“You’re a basketball player?” a feminine voice that I assumed belonged to the nurse asked. “Wow, that must take some working out.”
If I hadn’t worried that it’d burst my brain, I’d have rolled my eyes.
“I was a basketball player, but playing it at college and how they wear team shit all the time never appealed to me. It’s just a sport, why do you need everyone to notice you play it?”
Ignoring his irritation, the nurse breathed, “Basketball players are strong guys. I’ll bet your legs, stomach, and arms are—”
“Hilary,” the doctor snapped, “stop feeling the poor guy up.”
I wanted to laugh or even peek to see what she was doing, but the drugs took over, making my jaw feel like it was jelly and my body feel like I was floating. I could still feel echoes of pain in areas, and I definitely still felt shitty, but it was a vast difference from how I’d felt before.
There was just one area that was hurting still, and it was ironic. “My ass hurts.” It didn’t sound like my voice, and the words were slurred, but I knew I’d said them.
“Did you check her ass? Can you break that?” Jackson asked, sounding close to freaking out.
“She’s got a bruise on her left buttock, but there’s no breaking an ‘ass.’ I think it’s the site of the injections,” the doctor mused as he lifted the blanket on the sore side and prodded, making me groan.
“There’s some irony in the fact that painkillers administered by injection do sometimes make the site feel painful afterward, whereas the areas we’d given it for are either pain-free or much easier than they’d been previously.”
“So,” Jackson drawled, “you’re telling me it’s the painkillers that are hurting her?”
“Yup.”
There was a click, and then his hand lifted away from my eyes. From the lack of pain and light that came through my eyelids, I figured he had to have turned the light off.
“I’m going to go and check on her boss-eyed cat, but I’ve got a bandana in my truck you can lay across her eyes when she’s moved. If I go and bring it in, can you do that?”
“Are you calling the police about the accident?”
“Shit,” he muttered. “I should probably do that. I was so focused on bringing Sasha in and getting her help, I didn’t even think about it.”
“No police,” I whispered. “Accident.”
“Honey, we should call them and get it all recorded,” Jackson began, but I tapped my finger on the bed, hoping they’d see it because it was all I could manage.
“No. Police.”
Sighing loudly, he ran a finger down the hand that’d tapped the bed—the obviously non-broken one—and then I heard the jangling of keys.
“Can you write my plate number down in her notes in case she changes her mind, and I’ll give you all of my details to add to it. When I got out to get the bandana, I’ll take photos of the damage and show you them when I come back in.”
Whatever the doctor said was lost on me because my brain decided at that moment it’d had enough for the day, and I fell asleep.
Chapter Three
Jackson
I felt like the world’s biggest asshole right now. Yes, I know there were people who’d committed—and were likely committing at this precise moment—more significant crimes than I had, but still.
I’d had my lights on, I’d been focused on the road, but I’d taken my eyes off it for a moment to look to the side for a parking space.
Even more ironically, the whole reason I’d been back at Sasha’s apartment was because her dads had sent me some of the photos from what had happened to her at her college in Florida, and it’d been eating away at me. We weren’t near where our parents lived, and the poor girl had been through hell, so she could do with a familiar face and the knowledge she wasn’t on her own now.
Instead, I hadn’t seen her ahead of me because she was dressed head to toe in black, and I’d hit her with my truck.
That’d been seven hours ago, so it was now four o’clock in the morning, and I was sitting on her couch, staring at the wall and stroking her fucked up cat’s back.
“I didn’t mean to, man,” I repeated for the millionth time.
Each time I said it, he just made this gargling noise, and I didn’t speak feline, so I figured he was cursing at me for almost killing his mama.
“I wasn’t going fast, but her leg’s broken, her arm’s broken, and her head’s broken.”
The doctor had said she’d likely broken her arm when she fell onto the road and tried to catch herself. He also thought it was likely her leg had twisted with her body’s movement and then flown up, hitting the underside of the front bumper hard enough to break it.