Scythe & Sparrow (The Ruinous Love Trilogy, #3)(62)
I flash a tight smile at Rose, but I can’t bear to see the pity in her eyes. So I turn away. I’ll get the fuck out of here and find the next flight home and lick my wounds with a bottle of bourbon and we’ll forget this moment ever happened. We’ll go back to being friends, no benefits. Or maybe just doctor and patient. Jesus fucking Christ—
“Doc, stop.” Rose’s delicate hand wraps around my forearm in a talon grip. Part of me wants to pull away and keep walking, but I don’t. Not when she whispers a single word, filling it with a desperate note. “Please.”
My brows tighten as I take in the way her gaze darts across our surroundings. She tugs on my arm, towing me toward her RV. I don’t argue, though I don’t exactly stride after her either. But she doesn’t give up. And she doesn’t let go. Not even when she opens the door, tossing me a wary glance over her shoulder.
I enter the RV. A shirtless man runs at a punishing pace on the treadmill that fills the narrow aisle between the sofa and the little dining table. His chest is covered with cheap tattoos. His skin glistens with sweat.
“I’m gonna beat your record,” he declares with a crazed grin, his eyes latched to Rose.
“I should go—”
“No, wait.” Though I try to pull away, Rose refuses to relinquish my arm. She gives the guy a grimace of a smile and a thumbs-up. “Keep going, Chad. Maybe you’ll beat me, after all.”
When Chad gives her a double thumbs-up in reply, Rose tows me closer to the front of the vehicle, not letting me go until she seems certain I won’t try to push past her to leave. There’s a chittering sound of an animal, and a raccoon’s face suddenly appears from the driver’s seat.
“Is that … is that Barbara?”
“Umm, yeah,” Rose says through a pinched smile. She blushes when I raise my brows in a wordless question. “When I left Hartford, I drove past your clinic and saw her trying to break in. She fell from the vent by the roof. She hurt her paw. I couldn’t just leave her to fend for herself.”
“So you took her …?”
“Pretty much.”
“A wild, rabid raccoon.”
Barbara hisses, but Rose doesn’t seem to take that as proof of my point. “She’s not rabid. She’s pretty talented, actually. Cheryl’s been training her with the poodles. She had her debut show last week.”
I open my mouth to say something, but my brain can’t seem to sort through the many questions I have fast enough to land on a single one. Chad, however, is ready to fill the void. “She has a pet raccoon,” he declares from the treadmill. “Isn’t that badass?”
I let out an audible ugh and refocus my attention on Rose. “You really don’t have to explain, Rose. Well, more detail about the raccoon is probably warranted. But not about the guy. We never agreed to be exclusive.”
“Thanks for the reminder, you fucking clown. But I do have some standards,” she says as she rolls her eyes and crosses her arms over her chest, her brows knitting together for the briefest moment before her expression smooths to a veneer of barely restrained fury. “Dudes with tattoos made with a Bic pen in their garage don’t fit the bill, ya know?”
“Then what the hell is going on?” A sinking feeling drops through my chest to simmer in my guts when Rose gnaws her lip. “Spit it out—”
“He should be dead,” she hisses. “At least, that’s what Sloane told me when I texted her. I gave him double what she suggested.”
“What …?”
“I laced his churros with enough speed to choke a gorilla. He puked all over me and then started pacing around in circles so I brought him here and stuck him on the treadmill while I got cleaned up. I think he might’ve taken some other shit before I got to him. It didn’t take much convincing to get him to go for a little run, but then again I might have told a lie or two about letting him fuck me in the ass if he beat my nonexistent treadmill record.”
I blink at Rose, trying to process everything that just spilled out of her mouth. Churros. Speed. Gorilla. Ass fucking …? I shake my head and try to return to the medical part of her confession, though it’s a struggle. I finally land on, “You gave him amphetamines?”
Rose snorts. “A lot of amphetamines.”
“… Why?”
“He deals ‘study drugs’ to local high school and college kids when he’s not beating up his girlfriend, so it didn’t seem like it’d be a stretch if he took a little too much and wound up dead. Fuck around and find out. I was just hoping the finding out part would come a little more easily.”
“And your plan now is … what … exactly?”
“I dunno,” she says with an irritated flick of her hand in my direction. “Maybe to make him run until his heart explodes in his chest and he bleeds from his eyeballs or some shit. I’m not a scientist.”
We turn toward the man. His pace is relentless. When we face each other once more, Rose juts her chin out and tightens her arms across her chest, determined not to balk beneath my cold and clinical stare.
“I don’t think he’s just going to magically die on your treadmill, Rose.”
“A girl can dream.”
“Aren’t you worried about what will happen if he does?”