Wrapped Up in You Read online

  Ivy turned over in her bed for the hundredth time since Kel had left at one a.m. It was now three a.m. and he still hadn’t returned, though she’d gotten a text with an update on Arlo’s condition. Stable. She drew relief from that, which backed up in her throat at the sound of someone at her door.

  Not Kel. He wouldn’t be making that odd scraping noise. He’d have let her know right away it was him, knowledge that had her heart in her throat.

  Rising from the bed, she grabbed her handy, dandy baseball bat and reminded herself that she was a badass tough chick who could handle herself.

  That’s when the knock came, just a single, almost soft, knock. Swallowing hard, she moved to the door and took a look through the peephole.

  Nothing.

  When the knock came again, she nearly jumped out of her skin.

  “Ivy, it’s me. Open up.”

  “Brandon?” she gasped. What the hell . . . She yanked open the door and there he was, sitting on the floor.

  Bleeding.

  “Oh my God,” she said and dropped to her knees.

  “Merry Christmas a few days early.”

  “What the hell happened?” she demanded.

  “It’s just a scratch,” he said, sounding far away. “Help me inside and shut and lock the door.”

  At the real fear in his voice, which she’d never heard, not once in her life, not even the time he’d accidentally set their trailer on fire and they’d nearly burned along with it, she got behind him, hooked her hands in his armpits, and dragged him over the threshold.

  Then, because she hadn’t been born yesterday, she left him to go shut and lock the door. Turning back to Brandon, she found he’d scooted his way farther into the room, and still on the floor, had his head tilted back on the couch cushions, eyes closed.

  Crouching over him, worried about all the blood and where it was coming from, she started patting him down, arms, chest—

  “It’s my thigh,” he murmured in a faraway voice. “Bullet went all the way through. At least I’m pretty sure.”

  Pushing back to her feet, she rushed to her bathroom to scrub her hands and grab her first aid kit from beneath the sink, along with a spare towel. With shaking hands, she then ran to her freezer and grabbed the vodka before moving back to Brandon.

  “Okay, start talking,” she said, dropping to her knees. It took a pair of scissors to cut off his pants leg to the point where she could see what she was doing.

  “Just like old times,” he murmured, head still back, eyes still closed. “How many times have you patched me up?”

  “Too many to count,” she said tightly, taking in the fact that yes, the bullet had indeed gone straight through. Using the towel, she applied direct pressure to stop the bleeding.

  Brandon sucked a breath in through his teeth and moaned.

  “You’re so stupid.”

  He was grating his teeth and trying to hold still, but failing. “I know.”

  “And dumb,” she added.

  “I know that too.”

  She held firm, watching his face as she did, wondering what the hell he’d done, knowing he wouldn’t say. After a few minutes, she cautiously peeked beneath the towel.

  She’d slowed the blood flow down. “A Band-Aid’s not going to do it this time, Bran. You need an ER.”

  “No.”

  She lifted her head and he dropped his, meeting her gaze. “You can’t take me to the hospital.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I fucked up.” He paused, and closed his eyes again. “Fucked up bad.”

  “What did you do?”

  He didn’t answer.

  She opened the vodka and poured it over his wound.

  “Jesus,” he gasped. “Jesus H. Christ . . .”

  “Breathe. And start talking.”

  “I need to vanish.”

  “So you’ve said. And yet here you are.”

  “This isn’t funny.”

  “No shit,” she said.

  “I mean I really need to get out of here.”

  “Well I’m all for that,” she said, gesturing for him to get up and go.

  He looked at her. “I need twenty grand to do it.”

  Her mouth fell open. “Are you kidding me?”

  “No,” he said seriously, more seriously than she’d ever seen him. “And we both know you have it.”

  She just stared at him. “What the hell happened tonight?”

  “It wasn’t my fault.”

  “It’s always your fault,” she said. “Tell me.”

  He shook his head. “I needed money to pay off . . . some people. When I couldn’t get it together, I tried to . . . acquire some stuff to sell. But I ran into trouble during the . . . acquisition. Now I don’t have the . . . stuff, I don’t have the money to pay the people I need to pay, and plus, the trouble that I ran into is likely to cause more trouble. So if I want to keep my kneecaps—and I do, I really, really do—I need to vanish for a while.” He paused. “A long while. And I need money to do that.”

  “The twenty K.”

  “Yes,” he said.

  She gaped at him. But not for long because there was a knock at her door. She rushed to it, thinking it was Kel, he’d finally come back.

  But it wasn’t Kel.

  It was two very large guys who looked like they ate a lot of burgers and steroids, and little else. One had a whole bunch of hair. Everywhere. The other was bald as a cue ball.

  “Can I help you?” she managed to ask, keeping the door cracked so only a sliver of her showed as she slowly reached, trying to grasp the baseball bat she still had leaning against the wall from Brandon’s first visit.

  “We’re looking for Brandon Snow,” Unibrow said.

  “Who?” Dammit, she needed a longer arm, she couldn’t quite . . . reach . . . the bat.

  “We know he’s your brother,” Thug Two said.

  She kept an even expression on her face, stretching out her fingers. “I haven’t seen him.”

  “Really,” Unibrow said, heavy on the doubt. “Because he says you’re going to give him the money he owes us.”

  “Well that’s funny,” she said, feeling anything but amused as her fingers finally laid purchase on the bat, which she gripped like a lifeline. “Because I don’t have any money.”

  “That’s too bad,” Thug Two said. “Because if you don’t, we’ll have to take it out of his flesh. You sure he isn’t inside?”

  “Quite sure—”

  Before she could finish the sentence, Unibrow gave the door a hard shove. It bounced off Ivy’s face, and while her vision faded for a second, it was enough time for Unibrow to hold the door open and get a look inside.

  Ivy turned to look as well, her face throbbing, but still prepared to use the baseball bat she was holding behind her back. For once she was gratified that her apartment was small enough to take in with one glance. Her couch was empty. The blanket was even gone. The bathroom door was open, and also empty. No one in the kitchen either. “See,” she said, trying not to sound shocked to the core.

  Where the hell was Brandon?

  That’s when she saw it. One of her two windows was open, the lace curtain blowing in the night breeze. Jesus. If Brandon had crawled out the window, he was on an eight-inch ledge four stories off the ground. With a bullet wound.

  “He’s not here,” she said faintly, brandishing the baseball bat in front of her like she was warming up for the big leagues. “Now get out.”

  Thug One stepped back just out of reach of the bat, but didn’t look particularly scared. “He’s got twenty-four hours to pay up.” He pointed at her. “Or we’ll be back for you.”

  Ivy stood there at the door, watching to make sure they left. When they’d vanished down the stairs, she shut and locked her door and ran to the window just as Brandon fell back inside.

  “Shit,” he gasped, hands clutched to his chest. “While you were having a casual—and very long—conversation with those assholes, my life was flash