Free Obsession (The Plus One Chronicles) by Jennifer Lyon

shoved the sheets into the washer, turned it on and went back into Drake’s room now that his temper had calmed. Ignoring Drake resting in the chair, he focused on Kat. “Why the hell didn’t you call me?” Nope, not calm after all.
    Kat smoothed the fitted sheet over Drake’s bed and reached for the flat one, refusing to look at him. “I had it handled.”
    “She said you were too busy training,” Drake said.
    Too busy? For Drake or Kat? He’d been at the gym, not in the middle of brain surgery. Hot rage hit him. Sloane grabbed the sheet out of her hand. “Bullshit you had it handled. You could have been hurt trying to move Drake!” Like his day hadn’t already gone to shit as he dealt with the media in a news conference, stalked the hospital while Ethan underwent testing and evaluation, and held a mandatory meeting for every fighter and support staff to made SLAM’s no-tolerance position on performance enhancing drugs brutally clear.
    And then Sloane came home to this nightmare? After the nurse, Jane, had left for the day, Drake had started throwing up. Sloane had walked in on Kat trying to move Drake off the bed to clean up. His muscles twitched.
    Kat narrowed her eyes then jerked the sheet back from him and snapped it over the bed. “I’m not crippled.”
    “You were in a goddamned car accident last night. And FYI, sweetheart, a limp means you’re crippled.” He heard the words coming out of his mouth but couldn’t seem to stop them. No one yelled at him anymore but Drake or Kat. It felt damn good to yell back.
    Because when the yelling stopped, he was going to have to think about Drake. Sick. Dying. Fuck.
    Kat spun on her good leg until she was toe-to-toe with him. She tilted her head back, her eyes fired with all kinds of pissed off in her bruised face. “FYI, champ, you’re an asshole.” She stalked out of the room, her ass swaying as she limped.
    “That went well.”
    Sloane turned his gaze on Drake. The once-massive fighter was wasting away to this gaunt shell, his skin dry and tinged a sickly yellow. Drake’s cancer carved new lines and hollows in his face every day, and it killed Sloane that he could do nothing. Not a damned thing. Drake had enough to deal with and didn’t need to see how much this upset him. “Are you laughing? You spent the last hour puking your guts up all over Kat.”
    “She yelled at you. Called you an asshole. Hell yes I’m laughing. I don’t care if I puke again. That was pretty damn funny.”
    Sloane shook his head, went into the attached bathroom and turned on the shower. Returning, he asked, “She really said I was too busy training?”
    Drake sobered. “Yeah.”
    He didn’t like that shit. At all. “I would have come home if you or Kat called.” He crouched in front of the older man. “You know that.” He needed Drake to know Sloane would be here no matter what.
    Drake nodded. “I do.”
    Sloane fisted his hands on his thighs. “But Kat doesn’t.” Of course she didn’t. She’d come to him after his bitch of a mother dropped the bombshell on her, and he’d rejected her. He hadn’t kept the promise he’d made her—if she retreated, he’d go after her.
    Instead he’d avoided her, sure he needed to let her go.
    But Kat didn’t see it that way. She saw it as being pushed aside when she got in his way.
    “Then you came roaring in here telling her she couldn’t handle things. That sound familiar to you at all? Like maybe the way her parents treat her like she’s too dumb to make her own decisions?”
    He rocked back on his heels. “That’s not what I meant.” He shoved a hand through his hair. Had he hurt her feelings? But she hadn’t retreated into herself. The memory made him grin. “She got in my face and yelled at me. She’s okay.” It was when she retreated that he knew she hurt too much and emotionally shut down.
    Drake relaxed at that. “She held her own with you just fine.” He managed a weak chuckle. “She’s right, you are