Page 113 of Enemies with Benefits

The three of us could only get out of the way as the nurses came in and a doctor was called, the man holding a half-eaten bagel. It was the place where most injured cops ended up, so they were usually given high priority.

It was over two hours before we could finally sit down with Kayden. He had been allowed to bring the bed up to an incline so he could sit up and talk. He was still hooked up, but they had removed the worst of it, keeping the IV and the bandages. Which was probably just as well because the idiot kept pulling at the one on his chest to try to look at his wound to 'guess what the scar would look like.'

"If you don't stop," I told him with a growl, smacking his hand away. "I'm going to rip it off. It's going to need to be restitched, and whatever hair you have left is going with the bandage, quit!"

"Is this how you treat someone who's recovering?” he asked in his most pitiful voice.

"This is how I treat someone who's supposed to be recovering but is doing the kind of shit that's going to keep him from recovering properly," I said, raising my hand to give him another smack when he tried to pull at the bandage again.

"You say that, but I heard you spent all your time at my bedside, not getting a wink of sleep," he said with a grin. "I also heard that you didn't tell my girlfriend I was laid up with a gunshot wound, but we'll come back to that after you're done beating yourself up over it. Just like we'll come back around to you probably beating yourself up over me getting shot."

"You got shot because I wasn't there," I told him with a scowl. "And I wasn't there because I'm suspended because I can't keep my cool."

"Shot through the heart, and you're to blame," he piped up in his god-awful singing voice. He winced at my glare. “Sorry, that's probably not funny right now."

"It's never going to be funny," I told him. "That's what I keep telling you about all your awful jokes. You just don't listen."

"Yeah, yeah, you have no sense of humor right now."

"According to most people, I don't have one at all."

Kayden shrugged. “Moira says your sense of humor is what she liked about you. Of course, she also has a pretty fucked up sense of humor, so maybe I shouldn't take that too seriously."

I blinked. “Yeah, well, don't remind her. I'm on her shit list right now."

"Well, you did forget to mention I was in the hospital," he said with a shrug, and then winced when it pulled at his injured chest. "Ow."

"Idiot."

"Look, she'll get over it. She's like you, she's going to be pissed because you got on her bad side with a stupid decision, but she's going to turn around and make it about how she probably deserved it."

"Why the hell would she do that?"

"She didn't tell you about Micah...for eight years."

I glared at him. “So? I'm not going to hold off telling her about you for something like that! I was just...well, being stupid. And in my own head."

"She knows that, and I know that. But even if she knows you didn't do it because of her, she's going to say she deserved it. Just like you're going to blame yourself for my getting shot, even though if you had been there, I probably still would have been shot."

"You don't know that."

"And you don't know that you being there would have prevented anything, but here we are, with you kicking yourself over something you can't prove. And neither of you is going to listen to me, considering I might be speaking the truth. Martyrs and masochists, the both of you."

I sighed wearily. “How do you have this much energy? You've got a concussion and a bullet hole in you."

"Drugs, drugs, what a wonderful thing," he said with a waggle of his eyebrows that, while on brand for him, was completely unnecessary.

"Are you even allowed to have drugs when you've got a concussion?" I wondered. "Especially when the patient is already stupid."

"You're so sweet, that's what I love about you, your sweet, gentle nature."

"Fuck you."

"Do you kiss Mason with that mouth?"

My face flushed, and I wasreallyglad Moira and Micah had gone to grab something to eat. "Shut the hell up, I don't need that kind of shit announced everywhere."

"Why?” he wondered, eyes going wide with an innocence I didn't know if I should believe or not. "Because he's a guy or because it's Mason?"