I could act normal. So, I closed an eye and brought my index finger and thumb pretty close together. “Little bit.”

His jaw did that twitch thing again. “I’m not, but you’re going to the doctor, and I’m driving you there,” he tried to claim. Tried to tell me.

But I just stared back at him. “You don’t have to.”

His elbow landed on the top of my thigh, and I wasn’t sure if he was doing it to intimidate me—which I doubted—or if he was finally feeling how tight the space was. “I’m taking you to the goddamn doctor.”

I opened my mouth to keep arguing with him, but that was when my phone rang. Pulling it out of my pocket, I looked at the screen and couldn’t help but frown when Thea’s name popped up. I happened to look up at the rearview mirror and found Mr. Cooper’s blue eyes on mine through the reflection. He had a funny look on his face. I smiled at him before poking at the screen.

“Hello?” I answered, trying to whisper since Rip had already put enough of my business out there in front of someone I had barely met and another man who might not understand why or how Rip and I were talking to each other so… almost friendly.

“Luna,” my sister said my name all funny.

“Hi, Thee.” I bit the inside of my cheek when she didn’t immediately say anything else. “You okay?”

“I’m fine,” she rushed out. “Are you?”

“Yeah. I told you in my message, remember? I’m okay,” I promised, not liking the way she sounded. I could appreciate her being worried about me but….

She kicked you out of her apartment.

So there was that.

“Yeah? Nothing else happened?” she asked, sounding too… different.

I took in the back of the seat in front of me, trying to ignore the unease her tone made me feel. “No, it was only the accident. Just a little whiplash,” I promised her, telling myself not to think this over too much. “Are you all right?”

“Yeah, Luna. Yeah,” my sister replied a little too quickly.

She didn’t sound like it. I lowered my head. “Did you get your rental insurance sorted?” I made myself ask.

Thea made a weird noise I hadn’t heard before, which put me even more on edge. “Um, yes. They’re covering my things.”

“Good.”

“I’m glad you’re fine,” she muttered, sounding distracted then. “Well, that’s all I was calling for. I just… wanted to make sure you were okay.”

In the three years since she had moved out on her own, she had never, not once called to make sure I was okay. I wasn’t much better at calling, but I did text her at least once a week.

“I’m okay.” I lifted my head and stared at the back of the seat, something about this feeling wrong and weird. “Thee, is everything all right with you?”

“I’m fine, don’t worry about me. But I gotta go. I’ll talk to you later,” she answered quickly.

“Okay.” I paused. Then added, surprising myself, “Love you, Thea.”

“Yeah, me too.”

Then she hung up and left me holding the phone against my face, frowning over our conversation.

What the hell had that been about? Thea and I had always had the rockiest relationship. We had never been as close as Lily and me, or in her case, as close as she was to Kyra. But… I still loved her. I always would, regardless of the things she had said or done.

The car hit a speed bump right then that sent Rip’s elbow straight into my thigh.

“Your sister?” he asked quietly, forcing me to swing my eyes to him.

“Yeah,” I told him, leaving out the part where I thought something was off because… well, why wouldn’t I? I didn’t need to ask his opinion to know that he probably didn’t have good thoughts about her in the first place. Honestly, if our roles had been reversed, I wouldn’t have thought well of his family member if they had done to him what she had done to me.

But I wasn’t going to worry about that.

Instead, I looked over and slanted him a look. “And back to our conversation, I’m not letting you take me to the doctor, boss, but thank you again for offering.”

Chapter 17

All my hopes and dreams failed me the next morning.

I had told myself I was going to be better. Way better by the time I woke up the following day. Maybe I would have still been in a little bit of pain, but nothing I couldn’t have handled.

At least that’s what I had genuinely believed.

In reality, everything hurt even more. All it took was about five seconds after my alarm went off to realize just how much more. “Shit,” I muttered to myself as I laid there, wanting to reach up to massage myself and then stopping because lifting my arm would more than likely only make me choke up.

And I didn’t really feel like finding out for sure.

I was never going to tell anybody how loud I moaned as I rolled onto my side and then forced myself to sit up. Then I peeked out the window to make sure there wasn’t a black truck parked in my driveway. There wasn’t.

After he’d dropped me off at home yesterday evening, I had told Rip that he really didn’t need to pick me up. He had settled for giving me a look, then lifted a shoulder and said, “’Kay.” I still didn’t totally believe him that he wouldn’t come by, but at least his truck wasn’t there.

It took a long time for me to shower and stiffly pull on clothes; there was still no truck when I peeked out, and then it took even longer for me to make breakfast and fill a Rubbermaid with another serving of lo mein that somehow managed to look even mushier. I hadn’t thought that was possible.

It was thirty minutes later than I usually left when I opened my front door, juggling my things, and found a black Ford F-250 there.

Sure enough, through the windshield, I spotted a familiar dark brown head of hair attached to a massive body behind the driver seat.

In the minute it took me to lock my door and head down the steps, my boss was out of the truck and already holding the passenger side door open, all the while giving me a look that said “shut up, Luna.”

“Morning, boss man,” I called out as I walked in his direction, feeling pretty resigned.

He had his sunglasses on again, and his voice was just as low and hoarse as always. “Morning, Luna.”

I stopped right in front of him, noticing that he didn’t have on a compression shirt. Instead, in the middle of June, he had on a thin long-sleeved white T-shirt that ended right at the notch of his throat, showing off a whole lot of thick neck.

I met his gaze and raised my eyebrows. “Whatcha doing here?”

“Picking you up,” he answered, even as his hand took the bag from me.

Could I have held on to it? Sure. But I wasn’t going to.

But still…

“You don’t need any of this though,” Rip told me.

Now that had me hesitating and narrowing my eyes. “Why?”

He gestured me to get into the truck. “You’re not going to work. We’re going to the doctor.”

I stared at that handsome face, taking in the fact that he wasn’t trying to avert his eyes or be sneaky or anything like that. He was being serious. “But I don’t need to go to the doctor,” I told him carefully.

“You’re not going to work. Worthless can handle whatever needs to be done.” He motioned inside the truck again. “Let’s go.”

Worthless? Is that what he was referring to Jason as? Because if it was, I could be all about that. Instead of picking at his nickname though, I didn’t move, and he noticed.

And when he noticed, he frowned. “Why you being stubborn? You’re hurting. You were in a wreck—”

“So were you.”

That frown didn’t go anywhere. “I’m not in pain,” he claimed before gesturing toward the inside of the truck once more. “Go to the damn doctor and have them check you out. You could have some other issue later on, and the car insurance won’t cover it if you don’t have a record that you weren’t feeling good from the start,” he explained.

He had a point.