Unbreak My Heart (Rough Riders Legacy #1)(26)

Her eyes searched mine. “Why do you keep hinting that there’s some big thing we need to talk about?”

Here was my chance. My heart rate jumped two dozen points and my hand turned clammy. Before I opened my mouth, I heard footsteps on the rocks behind us.

“Nurse West, you got a sec?” Kyler asked as he approached us.

Never failed. “What’s up?”

“Some drunk chick started to fall out of her chair on the patio and Hayden tried to catch her. He ended up twisting his ankle and smacked his face into the concrete. He refuses to go to the hospital. Can you take a look at him?”

“Typical stubborn McKay,” I muttered. “Where is he?”

“Upstairs.” Ky threw a look over his shoulder. “Tug has already started kicking everyone out.”

As soon as I started toward the patio door, Sierra fell into step beside me.

“How often are you asked to administer first aid at a party?”

“Damn near every one of them I’m at.”

“I’m surprised you still go to them.”

“And miss the chance to stitch up drunk guys after a fist fight or have a random chick barf on my shoes?” I said dryly. “Woman, that’s what I live for.”

She snickered.

“You’re out of college, McKay. Why do you keep partying with the underclassman?”

“I graduated early so I still know people in school. So far this year I’ve just been to parties here. It’s weird. Maybe I have outgrown them.”

People still milled around in the house. As I started up the turn in the stairs, I saw we had rubber-neckers trailing behind us.

I found Hayden stretched out on the floor in the hallway in front of his room with a bag of frozen tater tots pressed to his face. “So chivalry ain’t dead after all, huh?”

“Fuck off.”

“I’ll take a look at your face first.” I stepped over Hayden and lowered to my knees to get closer. “Where’d you hit?”

“The ground.”

“No, what part of your face hit?”

Hayden lifted the bag of frozen potatoes.

I hissed in a breath. An angry-looking cement burn scraped his cheek but hadn’t started weeping fluid yet. A bruise had already welled up on his cheekbone beneath the scrape. I didn’t see that any part of his face had been split open, so there wasn’t any blood. “Does your head hurt?”

“Sudden, massive headache.”

“Over-the-counter pain meds will help. You can take eight hundred milligrams of Tylenol or Advil every six hours. Keep icing it. But if the swelling increases? Go to a clinic.”

“Fine.”

I slid over and picked up his foot. “Let me know if it hurts when I start poking around.”

“You just want to see if I scream like a girl,” he retorted.

“Dude. I already know that you scream like a girl.”

His lips twitched. “Asshole.”

I slipped my hand beneath his calf. The area around his ankle was swollen. “Did you hop or hobble into the house?”

“Hopped up the stairs, tried to hobble down the hallway and when that hurt, I crawled.”

“Did you feel anything pop?”

“No.”

“When you put weight on it, did you feel anything grinding?”

“No.”

“Ooh, are you a doctor?”

I glanced up to see a brunette with an enormous rack dropping to her knees across from me.

“No, I’m not,” Hayden drawled, “but if you wanna play doctor, hot stuff, I’m game.”

“Not you,” she said, wrinkling her pert nose. “Him.” She batted her eyelashes at me. “I just love doctors.”

I’ll bet you do.

“And you’re hot. Like really hot. And young too,” she said in whispered wonder, leaning over Hayden’s head.

“You’ll have to move back,” I said to her. “You’re blocking the light.”

“No problem, Doctor.”

Curling my fingers over Hayden’s toes, I gently pushed until his foot was at a right angle. “Any pain with that movement?”

“Some. Not bad though.”

When I pushed the foot up more, Hayden hissed in a breath. Same reaction when I shifted his foot side to side.

“What’s wrong with him?” Perky Tits asked. “Does he need an operation?”

“He just needs to rest and let the swelling go down.”

“Maybe your helpful assistant oughta check the swelling in my groin,” Hayden suggested.

Jesus, Hayden, really?

Perky Tits looked confused.

“What’s the diagnosis?” Hayden demanded.

“It’s sprained. Elevate it and ice it fifteen minutes every hour is about all you can do. If the swelling isn’t down by Monday, go in for X-rays to make sure it’s nothing more serious.”

I stood and so did the brunette. I saw Sierra leaning against the wall, her lips curled into a smirk.

“Is there anything I can help you with, Doctor? Like shouldn’t we be in bed?”

“We?”

“Oops.” She giggled. “I meant he. Shouldn’t we get him in bed?”

“He crawled this far, he can crawl the rest of the way.”