Give Me Love (13 page)

“Tell me what happened, Jared,” I ordered.

“Can I tell you later?” he asked as he slowly got out of bed. “I’m a bit knackered right now.” He turned his back to me so he faced the bed and ripped off his hospital gown.

“Jared,” I squealed. He wasn’t wearing anything underneath, and I almost passed out when I got a glimpse of his bare ass. It met the tops of his legs in a tantalising package of firm, smooth skin that had me diverting my eyes before the urge to get grabby overwhelmed me.

He chuckled in the face of my modesty when I turned around to face the wall as though it held all the secrets of the universe.

“Put some clothes on!”

“Like you’ve never seen a bare ass before.”

I muttered under my breath. “Not one as fine as that.”

“Right, let’s go,” he said after a minute.

I turned back around to see him wearing jeans covered in blood spatter. Knowing it was his had me closing my eyes at the swift onset of anger until I felt myself shake with it. “Who did this to you?”

He smiled a silly grin and his dimple deepened with amusement. “Why? Going to give them a knuckle sandwich for me, baby?”

“Damn straight,” I muttered valiantly. “I’ll kick the fucker’s ass.”

“Maybe you’ll get your chance later today,” he chuckled.

“Where’s your shirt?”

“It got thrown out. It was all torn and bloody.” He gave me a pitiful look. “Can we just go?”

“Come on then.” I sighed.

By the time I started the car, I realised I hadn’t been to Jared’s place before. I only knew it was a loft somewhere in Woolloomooloo that he shared with Travis. Putting the car in gear, I look at him. “Where do you live, Jared? I’ll drop you home. Will Travis be there?”

“Travis will still be working. Evie...” He smiled his silly grin again as I drove out of the hospital car park. “Beautiful Evie,” he sing-songed, and I wondered how much morphine they pumped into that IV of his. “Have I ever told you how beautiful you are?”

Droopy eyelids and a soft smile, I laughed at the dreamy expression, but I couldn’t leave him like that on his own. “Come on, Romeo, I’ll take you home with me.”

He grinned in smug satisfaction. “I like hearing those words on your lips. I like hearing everything on your lips. You sing like an angel. Sing me a song?”

“Jared, I’m trying to drive.”

“How about I sing you a song?” He started to warble a little tune, and it grated painfully on my ears. Bad singing, I realised, ran in the Valentine family.

“Don’t. Stop! Please,” I pleaded, laughing as I began the return journey home through the still dark streets. “My ears are bleeding.”

“Don’t stop? Okay,” he joked and kept singing. His little song faded out pitifully, and when I took a quick glance at him, I saw he was fast asleep. When I pulled into the driveway, I gave Travis a quick call to let him know I had him at my place. He seemed relieved, asking me if we could keep him for a couple of days to rest up because he’d be working around the clock. I agreed and hung up on his promise to come by in the morning with Jared's laptop and some clothes.

When I shut off the ignition, Jared stirred. “Evie?”

“Yeah?” I replied as I tucked my phone back in my bag.

I looked up and was met with sober and serious eyes.

“I feel like everything is so much brighter when I’m with you. When you’re not there it’s like someone turned out the lights.”

It had to be the morphine talking, but still, I grasped his hand and squeezed tight, feeling the warmth of it wrap around me soothingly.

“I know. I feel the same.”

I let go of his hand and fumbled with the door handle.

He reached out and snagged my wrist. “Evie?”

I stopped. “Yeah?”

He looked at me intently, and after a long pause, let go of my arm. “Nothing.”

Chapter Seven

I heard an alarm go off at a time that should have been reserved solely for bakers and crazy people. Was it some kind of hideous cosmic joke or simply Henry playing another prank? He’d done it before when I’d eaten the last of the chocolate biscuits. I racked my brain but I couldn’t think of what I’d done recently that deserved this kind of retaliation. Maybe it was from lack of real food in the house. Perhaps
Lord of the Flies
was now a reality and Henry was the first of us to fall.

I opened one eye when I heard a male grunt and the alarm stopped.

“Sorry,” Jared muttered. “Forgot it was set.”

Hair mussed and eyes half open, he turned his head to face me, giving me the urge to snuggle close and feel the heat of his bare skin against mine.

His grimace of pain had me scooting to the edge of the bed and reaching for the pills and water I’d placed nearby last night. “Here.” I handed them over.

Jared propped himself up on an elbow and put them in his mouth before reaching for the water I held out.

“Thanks,” he offered gratefully after swallowing them down.

I took back the empty glass and sat it back down. “You wanna tell me what happened?”

He sighed and snuggled into the fluffy white covers, wincing a little. “It was the hostage situation from yesterday at Penrith. We’ve been consulting on this case that started as a kidnapping a couple of weeks ago. Jimmy Farrell took his two young kids in a custody dispute, and believe me, Jimmy is not the kind of father you’d want around your kids.”

As he explained some of the things Jimmy had done, I agreed it was better to have no father at all than to have one like that.

“We located him in a house yesterday morning with his brother Joe. They’d barricaded his wife and kids inside, and he was refusing to let them out. It spiralled from there. We had the house surrounded and they started taking shots at us through the front windows.”

I grabbed his arm, fingers digging in. “Jesus, you all wear vests, right?”

“Babe, of course we do,” he replied, exasperated. “Anyway, Jimmy’s wife moved at the same time one of the cops took a really bad shot and it nicked her in the arm. She started screaming and shouting, and Joe turned and shot her dead right in front of the kids.”

“What the hell?” I shouted. I shot off the bed and stood up, pacing the length of the room before I planted one hand on my hip. The other I used to jab fiercely towards the window. “I can’t believe there are people out there who do that. How could anyone do that? Those poor kids.”

