As much as he would love to walk away and leave her before she could cause him any more misery, he just couldn’t. He wasn’t the kind of guy to walk away from someone who needed help. It wasn’t how he was raised and it just wasn’t who he was. He was the dumb asshole who risked his ass to help someone guaranteed to fuck him over.

“Let go,” he said, closing his eyes briefly as the nausea from the medication and concussion threatened to knock him flat on his ass.

“No, that’s okay,” she said quietly as she tightened her grip around the tire and curled her body around it, testing his damn patience and making him rethink his decision to help her out ever again.

It would be so easy to just get up, walk past the bickering assholes now that they’d discovered a tray of cupcakes, head in through the back door and go up the back stairs to the attic that he’d turned into his room a few months. He’d flick the lock and sleep for the next week or so since he had nothing better to do, but unfortunately for him, he knew that he probably wouldn’t get more than thirty winks tonight, if that.

Insomnia fucking sucked.

Months long after his brother had learned to walk again and Jodi had given birth to the twins, taking an insane amount of pressure off his shoulders and he still couldn’t fucking sleep. He’d tried everything, changing his shifts at work, moving his room upstairs, tripling the insulation, blacking out the windows, and he even bought one of those white noise machines with the hopes that it would help, but nothing worked.

Every now and then he’d pass out and catch a few minutes of sleep, but it never lasted and it never left him feeling revived. Instead, it left him feeling even more exhausted than before. He’d talked to his brother about it a few times and even accepted a prescription or two hoping that it would help, but nothing had. The drugs that his brother prescribed had only made things worse. He’d considered talking to his father about it, but he kept putting it off, telling himself that it would get better and that this was just a phase that he was going through, but it wasn’t and he knew it.

He also knew that admitting to his father that he was having problems was going to make this fucking problem all-too real. Admitting that he was having problems was also going to get him taken off the truck and placed behind a desk, a job that he wasn’t ready for. So, to protect his job and his sanity, he kept his mouth shut, made sure never to bitch about how exhausted he was or the fact that he was afraid that his father was going to tell him that this wasn’t just a phase.

That fucking terrified him.

It was also his problem to deal with so he kept his mouth shut, kept his problems to himself, did his job, helped his family when they needed him, and saved the aggravating woman next door from herself when she needed it. From the looks of things, she definitely needed it.

“Let’s get you inside before you catch pneumonia,” he said blandly, using the same words and tone that he would use on any patient as he reached for her only to once again have the annoying woman make his life more difficult than it really needed to be.

As usual, but tonight he didn’t have the fucking patience to deal with her bullshit so he ignored her muttered protests, put his arms around her and-

Nearly lost his footing when she started screaming and blindly slapping at his head, shoulders, arm and chest with her free hand, basically hitting him wherever she could reach as she squeezed her eyes shut on a gasp and tried in vain to lock her arm around the large tire. Ignoring her muttered demands to leave her alone, he tightened his hold around her, stood up and-

Rip…

“Oh…..God….,” she muttered on a pained gasp as she bit her lower lip and turned a very interesting shade of pale pink.

“You’re fine, Dixon,” he said, calling her by her last name. He refused to use her first name since it could mistakenly lead her to believe that they were friends, because that was the last fucking thing that he needed was for her to think of him as a friend.

Instead of arguing with him, she squeezed her eyes shut tighter and shook her head stubbornly as she folded her arms over her chest. She didn’t say anything and for that, he would forever be grateful. Since she wasn’t trying to get out of his arms, wasn’t screaming for help or anything else that would require him to put her down, he started to head for his house only to realize that she might take that the wrong way. Not wanting any misunderstanding between them, he turned around and headed towards her house where her grandfather, a man known for his temper and his soft spot for his granddaughter, stood waiting for them with his large arms crossed over his chest and his curious, almost amused, gaze locked on them.

When Mr. Dixon moved to the side without being asked, Duncan took that as a sign that the old bastard wasn’t going to shoot his balls off for touching his precious granddaughter. With a nod, he walked past the old man, through the insanely large commercial kitchen that took him by surprise and headed through the door. Figuring that she would probably be on the second floor, he turned towards the back stairs only to pause when he spotted the bedroom off the kitchen, what was considered the servant’s room in most of the old large houses and apparently by the looks of things, it was Necie’s room.

Deciding that trying to make conversation with her was not only pointless, but a bad idea, he continued to ignore her little grunts of pain and headed for her room, pausing only at the door long enough to close it behind them with his foot. Once he had the door shut, he set to work, needing to get her fixed up and out of there before she could do any more damage to him.

When he laid her on her bed and managed to pry her arms away, he accepted the fact that this was easily the worst Thanksgiving that he’d ever had and God, he couldn’t wait for it to fucking end.

Chapter 4

Don’t puke, don’t puke, don’t puke, don’t-

“Let’s see what kind of damage we have here?” Duncan, the man that filled her thoughts more than he probably wanted to, said with a bored sigh as he gently placed her on the bed and gently grasped her arm to move it to the side, but she wasn’t ready to see the extent of the damage yet.