How About No
Page 7

I growled, letting her hear my frustration.
Ignoring the pain that the act caused, I sat up and pulled her hair, forcing her to come closer while also pulling her over until she was now sitting on the bed next to my leg.
I would address the searing pain in my thigh later. I’d also try to figure out why my dick felt so goddamn funny, too.
But for now, I wanted to know what in the goddamn hell had caused Landry harm. God help the motherfucker that had caused it.
“Tell. Me.”
Landry narrowed her eyes and lifted her lip in a silent snarl. “Don’t tell me what to do, bossy pants. I wasn’t the one that nearly almost died. You were.”
I opened my mouth to tell her exactly what I thought about that statement, but I was interrupted when Bayou came into the room, clearing his throat.
“She was shot in the hand,” he said without preamble. “Through and through between her thumb and pointer finger—right through the webbing and missed every single bone. The man that you were investigating—one of the lawyers involved in the pedophile ring, got pissed that the other lawyer sang like a canary and got a plea bargain in exchange for narcing on his fellow criminals. He came and shot up the entire waiting room. Nobody died, but your girl there took a bullet straight through her hand.”
I looked at Landry’s hand and felt something inside of me sour.
“Bayou got shot in the side, took a chunk of meat out that required stitches,” Landry muttered darkly. “But you don’t see him admitting that, do you?”
My eyes flicked to Bayou, then back to Landry. “I wasn’t asking him what was wrong. I was asking you.”
Because honestly, I could give a fuck what happened to Bayou. Bayou was a grown fucking man. Landry, on the other hand, was my wife—ex-wife. She meant the entire world to me—even if she’d left me.
I couldn’t say the same for Bayou.
Although I was concerned that he’d been hurt.
But still. There was a large difference between Bayou and Landry, and there always would be.
She shrugged. “Whatever.”
My lips twitched, and I let her go. Reluctantly.
She looked just as hesitant to move away from me as I had been at letting her go.
I almost reached for her again, but Bayou cleared his throat and asked, “There anything you two need?”
Landry looked down at her hands and shook her head. “I should probably go.”
And before I could open my mouth to protest, she was out of the room and out of my life all over again. At least, she would try to be.
I hadn’t talked to her that much since the divorce—though that was her doing and not mine. I at least tried. And then she’d been shielding her feelings so hard that I had been left reeling.
She’d acted as if she wasn’t affected at all. As if I was just an annoying piece of gum she’d just scraped off her shoe.
But looking at the tears in her eyes as she hauled ass out of the room, I knew better than most that women didn’t cry if they were unaffected.
They also didn’t come and wait at the hospital for news of their ex-husband, either.
“That girl,” Bayou said, causing me to turn my attention to him. “Never seen her so fucking scared.”
I didn’t know what to say to that.
“And she yelled at the man she lives with. He was trying to take care of her hand, and all she wanted to do was get to you.” He laughed. “Was obvious as hell that she still had feelings for you, and she didn’t care who knew it. Not even the man that she’s living with.”
I snorted. “Yeah, well. If she felt that way, then why is she living with him and not me?”
A loud snort had me turning to the door once again.
Startled, I looked up to find the last person in the world I ever thought I’d see in my hospital room.
“Have you ever asked yourself why she was living with me?” the man who had stolen my wife away from me asked, standing in the doorway.
I scowled. “What are you doing here?”
“You’re on my floor, goober,” Kourt replied. “And you didn’t answer my question. Have you ever asked yourself why she was living with me?”
I didn’t want to answer that question. In fact, I’d rather light myself on fire and put myself out with gasoline.
I frowned. “You mean other than the obvious?”
Kourt scoffed. “That’s a big negative, Wade. I’m not with your wife. I’ve never been with Landry. In fact, I’ve never wanted to be with your wife—at least not in that way. We just share a bond, and we keep each other on track. Maybe you should lay there and listen to what I have to say.”
“Why would you do that?” I asked.
“Because today, I realized that you’re both stupid,” he answered as he settled into the chair at my bedside. “I realized that after you both were severely injured and it could have been life threatening the way the bullets were flying in that waiting room. Both of you were so concerned about each other. Y’all are likely to be the kind of people who follow each other into death. And if y’all are going to do something like that, then you both should probably be together in the first place.”
The last thing I wanted to do was talk to this man about my life, but it didn’t look like I had much choice in the matter seeing as Kourt was now sitting down and I was fairly sure that if I attempted to stand up to get away from him, I’d fall flat on my face.
“Fine,” I moved until I was up farther in the bed and ignored the pain that shafted straight through my thigh the moment that I did. “Enlighten me. I’m just not promising that I’ll like what you have to say.”
He laughed harshly, without humor. “Oh, I don’t doubt it for a second. The moment that I ‘enlighten’ you, you’re going to lose your shit.”
I had a feeling that I wasn’t going to like what he had to say either, but as it turned out, it was not for the reasons that I’d thought it would be.
I looked over at Bayou to gauge his reaction to the comment and found him leaning against the wall, appearing as if he was uninterested even though I knew damn well and good that he was.
Bayou had adored Landry, and sadly, he’d had to choose sides when we’d divorced. He had chosen me.
“We met each other online years ago, on Reddit, actually. Then, she moved here because I was here doing my residency.” He paused. “But at first, it was both of us just talking, expressing our frustrations online that started all of this.”
I already didn’t like where this was going.
“We were both on the verge of killing ourselves when we met up.” He frowned. “She was very depressed and talking to me about having a plan. I knew that if she had a plan to kill herself, it was likely that she would accomplish it. That was when I met her face-to-face for the first time.”
Every single thing that’d been going through my mind—the pain in my thigh, the throbbing in my skull, the pain in my heart at watching the woman that I loved leave me—it was all gone. It was replaced with a sudden horrible sense of dread that made my already uneasy breaths stall in my chest.
“I’ve wanted to have this discussion with you for a very long time,” Kourt said calmly. “But she made me promise to keep my distance. I was not, under any circumstances, to ever tell you a thing without her express permission.”
I felt something inside of me clench.
I wasn’t sure that I wanted to know what he was about to tell me.
I had a feeling that I was not going to like it.
“How much do you know about her family?” he asked.
“You mean other than her sister having leukemia, and them living in Mexico for her first seventeen years of life?” I clarified.
My voice sounded raspy as hell, and I would kill for a drink of water.
Kourt got up and handed me one before I could even think to ask.
I didn’t want to drink it on general principle alone, but then I’d just look petty, and I wasn’t normally a petty person.
Then again, the man living with my wife, living the life that I wanted to be living, and he was now handing me water while looking at me like I was a small child that needed to be taken care of.