Jay Crownover - Better When He’s Bad

“No one drives my car.” I sounded drunk. The words were slurred and I didn’t honestly know if I was going to make it as far as the suburbs.

“No one but me.”

She slid her tiny frame under my arm on my noninjured side and I almost collapsed on her. For the first time since I let Race take me to the hospital when I was sixteen, I relied on another human being to take care of me. I didn’t want to think what that meant for either one of us.

I KNEW SOMETHING WAS off with that text message. Just like I knew I was in trouble when I woke up on that couch and Bax had been holding me like I was something to be treasured. I never felt safe, never felt protected, even with Race in my life. I still knew every day was going to be an uphill battle. But in that instant, while I was all wrapped up in him, I felt like nothing bad could ever get to me again. That’s why I bolted. Sure, I didn’t know what his ultimate agenda with my brother was, but more than that, I was starting to think he might be developing a separate one for me. It wasn’t smart to send Brysen back to the Hill after the fight without me. I should be running from this guy as fast as I could, yet every time I turned around, I seemed to end up closer and closer to him.

It had taken every fiber of control I possessed not to return his text in the middle of the week, and there was no denying I dragged Brysen to that fight more to see him than out of any real hope of locating my brother. I was dangerously attracted to him; he was magnetic and so hard to get a handle on, and after the violence of that fight, I knew he had vicious brutality floating close to the surface of his tattooed skin. He was also losing way too much blood from that knife wound, and stubbornly refusing to let me take him to a hospital. Instead he had shoved some money in my hands and ordered me to stop at a drugstore and buy the basic first-aid stuff I would need to keep him from passing out from blood loss. He also told me to grab a couple tubes of superglue. I didn’t even want to know what his plan for that was.

By the time we got back to the bungalow, his eyes were squeezed shut and deep lines of pain were radiating out from the corners of each eye. His skin looked kind of waxy and pale, making that black star prominent and so ominous where it throbbed at his temple. I had to scramble around the side of the car and get the door open for him. I gasped when I saw the wet spread of blood that had soaked through the side of his hoodie.

“Bax, that’s a lot of blood.”

He just grunted at me and struggled his way to the front door.

I had to reach around him to get it open and almost got lost in the endless darkness of his eyes as he looked down at me. I gulped a little and blinked up at him. He gave his head a shake and started struggling out of the blood-soaked hoodie before I had the lights on. The T-shirt he was using as a makeshift bandage was so saturated that all he could do was toss it in the trash on his way to the single bathroom that was in the hallway. I wasn’t sure what I should do. I got him someplace safe, he was a big boy and could clearly take care of himself, Brysen only lived a minute away and I could be back, safe and sound with her in a heartbeat, but none of that felt like the right answer. I argued with myself as I followed his half-naked form into the bathroom.

He already had black-and-blue marks flowering all over his taut skin and that knife cut on his side had just barely missed the naked pinup that covered his entire side. His face had a steady stream of blood trickling from the cut on his cheek, and his bottom lip was back to being split wide open. He was a mess.

“Sit down on the toilet and I’ll clean you up as best I can.” I was no stranger to patching up Carmen’s boys after scuffles with other kids in the neighborhood. Granted, this was on an entirely different level, and being that close to him made my skin feel like it was electrified.

He looked at me emotionlessly in the mirror over the sink. He looked like he had just come out of a war zone.

“Are you scared of me?” His voice was scratchy.

I met his gaze steadily in the glass. “Terrified.”

His chin dipped in a little nod of acknowledgment.

“Do you trust me?”

“No.”

I saw a shadow flit across that midnight gaze. He lifted a knuckle and rubbed at the blood smeared across his face.

“You going to go to bed with me?”

I sucked in a hard breath through my nose. I wanted to look away but he wouldn’t let me. “Probably.”

He finally looked away and picked up a washcloth and slapped it on the cut.

“I was hooking up with Roxie at the beginning of the week. I’m not a nice guy. I don’t know how things with me and your brother are going to play out. By the time I’m done with Novak, there’s a good chance I’ll be dead or back in jail. You still gonna go to bed with me?”

