Raw Deal (Larson Brothers #1)(52)

“Rowan and I just had a huge fight,” she managed to tell him. Something about his voice, strong and authoritative while her brain felt like a mass of confusion, gave her strength. “I don’t know what to do. We were about to leave for the airport.”

“Fuck. I’ll come get you.”

“No,” she bit out before she thought about it. It was what she wanted more than anything right then, to see him, feel his arms around her, but . . . “That’ll make things worse.”

“Is the car there yet?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t left the room.”

“If it’s about us, Savannah, tell her what she wants to hear.”

“That I won’t see you anymore? I can’t. It’s a lie. That lie will keep going on and on and I can’t live like that.”

“Can you live like this?” he asked grimly, then his voice gentled as he said, “Go get on the plane, darlin’. Everything will be all right.”

“God.” She dropped her forehead to her free hand, rubbing at the headache blooming there. “If we’re both acting like this on the plane, they’ll kick us off.”

“Dry your eyes and take a breath. You got this.”

“I miss you.”

“Miss you too.”

Chuckling, she raised her head and stared toward the window with bleary, unfocused eyes. “Yeah, you’re probably ready to get off this merry-go-round. Get us crazy girls back to Louisiana.”

“Never think it, baby.”

Of course he would say that. She took a moment to get her emotions under control, and it helped to conjure him up in her head, that devastating smile and rock-hard body she’d spent a good portion of the weekend exploring. Sitting on his kitchen floor eating ice cream in the dead of night, standing on the beach in the darkness with him while the rest of the world was sleeping. “What were you doing when I called?”

“Cardio,” he said, a little sheepishly.

“What we got last night wasn’t enough for you?” she teased, those images in her head now sweaty and hot, a tangle of sheets and limbs and hands and orgasms.

“No, actually. I could go for a few more rounds of that.”

“Me too.” She drew a fortifying breath, needing every ounce of strength she possessed for the next hours ahead. “But I guess I’d better go.”

“You’re okay?”

“Yeah. I am now.”

“Call me when you’re home. Let me know you made it safe.”

“I will.”

“I’ll count the minutes, then.” The smile was obvious in his voice, and damn him, she might have fallen a little further in those seconds.

Knocking on Rowan’s door a few minutes later, she began to wonder if she had gone ahead down to the lobby, but suddenly the door snatched open. Rowan’s eyes were dry now, but glassy and red rimmed. She didn’t look Savannah in the face as she said, “Come here.”

The room was frigid and dim as Savannah wordlessly slipped in; Rowan had pulled the drapes closed. Most of the light came from a lone lamp in the corner and Rowan’s laptop open on the desk, the screen glowing with an easily recognizable YouTube page.

Savannah froze when she saw it. “What’s this?”

“Sit.”

“No. Damnit, Rowan, I told you—”

“I had to see it,” Rowan said savagely, “and that means you have to see it too. Sit down.”

All the tears Savannah had managed to repress sprang back into her eyes, and she backpedaled from the computer as if it were a venomous snake poised to strike her, a hand to her mouth. “I said no. This isn’t happening.”

“What are you afraid of? Afraid you’ll see what he really is? Maybe you should. I saw it.”

“You’re trying to make me watch my brother die all over again and—”

“He didn’t die here, he died at the hospital.”

“I know where the f*ck he died, Rowan, I was there.”

“Then it’s interesting you put it like that, because yeah, you’re right, he died at the hospital but Mike Larson killed him here.”

“He didn’t mean to!”

“How do you know? You’ve never seen it.”

“I know what he told me.”

“Just watch it, Savannah. Then you can try to justify to me, or to your parents, why you want to be with him. Trust me, that’s a conversation you don’t want to go into without knowing all the details.”

“I hate you for this.” The words tore her heart, shredded it, as they ripped from her throat. At the moment, she meant them completely.

“Then we’re even. I hate you for this too.”

But nothing had ever hurt her as much as that, even if she deserved it.

“I don’t want to,” Rowan said quickly, her voice losing its maniacal edge and turning softer, pleading, “Savannah, please, just watch it. I’ll leave you alone while you do, if you want. But I want to . . . I need to know that you’re going into this understanding how I feel. To understand it, you have to see.”

“We have a plane to catch in less than two hours,” Savannah said desperately. “Please, let’s go. I’ll watch it when I get home, okay? Can I at least do that?”