Chapter 4: Injury

I bite down on my inner cheek, drawing blood in my attempt to veil my annoyance with Haley. She has been on a power trip the entire day, which is amusing considering she is the person who runs the household. It would seem little miss priss wants to prove something too little ole me. Which is both infuriating and painful.

I heave a grunt as I lift the overstuffed recliner chair–for the seventh time in the past ten minutes. Lucky me, my duties all revolve around Haley and her terrible taste in design and setup. I roll my eyes when I hear the sound she makes when she hates it, even though I place the chair exactly where she proclaimed it would be perfect. She makes a tutting noise and I look at her from next to the chair.

“Ivy, step away from it.” she tilts her head, her nose scrunching in disgust until I’m so far away I’m not even in her peripheral vision. “Ah! It is perfect. The problem the entire time was the trash that was next to it.”

I remain quiet when she looks over at me and she pretends to sniff in my direction, then scowls. 

“What trash?” Bella asks, a look of horror on her face as she scours the perfectly clean floor. Haley rolls her eyes and walks out of the room. She peeks her head back in and looks at me. 

“The lawn keeper is putting pavers and bricks in to build me the perfect front yard. I told them I had the perfect person to help.” And then she is gone. 

“Where is the trash she is talking about?” Bella asks. 

I roll my eyes at Bella and her ridiculous fear of the prissy bitch who just referred to me as trash and make my way outside. When I make it to the overwhelming pile of heavy pavers and bricks, I look to find the guys I am supposed to be helping. I sit and wait in the blistering sun for two hours before someone finally shows up. His sandy hair glistens in the sunlight and I frown at how he can get his hair to be so shiny and healthy with the shitty bars they gave us to wash all of ourselves with. 

“Hey. I was waiting for you to show up hours ago. I’m Ivy.” I extend my hand out and he regards me with an incredulous look before lifting a brow and nodding.

“Garret,” He says, his voice a low murmur as he looks around. “You are the only slave they sent to help me?”

“Apparently.” I shrug.

“Damn. What did you do to make Haley hate you so much?”

I quirk a brow, a small smile on my lips.

“Whatever do you mean? Haley and I are besties. I spent all morning helping her decorate and later tonight I’m going to braid her hair and tell her all about my dream boy.” I say, laying the sarcasm on thick.

He grins and shakes his head.

“Yeah, I can see why she is punishing you.” 

I give him a scowl and he throws his hands up in a placating manner.

“Hey! I don’t think you deserve it. I’m just saying you don’t look like you have been broken yet. She usually breaks her slaves, so they are afraid of her.”

Suddenly Bella’s reaction and fear make much more sense. I suppose when you are conditioned with fear; you want to avoid what causes it. However, I will not be here long enough to pretend to fear her. 

“And she broke you too, then?” I ask, moving to grab three pavers. Garrett moves next to me to collect five of his own and I try not to scowl at the overachiever.

“Nope. I slept my way to the top.” He shoots me a sexy grin and I give my best-impressed face.

“Yeah, Haley gave me that option, too. She was super disappointed when I told her I’m strictly dickly.”

Garrett laughs out loud and I follow him to where he places the pavers down on the ground. After he stops laughing, I look at him and narrow my eyes. He rolls his and sighs heavily. 

“I wasn’t joking. Yes, I’m the lawn keeper, but I’m a pack member now. Took me three years of hard work and a week of being her fuck buddy to be promoted to pack member. Now she wants nothing to do with me. Thank the heavens.” He grits out and I grin at him. 

“That bad, huh?”

“I would have rather done another three years.” He says, cringing when we grab more from the pile. 

I chuckle and reach for more, opting to grab five like him and he lifts a brow in a challenge, adding two more to his pile. We work that way for about an hour, placing the pavers down in the walkway and then organizing them in the exact pattern that Haley wants.

“This looks like crap” He frowns at the pattern that makes no sense.

“Yeah, well, you ran out of pavers.”

“I ordered the right amount for a normal pathway. She keeps changing the stupid design.” He says throwing the paper he was comparing the design to on the ground. I sigh and bend down, plucking the white paper from the moist grass and opening it up. 

He is right. This design looks like someone threw up several ideas and instead of deciding, they landed on all of them at the same time. I squat down and look at the pavers from another angle, trying to wrap my head around what the hell Haley was thinking. When I stand back up, I realize that if we take it two wide instead of three, we can stretch our pavers further.

“I mean, it won’t be pretty, mostly because the design is shit,” He chuckles and runs a hand through his hair. But what if we go two wide instead of the three and occasional four? I think if we eliminate the hopscotch look, we would be better suited to hit the awkward turns. “

“Yeah, but that would be too easy. She specifically wanted three across.”

“Then get more pavers?”

“Ugh. This sucks.”

I offer him a small smile and he moves shoulder to shoulder with me as we look over the specs one more time so he can make the best decision. My head jerks hard into Garrett’s shoulder, bouncing off him as his hands move to steady me. Then the pain registers. My knees buckle and somehow there are four Garretts instead of the one, all of them staring at me with a look of shock and calling out my name.