My heart did a weird flip and my blood did a weird thing where I felt like I could actually feel it slow down in my veins. At least there was no second guessing with him. He turned around and leaned back on the vanity. I sighed and reached around him to put a towel on his steadily leaking side. His blood-caked skin was warm, despite the fact he had goose bumps raised along his naked torso.

“If I do, is it going to be any different than you going to bed with Roxie or that stripper?”

“Do you want me to lie to you?”

I grabbed his hand and forced him to hold the towel so I could work on his face. I cleaned him off with a cotton ball soaked in peroxide, which had him swearing and scowling at me. I found the little butterfly Steri-Strips I bought and slapped a couple on his cheek.

“Yeah. I think I do.” I couldn’t tell the difference when he lied to me anyway.

He grunted and narrowed his eyes even farther at me when I slimed some antibacterial goo on his lower lip.

“Then no. You would be exactly like all the rest.”

I flicked my gaze up to him and we stared at each other for a drawn-out minute.

I cleared my throat. “Let me get something wrapped around that knife wound.” I gave a dry laugh. “Those are not words I thought I would ever have to say to anyone.”

He winced when I pulled the towel away from his side. “Hang out with me a little bit longer and they’ll become a regular part of your vocabulary.”

I didn’t have an answer for that, so I ran some warm water in the sink and tried to clean up the bloodbath. It was a long gash, probably five or six inches, but it was clean and didn’t look like it went deep into the muscle. I blew a wayward curl out of my face and pulled open several of the large bandage pads and the Ace bandage I had bought. I went still when one of his rough, callus-tipped fingers brushed across my forehead and moved a loose curl out of my eyes. That was what undid me about him. He was unpredictable, he was a criminal, he was hazardous to my sanity, but then he held me when I couldn’t sleep and he touched me like I would break. It was an intoxicating combination that I was having no luck in fighting.

“Lift your arm up if you can.”

It obviously hurt him to do it, but he got the thickly muscled appendage out of my way so I could secure the wrap all the way around his broad chest. I had never been around a man who built his body up to use as a weapon before. I couldn’t ignore how impressive it was. Even with the stark black ink that covered his abs and spread across his shoulders, it was still a nice sight. When he shifted I noticed he even had ink peeking out of the top the band of his boxers showing above the edge of his jeans.

“If you really don’t want to go to the doctor, that’s the best I can do with what we got.”

I took a preventative step back.

He moved stiffly and bent to pick up his ruined hoodie off the floor. The cream-colored tiles were stained crimson where it had fallen.

“If it’s still bad in the morning, I’m going to have you seal it shut with superglue.”

I made a disgusted face and followed him out of the bathroom. “Gross. No way am I doing that. If it’s not better tomorrow, we’ll take you to the hospital.”

He just ignored me and made his way to the back bedroom, where the bed was still barren of sheets and blankets. He threw the hoodie on the dresser, popped the button on his jeans, kicked his heavy boots off, and plopped across the naked mattress on his back.

“I don’t need a doctor. This is fine.”

“You’re white as a sheet.”

“I just got my ass kicked. Of course I look like shit.”

He didn’t really. He looked battered, worn out, and a little rougher than usual, but I really thought it would be impossible for him to look like shit. His eyes were closed and his chest was rising and falling in a pretty steady rhythm, so I thought maybe he was falling asleep. I needed to snag his car keys and go get some food and stuff for this shell of a house. He might not like it very much here because of the memories attached to it, but he seemed to keep landing back here for safety and security and he needed provisions.

“Where do you think you’re going?”

His voice was sharp when I turned to go back to the living room, where he had thrown the keys on the coffee table.

“To the store. I need to get food and stuff. This house is empty.”

“No.” His eyes were still closed and he sounded mad.

“No, what?”

Before I could react, he was up off the bed and had one arm locked around my waist. I gasped when the soft mattress was suddenly under my back and he was looming over the top of me, black eyes blazing like coals.