life. I don’t want to ruin the trust they have in me or betray them by lying.”
See what I mean? She was a great person, always putting other people ahead of her.
“I wouldn’t put you in that position. All I need is to just lay low for a couple of days until all of this,”—I gestured with my bandaged hand to my banged-up face—“has healed. If they ask, just say I’m rooming with you to help you out with your car.”
Her car was also known as the heap of shit, but we refrained from saying that out loud while she was around.
Rubbing her lips together, she eventually sighed and nodded. “Right. Do we need to go and get some of your stuff?”
“It’s in the truck. I kind of presumed and packed some stuff before I came over.”
With another sigh and an amused eye roll, she got up and moved through to the kitchen and started to go through what sounded like a junk drawer. “Ah-ha, I knew you were in there.”
Carefully—because, no lie, every movement hurt by this point—I turned to see what she was doing, feeling the good corner of my mouth lift in a semi-smile when she held up a set of keys and jingled them around. “Thanks.”
Putting them on the counter, she went back to the drawer and pulled out two bottles. “I’ve got Tylenol PM and Mefenamic Acid, which is like ibuprofen. We’ll dose you up, and hopefully, it’ll help you get some sleep.”
Liking how her mind worked, I prepared myself mentally to get off the couch while glaring at Dobby as she moved around getting whatever else she needed. He was sitting licking his paw as he stared at me like he was sterilizing his nails to slit my throat.
“Why is he such a psycho?” I asked as she sat down, passing everything over to me. Shaking out three of the ibuprofen pills and two of the Tylenol, I threw them in my mouth and swallowed them down with a mouthful of the water she’d brought back with her.
“I think it’s to do with something from his past. When I first found him, he was tiny, obviously bald, and so skinny I could count every single bone.” She snickered when I looked at her like she was talking shit when she said he’d ever been skinny. I was sure the bastard had probably eaten his siblings in the womb. That’s what evil did, right? “I took him to the veterinarianan,” she explained, totally tripping over the word, “and he said he figured he was about eighteen months old. That’s old enough for someone to have abused him—”
“Or he ate them.”
“—or for him to just be scarred from not having a home and love.”
Snorting, I stretched my arms, groaning when it pulled on my side. Fuck me, that last guy had to have been on something. The way he’d landed punch after punch, not even showing a hint of pain until I’d hit him with three uppercuts and knocked him out.
“Right, gob shite, bedtime,” she sighed, patting me on the thigh and then squeaking. “Fuck, sorry, I forgot you’re bruised everywhere.”
Ironically, where she’d patted me had been about an inch away from where my dick was sitting. The second her hand had touched me, he’d raised his head like he always did when she was around. But I’d totally blame the flinch and groan that’d come out of me on the supposed bruising in the area.
Standing up, I motioned to the door. “I just need to get my shit out of the car. Do you need anything when I come back in?”
Getting to her feet, she fidgeted as she watched me move to the door. “Uh, could you make sure all the locks are in place when you come back in?”
Frowning, I looked at what she was talking about and growled when I saw she had six locks and two chains on it. Not flimsy chains either. These were substantial ones from a good security company.