The Strength of the Pack (Suncoast Society #30)(8)

“Huh?”

“Is your headache back?”

“No. I feel fine.”

“Then what’s going on with you?”

“Nothing. Just the energy from one of the people I worked on tonight.”

“Bad?”

“No…just…” He tried to find a word. “Unusual. I’m still processing.”

What he didn’t want to admit was he’d felt somewhat drawn to Eva the longer he worked on her.

The fact that he was thinking about her now like this might even be problematic. He didn’t want personal emotions muddying the treatment waters.

“Wow. Must have been some lady.”

“How do you know it was a lady?”

“Well, you never get hooked in by a guy, and other than Leo and Jesse, you only worked on women tonight, as far as I know.”

He hated when she was right.

And she knew she was right, which made it even more infuriating. “Ha.” She looked infuriatingly smug.

He glanced at her. “You can be a very annoying little sister sometimes. You know that?”

“Yes. And yet you didn’t throw me under a tank or mail me to Alaska when I was a kid.”

“No, I didn’t. You’re stuck with me and I’m stuck with you.”

“Stuck like glue,” she replied, their old mantra.

“Me and you.”

Home alone again, he set about his normal routine. He kept the house tidy, organized. Some might say sparse. Having military parents had taught him well about keeping things trimmed down.

It’d been weird when Cherise had moved out last year. He’d briefly had one roommate, but fortunately for Nate, he moved on quickly once his situation turned around.

He wasn’t interested in another roommate. Cherise had told him to consider it a character-building experience.

He’d thought it was a pain in the ass.

Okay, yes, he’d admit to being a Dominant. If wanting things exactly the way he wanted them and keeping them that way made him a control freak, sure, he’d own that.

Even raising Cherise hadn’t been as nerve-wracking as learning how to get along with someone who was nearly a stranger.

You might think you’re close friends with someone until you’re actually living with them and have to listen to them fart during their first pee of the morning.

Every morning.

And not even a polite little toot, but a rip-rolling zipper of a fart that sounded like the bowels of Hell itself were being aromatically emptied into the other bathroom.

Not cool.

Not cool at all.

No, people couldn’t control stuff like that, but when it happened Every.

Single.

Morning.

That’s when it turned from an annoyance into an obviously passive-aggressive attempt to stake a more permanent claim on the space than was intended.

Now Nate understood why the guy’s last roommate had kicked him out after three months.

Fortunately, the guy had got a new job at better pay and quickly moved.





Once they were home, settled in for the night, and Eva was alone in her room, she had time to reflect on the evening. Ever since working with Crawford, she had felt…different. A little lighter inside.

She had never been a big believer in alternative medicine until she saw what a positive impact it’d had on Leo. He hated taking pain killers and wanted to get to the point—as quickly as his body would allow him—of working full time again.

But he was a welder. That meant he was still not ready for doing more than what he was now, managing the office a few hours a week and handling bookkeeping and scheduling from home.

Leo had tried driving and could manage it if his pain levels were low and his energy levels high, but it still wasn’t a reliable skill he could claim yet.

She knew it chafed him, too.

One of the things she’d always loved about Leo was how hard he worked. Not to the exclusion of his family, but to take care of them. He hated having to rely on them for day-to-day things.

His healing was, according to his doctors, going well, even ahead of what they had anticipated.

If you asked Leo, it was a snail’s pace.

By this time tomorrow night, Leo and Jesse would be legally married, and she’d be…

Pretty much the same emotional wreck she’d always been. Leo was right. She was stronger than she thought, and she’d get through this. There were plenty of men who never would have put up with what Leo did during the divorce.

Something she felt infinitely ashamed of now.

No matter how much they tried to tell her the delay tactics she’d used hadn’t led to Leo’s accident, to her they had. Had they been divorced, he likely wouldn’t have been standing there at her door that evening after dropping Laurel off. They wouldn’t have had the chat where she’d told him she was dropping her challenges and delays.

He would, at the very least, have been out of there a few minutes earlier. Missed the driver at the intersection.

Would have gone home, unscathed, to Jesse.

When Tilly tried to inject a little logic into the situation, that maybe if she hadn’t delayed the divorce Leo never would have met Jesse in the first place, Eva didn’t want to think like that.

Leo was happy. Laurel was happy.

They wanted her to be happy.