Free The Arrangement (The Blankenships Book 9) by Evelyn Glass

she could hear nothing in the aftermath other than ringing echoes of pain. She hadn’t known that she could hear pain until then.
     
    And then the office door burst open again, and Luke Pyramus, bless his heart in the most sincerest way she knew, came through, weapon drawn, shouting words that she couldn’t understand, but the words didn’t matter because the weapon was kicked out of Schwartz’s hand, and Alex was kneeling on him, carefully holding him down as Luke restrained him. He looked over at her, and she nodded, pulling her phone out of her pocket and wearily waving it at him. She’d gotten the recording. She’d gotten what he’d said on tape.
     
    She was tired, now, painfully and deeply tired. She let her head sag down onto the floor, which was when she noticed that the pain wasn’t fading. It was getting worse, in fact, and she could feel wetness, in fact, warm heat spreading down over her thighs, and when she looked down to see if she’d peed herself in fear, she noticed that there was an awful lot of blood.

 
     
    CHAPTER TEN
     
    One month later
     
    “What did the doctor say?”
     
    Zoey had to laugh. Alex was practically hovering on the seat inside the car. She’d told him she didn’t need him to come into the appointment with her, and she’d absolutely forbidden him to ask her anything in the waiting room. “As I have told you, many times, it’s fine. It’s healed beautifully. The tube they put in my thigh to help the wound drain has dissolved, just like it’s supposed to, and there’s hardly any scar.” Well, that was a lie. The bullet that had hit her upper thigh had dodged the bone, which she gathered was a huge blessing, but had nicked some major blood vessels. The entrance and exit wounds from the bullet, which had passed straight through her leg, were pretty unimpressive, considering the story she got to tell when people noticed them. About the size of a dime on the front, a quarter on the back. She nudged his leg with her knee, and he winced like he was the one who’d been shot. “As you verified just last night.”
     
    He winced again, and she had to sigh inside. “Are you okay to be using it as much as you are? Should you be using a cane?”
     
    “Are you my old mother hen, sha? It’s nothing to worry about. There’s no infection, and it’s healed beautifully. The plastics guy said he couldn’t have done better without skin grafts.”
     
    “Do you want that? I can make that happen.”
     
    “Alex.” She glanced at David up in the front seat, and he didn’t even need to look in the rear view to feel her gaze. The privacy divider slid up between the front and back of the town car. “There is something I need.”
     
    “Yes,” he said. “Anything. Tell me. I’ll make it happen.”
     
    She leaned towards him and kissed his lips as softly as she could. “I need you to stop treating me like I’m a fragile little flower.”
     
    She watched the war on his features. It was as intense as Stark versus Lannister, and it hurt to watch, but this was also something he needed to go through. Since they’d been back in New York, and he’d resumed leadership of AEGIS, he’d been seeing his therapist and gone back on the meds, which were doing a great job of keeping his panic attacks at bay as he worked through the trauma of losing his family like he had. But things had changed between them, and she needed to know if it was the meds, or if it was just that he was afraid. Either way, she’d work with it, but she needed to know which it was. It was important.
     
    “I’m afraid,” he said, after a long moment. “I am completely afraid that you’re going to realize that this was all my fault, and leave me.”
     
    “I understand,” she said. “But that’s—” there was no way to tell him. She knew that. “Can we go out tonight?”
     
    “If you want. Will that help?”
     
    I’m hoping it will help you. Not that it would be a helpful statement to voice.