Page 6 of Their Pup to Tame

“Want me to tell James we need an ambulance back here?” Dream asked. “He’s gonna be pissed as hell when he finds out what Landon did to you.”

“Asshole!” Landon snapped, and this time I did duck, just in case Landon got it in his head to throw something else at the infuriating blond with aqua and blue streaks in his hair and a devilish grin that, yeah, looked a hell of a lot like taunting.

“Just tell James that I’m ending my shift early to go get stitches,” I grumbled. “If he insists on knowing why I need them, tell him I tripped over a platform boot and hit my face on a vanity. He doesn’t need to know what really happened.”

“B-but…” Dream stammered.

I lowered the t-shirt enough to squint directly into his eyes and let him see how over this whole mess I already was. “He doesn’t need to know,” I growled, leaving no room for interpretation. I wanted him to see just how serious I was about what I’d said. “If I find out you told him anything different, I’ll make sure you’re stuck in the seven o’clock slot every Wednesday until someone pisses me off worse. Got it?”

“Yeah, I, um… I won’t tell him,” Dream replied, face having paled in the wake of my threat. “But, umm, how are you gonna get to the hospital like that if you don’t want him to call anambulance? I’m pretty sure your eyes are too swollen to ride your Harley.”

“You’re damned right about that,” Malachi concurred as he squeezed my shoulder. “Want me to call Rex?”

“No, I do not want, nor do I need you to call my big brother down here to drive me to the ER,” I snapped, feeling indignant as hell, even as it dawned on me that letting him call my brother was one of the few options I did have while the strip club was still open for business.

Shit.

Calling Rex should have been my go-to solution to this turn of events, since he was off tonight, which usually meant he’d be in his studio, smoking a bowl while he covered canvas with acrylics and cut headlines and images from the various magazines he read. Only now it was a matter of pride for me to find somebody else to take me, because I was not dealing with this shittastic night and getting calledbaby brotheron top of it.

Fumbling around, I quickly discovered that trying to reach my back pocket while keeping my t-shirt pressed to my face was futile. I was forced to endure the indignity of letting Malachi retrieve it for me and open the lock screen, since the numbers were too blurred for me to see.

Which made scrolling through my contact list a lesson in redundancy as well, so I gave up and handed it back to him.

“Find the one that saysAspenand hit call, please,” I grumbled.

Malachi managed to smack me in the ear with the phone when Aspen answered, so of course, I sounded like a deranged personsnarling a response to his greeting. “Ow, fuck! I’m hurt enough as it is! Watch it, will you!”

“Hurt? Who is this? Oh…Phoenix! What the hell is going on?”

“Are you busy?”

“Even if I was, it wouldn’t matter right now,” Aspen replied. “Now tell me what the fuck happened.”

“I…” Stammering, I realized that I wasn’t capable of lying to this man despite my insistence that Dream tell a whopper of a tall tale to my uncle.

“Phoenix?”

“Got my nose broken by a flying blow dryer,” I admitted. “My eyes are swollen; I can’t see for shit. I was wondering if you could take me to the hospital. I need some stitches on top of the whole nose-realignment thing.”

“Excuse me?”

“I got my nose broken,” I repeated. “And a pretty wicked gash to hear Dream tell it.”

“I heard what you said. I just can’t believe something happened to you again after the new bruises you showed up to game night with.”

“I told you that was because of a...”

“Just because I heard what you said to me doesn’t mean I have to like it,” Aspen grumbled. “You’re at work, I take it?”

“Yeah.”

“Should I pull up to the front or park in the parking lot?” he asked, irritation having crept into his voice the moment I’d confirmed that I’d gotten hurt on the job again.

Though to be fair, it wasn’t in the usual manner.

Being sent to the ER by a dancer was a whole new level of bullshit, and it was going to take forever to live this down. The less people saw of me, the fewer chances they’d have to give me shit.

“Parking lot,” I replied. “I’ll be out there leaning against the fence, pondering my life choices.”