He nodded his agreement at my outburst and rolled further on to his stomach with a wince.

I rushed back to the bed, and sitting on the edge next to Jared I peeled back the bandages to check his stitches. I was no nurse but they didn’t look red and angry, and I assumed that was a good thing. I put the bandages back in place and asked him if he was okay.

“Yeah.” He nodded. “Just sore. I got a clear shot and took Joe out, and then Jimmy started threatening to shoot his own kids. Coby and I and two others stormed the back of the house, but Joe mustn’t have been down like we thought and next thing I knew he was behind me with a knife.”

“Christ, you’re lucky he didn’t come up behind you with a gun.”

It was like a bad Steven Seagal movie. No particular one, they were all bad.

“So what happened to Jimmy?” I asked. “And Joe?”

“Jimmy disappeared in the scuffle. Fucking Houdini. The cops have likely been out all night looking for him. I know Travis and Coby would still be out there. Don’t know about Joe."

Henry chose that moment to walk into the room, busily texting on his phone. “You doing a food shop today, Sandwich?”

“Is Sandwich doing the shop?” I heard Mac call out from behind him.

As I turned around on the bed, Henry looked up from his phone and caught Jared lying there. His eyes went wide as he stopped dead.

“Ouch, fucktard,” Mac mumbled as she smacked into his back.

She came out from behind Henry and took in the scene before her. I knew it didn’t look good. I was in my silk nightwear, and Jared was shirtless. She rubbed at her eyes as though she’d woken up in an alternate universe.

Henry pointed at me threateningly. “You’re not taking him with you.”

Mac didn’t even respond, clearly having forgotten what food even was. Her eyes had glazed over and she looked almost giddy.

“Yes, I’m doing the food shop, and no, Jared isn’t coming with me. You are. Besides, Jared’s injured so you can just stop thinking whatever it is you’re thinking.”

Mac’s eyes whipped to Jared. “You are?”

“Just a couple of scratches, Mac,” he replied, his voice low and husky.

I folded my arms, hiding a shiver at the sexy sound. “Yeah, with a knife.”

While Mac and Henry were effectively distracted, I made a hasty exit for the bathroom and slammed the door with glee. Showered and dressed, I missed Travis by five minutes, so I set Jared up with his laptop, a coffee, and breakfast, and Henry and I hit the shops.

J: Can you get me some Gatorade while you’re there?

I handed over the shopping list to Henry as he pulled out a trolley. “Here. You make a start. I have to go to the chemist to get the prescription filled for Jared.”

He took the list.

“Wait.” I snatched the list back, got out a pen, and scribbled Gatorade on there and handed it back over.

“Make sure you only get the lime flavour,” I ordered as Henry looked over the list. “He doesn’t like any of the other flavours.”

Henry laughed.

“What?”

“You two. Like an old married couple already.”

I stopped searching the bottomless pit that was my handbag for the prescription so he could see my look of exasperation. “We are not! We’re just friends. I’d be doing the same for you, Henry.”

He rolled his eyes as he started moving off. “Whatever helps you sleep at night, Sandwich.”

The next three days found me running around between band rehearsals in the basement and looking after the big baby formerly known as Jared. I could only blame myself for telling him to message me if he needed me. I was worried I wouldn’t hear him over the noise of our music otherwise.

J: Can you bring me up a juice?

Or

J: I can’t find my USB. Have you seen it?

Sure he may have been milking it a little, but I was happy to oblige. Sometimes it was nice to be taken care of, and the man had just saved the lives of two young kids. Someone should have been giving him a medal for God’s sake, not just a glass of juice.

When he wasn’t in bed and had moved to the couch, he could simply shout down the stairs to the basement rather than message me.

“
Evie, what’s for lunch?”

Or

“
Have you seen my painkillers?”

By the time Saturday rolled around, I was walking on air. Not because I had another date with Tate later that afternoon, but because I was getting to escape the house.

“Babe?”

“Yeah,” I shouted back from the confines of my wardrobe.

“Can you get me some pills?”

I tossed another crappy outfit selection on the floor and walked out of the wardrobe. “You okay?”

“Yeah. Just wanna make sure I’m up for seeing you guys play at the White Demon tonight.”

I arranged his pills and headed off for a shower, spending so long under the hot water I could have filled an Olympic pool five times over. Mac was obviously thinking the same thing. By the time I was pulling on my underwear, she barged through the bathroom door, her face like the black thunderclouds of a tropical storm. She didn’t even bother to check the wall this time when the door bounced off because the dent was already there anyway.

“Would you hurry up, asshead? You spend more time in this bathroom than I do sleeping.”

“I do not, Mactard. I have to get ready for my date. Tate is gonna drop me at the White Demon straight after. Is that okay?”

She sat the glass of wine in her hand down on the vanity with an angry clank at my mention of Tate. “Whatever. Out you get. I need a long hot bath.”

I adjusted the twisted strap of my bra as she started running the taps using short, angry movements. “Why are you being such a cow this afternoon?”

She finished adjusting the water temperature and turned to face me as she pinned her hair into a giant knot on the top of head. “Because I’m in a shitty mood. I haven’t been shopping in days, Travis is being an overbearing asswad brother, and my best friend has turned into the village idiot by dating Tetris Tate rather than my other brother.” She finished her rant in a shout and I flinched.

“I am not the freaking village idiot. Stop being an interfering bitch.”

She waved her hand. “What the fuck ever, Sandwich.”

Huffing, I grabbed my makeup bag, slammed the bathroom door on my way out, and stormed angrily into the bedroom.

I slammed my own bedroom door behind me, moved to the dresser, and yanking open a drawer, tossed clothes about in a mess while muttering angrily to myself.