Hissy Fit (The Southern Gentleman #1)(29)

I’d heard nothing of any panic attacks. Not from the principal that I’d addressed it with to find help with my class, and not from Raleigh.

“Yeah. When she was attacked while being a student teacher during her schooling, she suffered some PTSD. Now, any time she gets close to the bigger boys, she kind of freezes up. Hyperventilates. That’s why we’re really careful about her being at sporting events. If she does go, one of us is always with her.”

I felt bile rising up the back of my throat.

“I don’t…I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I admitted. “She never…”

The sheer horror of what he was insinuating made me want to vomit.

“She never told you,” Gates supplied, sounding just as miffed as Croft.

And, if what I was understanding was true, he had a reason to be.

The more I sat there and thought about it, the more that it made sense.

A sick sort of sense that made me want to throw up the good food I’d just consumed.

“Shit,” I said, running my hands through my hair. “She told me that she was okay with it.”

“More like, she told you what everyone wanted to hear,” Croft grumbled. “What do you want to bet that they threatened her job?”

I didn’t want to know. I didn’t want to be partially responsible for what she’d gone through, either.

I closed my eyes. “What happened?”

That was when the two men took ten painstaking minutes to explain what had happened to Raleigh, and why she was the way she was.

And now everything became clear.

Why she became antsy when she was around the baseball team. Why she avoided sporting games—because most of them were with large, rowdy boys that were the very thing that scared her.

And, to make matters worse, she’d been terrified to do a class with seniors, and I’d been the one to make it happen.

“Fuck,” I groaned.

Before we could talk any more about it, though, the door opened and Camryn walked out, followed shortly by Merida.

Raleigh was the last one out, and she smiled at me as she took a step over the threshold.

In her hand was a bottle of beer for me, and a can of Dr. Pepper for her.

She’d just made it to where she was reaching back for the doorknob when she tripped on air and went flying.

I saw what was about to happen about two seconds before it actually did, but I could do nothing to stop it.

She went down face first.

The bottle of beer fell with a crash against the concrete, and she landed directly on top of it.

We were all up and out of our chairs, and I was lifting Raleigh to her feet, when we saw the blood.

“Shit,” Raleigh whined. “I was supposed to run tomorrow!”

“Raleigh,” her father said, sounding amused. “You don’t run.”

I bit my lip and reached for a beach towel that’d been resting along the back of the chair I’d taken up residence in and pressed it against her bleeding thigh—perilously close to other more pleasant things.

She blushed profusely when my big hand got close to other parts of her anatomy, but she didn’t complain or pull away.

“I was going to go run with Ezra,” she explained. “But this is going to need stitches.”

I pulled the towel away from her leg and nodded my head.

She was going to need stitches.

Shit.

“Not it,” Camryn, Croft, and Gates said at the same time.

Merida sighed. “Y’all suck.”

Raleigh scowled.

“What?” I asked her, likely sounding confused. “Does it hurt?”

She shrugged. “It doesn’t feel all that great, no. But that wasn’t what I was grimacing about.”

“Then what were you grimacing about?” I asked.

She gestured to the group at her back.

Merida was already heading inside.

She came back moments later with her purse slung over her shoulder and an impatient look on her face.

“I’ll take her,” I said, standing up. “Hold that there so you don’t lose half your body weight in blood.”

She was so freakin’ small that it wouldn’t take much for her to get to the point where she was woozy, that was for sure.

Merida beamed at me. “We normally take her to the doc in town. We’ll give him a call and tell him that you’re on the way.”

With that, they practically ushered us out of their house.

Moments later, when we were safely in the truck, I looked over at Raleigh, who didn’t look amused.

“Do they always do that?” I wondered as I started the truck up.

Raleigh shrugged. “I get hurt a lot. I go to the doctor at least twice a year for doing stupid things like I just did. It’s understandable that they don’t want to take me.”

I didn’t agree.

But that was just me.

If she was ever in need, it’d never get old taking care of her.

The more I got to know the woman by my side, the more I realized what a fool I’d been for not paying attention to her.

“Where to, darlin’?” I purred.

She narrowed her eyes on me. “You can just take me home. I’ll drive myself. This really isn’t a big deal, I promise.”