My head throbs and I swear something warm is dripping from the temple. Words escape me as I try to move or inform Garrett that I think I will live and then she appears in my sights and everything snaps into place. I blink over and over to clear my teary eyes and then I clutch to Garrett so I can stand upright.

My hand gets swatted away and I’m left to fend for myself as my knees drop to the ground and I land on my hands. Vomit erupts from my lips as the pain takes hold of me, growing worse with every breath. What the fuck did she hit me with?

“What the shit Haley!” I hear Garrett yelling and I shake my head hard, trying to force my eyes to work.

“She was all over you. I won’t have sluts in my house.”

“She was helping me figure out how many more pavers I needed because you changed the design again.” He seethes, moving away from her and helping me up. “She needs to see the healer.”

“Bella, bring the healer here and have him wait to see Ivy in her room,” Haley says flatly. 

My vision finally focuses and I gingerly reach out to touch my head, feeling the sticky texture of blood mingled with my hair and my eyes widen when I look at my fingers.

“You hit me?” I ask, looking up at her and she rolls her eyes.

“No. Of course not.” She says unconvincingly. 

“She threw a brick at you.”

“Oh.” I blink, then blink again. “Good thing I caught it with my face, huh?”

Garrett looks at me like I’m crazy and I try to grin, but it turns into a grimace as the pain takes hold of my head, squeezing it like a vice grip.

“You don’t cope with shit well, do you?” Garrett asks in a low mutter.

“Hah,” I garble out as the world goes dark.  

“Ivyana…” Enzo’s voice says as the bed dips. I groan as I peel my heavy lids open and stare into Enzo’s angry eyes. His hand reaches out skimming the outline of the bandage and then his eyes are on mine, full of question and such intensity my mouth feels dry.

“Water…” I rasp out and he is gone in an instant, moving to the bathroom where he flicks the light on and grabs me a cup of water using my standard-issue cup. The only dish I am allowed to have in my room.

I take a few sips before he removes it from my hands and places it on the side. I fake a yawn and puff my pillow, laying down trying to avoid talking about my injury. After a few minutes, I turn and I gasp in pain as my tender temple hits the plush pillow. 

After watching me struggle, Enzo sighs and motions for me to move as he inserts himself behind me, leaning back against the headboard. He then bends forward and grabs me with ease, pulling me to him so my head rests easily on the pillow between his legs and on his thigh.

I sneak a peek up at him, taking in his firm jawline and perfect angelic features. Maybe it’s the hit on my head or maybe it’s the tenderness in his touch either way right now… there is something fluttering in my stomach. 

He looks down at me, catching me staring, and the corner of his lip lifts in a cocky grin. It reminds me of the times he would always pretend to let me win when we were sparring at Angelica’s. She would always get so angry at him for letting me win, and every time, his answer was the same. “If Ivy loses, then I lose. If I lose, she wins, and Ivy must always win.”

Not that I needed to win all the time. I never threw a fit when someone beat me and I never complained about doing hard work, but Enzo takes his oath seriously. And he seriously wants me to be safe at all times. Which sucks for him, because I am the opposite.

“You need to tell me what happened,” he demands softly, his eyes filling again with worry.

I offer him a small frown.

“Haley—” I barely get her name out before he is trying to move away from me. I can only assume he wants to head to Haley’s room. “Stop.” I hiss and he freezes, his eyes full of murder as he is half raised to move away. I give him a glare and he sighs heavily before dropping back down.

“Continue,” he mutters.

“Oh? You’ll let me?” I snark at him and he tries to hide his smile. “Unbelievable, Enzo. You need to think about the mission. You can’t go off all angry trying to kill people because they piss you off.”

“... I could…” 

“But you won’t,” I grit through my teeth. “Understood?”

He drops his head back on the headboard before looking back down at me and nodding. 

“Yes, Ivy. Now please tell me what happened.”

“Haley…” I freeze and look at him and he rolls his eyes. “Threw a brick at my head.”

Enzo’s whole body freezes, and I watch as his jaw clenches repeatedly. His eyes slowly close as he focuses on his breathing, rhythmic breaths, in and out until he is calm enough to look at me. 

“Let me kill her.” He demands so softly as he reaches down and runs his fingers along my shoulder and arm. 

“Not today, Enz. Not today. And I’m going to need you to control that anger around her… because I’m going to need you to ask her out.” I toss my chin back so I can see his full face and he looks down at me angrily but instead of anger I see resigned defeat and he groans before nodding his head. 

“I will hate every second.”

“I would expect nothing less.” I grin.

“Should I shift now or wait for you to fall asleep?” he asks me softly. I turn to my side and snuggle into his lap, making sure he can’t see the blush on my cheeks.

“Ummm, you can stay in human form the whole night… if you want.”

“Yes, mistress,” he says, his voice sounding breathy.

“And you could you, maybe, move behind me… So I don’t turn that way and hurt my head?”

I swear I can hear him swallow before mumbling a low yes and extracting himself from me before moving up behind me and wrapping his big muscular arms around me.