The Summer Deal (Wildstone #5)(5)

She’d gotten here at four thirty, because she was a lot of things, most of them not especially complimentary, but she was never late.

Especially for her own kidney transplant.

It was now late afternoon, and she was tired of cooling her jets, tired of hearing “the doctor will be here shortly to fill you in” but getting no further explanation.

If there was one thing she knew from years and years of waiting on a kidney, with a whole bunch of false starts and even more false hopes, it was that if it didn’t happen when she was told it would, it wasn’t going to happen at all.

But since that was a far too depressing thought to contemplate, she focused on things she could control. She was so hungry that it felt as if her organs were starting to eat each other. Hopefully not her one working—barely—kidney, though. She’d received it fourteen years ago at age fifteen, and her body had decided it wasn’t a good fit and was slowly but surely rejecting it.

A nurse entered the room and smiled as she began to check Kinsey’s vitals. “How are you feeling?”

“Oh, just peachy—” She broke off as the only person she trusted more than herself rushed back into her room.

“Where were you?” she asked.

“Moving the car,” Eli said.

He’d been doing this every hour or so all day long and it was driving her nuts. To be honest, life was driving her nuts. “I told you not to park in the drop-off area or you’d get a ticket. Did you get a ticket?”

He smiled. “Nope.”

She narrowed her eyes. “Why do I feel like you’re lying?”

“I’m not. I got there just in time.”

“Let me guess,” Kinsey said. “A female cop was about to write you up and you flashed that annoyingly charming smile and got out of it, even though I’ve never once managed to talk anyone out of giving me a ticket.”

“Because you don’t even try to use charm. Ever.”

This was true. “It’s false advertising.”

He smiled. “Not in my case.”

Also true.

“And I’d park in the visitors lot if there were any open spots, but there aren’t.”

The nurse looked up from the chart to eye Kinsey. “Your husband reminded me that you haven’t eaten anything today. Is that correct?”

“Yes, during the preop, I was asked not to eat twelve hours before surgery. And Eli’s not my husband. He’s my . . .” She hesitated, because it was hard to describe the person you loved like a best friend, but also often wanted to smother with a pillow in his sleep.

Eli raised a brow.

She rolled her eyes. “Annoying-as-crap life mate.”

He’d been her best friend since third grade, from the day Kinsey had pushed bitchy Donna Morgan into the mud for saying that Kinsey was trailer trash. Eli had taken the blame so she wouldn’t get in trouble, and they’d been BFFs ever since. Actually, more like brother and sister, because it truly was a sibling-like relationship, right down to bickering being their favorite pastime. Together, they’d been through thick and thin, and there’d been a helluva lot of thin. Her health issues. His family issues. Her utter failure to let people into her life. His inability to trust people to love him. And so on.

Though they were both pretty messed up, they’d become a family of sorts, and she knew no one had her back like he did. Just as she also knew she’d do anything to protect him.

Still, he managed to drive her insane on a daily basis. Like right now. “Why do you smell like chocolate?”

“Because I made a pit stop at the vending machine.”

She sniffed him like a police dog on the scent of drugs, and her stomach growled. She might’ve growled too. “Oh my God, you had a Snickers,” she accused.

“Yep.”

She wanted to kill him on sight, and was glad to see the nurse step out of the cubicle so there wouldn’t be any witnesses. “Are you kidding me?”

He didn’t even have the good grace to look guilty as he came to the side of her bed and took her hand. His eyes were guarded. Worried. “What did the doctor say?”

“Haven’t seen him yet.”

Eli let out a breath. “Your text scared me. I rushed back.”

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.” She paused. “Were you really just moving the car and getting a snack?”

“What else would I be doing?”

“Calling Deck.”

There was a beat of disbelief, during which Eli apparently absorbed the fact that she hadn’t called Deck.

Deck, short for Deckard Scott, was the guy Kinsey let into her bed on the nights they were both free. He was big and built, tough as nails, sexy as hell, and best of all, didn’t have any need to fill a silence with words. She could love him for that alone—if she was free to love anyone.

She wasn’t.

She’d grown up with chronic renal failure, and after her first transplant at age fifteen, her body had switched things up for shits and giggles to a new problem—transplant rejection. This meant she was literally a walking, talking expiration date. She didn’t know when, but she knew it would happen. Eventually she’d run out of luck and her kidney would give out. So falling in love and letting someone fall for her in return was selfish. And she might be a whole bunch of things she wished she wasn’t, but selfish wasn’t going to be one of them.