Ask Me If I Care (SWAT Generation 2.0 #4) - Lani Lynn Vale Page 0,5

to the table, thankful that he hadn’t stopped me.

I arrived at the table and sat down with a growl of frustration.

My brother and dad were talking to Saylor and Brooke, which suited me just fine. If they paid attention to me, they’d see that I was pissed. Then they’d assume that the asshat was to blame and would start something of it.

Ryan sat down seconds after I did, wrapping his arm around Brooke’s shoulder and pulling her in tight to his chest.

She smiled at him, but then went back to her conversation with Saylor.

I rubbed my arm and surreptitiously glanced down at it to see if it was red.

And it was, of course.

Goddammit.

I shifted in my seat, trying to hide it as best as I could, then decided that I would need to cover it up completely.

Reaching for the simple shawl that was draped over the chair, I picked it up and draped it over my shoulders, arranging it perfectly so that it covered my arm.

When I looked up from doing that, it was to see Hayes’ eyes on me. Or, more specifically, the red mark on my arm that his brother had caused.

His eyes flicked to mine, and I all but pleaded with him not to say anything.

He gritted his teeth, the muscles of his jaw flexing in annoyance, then went back to staring at the table as he took a drink.

I breathed out a sigh of relief and reached for the whiskey that’d been placed onto the table in my spot.

Taking a short swig, I nearly cried as fire licked down my throat following the liquid.

When I looked back up, it was to see amusement in Hayes’ eyes.

I looked away and contemplated pulling out my phone to pass the time, but quickly dismissed that idea.

The fastest way to get my brother to pay attention to me was pull out my phone.

So instead, I sat there like a good little girl, laughed at the appropriate times, and finished off my whiskey before the meal started.

When the meal was finished, I’d only eaten a quarter of what they’d served. The rest had gone to my brother or father.

I was a very picky eater.

I didn’t eat fish—because gross.

I didn’t eat green stuff—because double gross.

And I didn’t eat anything that resembled snot—triple gross.

Sadly, the main course was fish. There was a salad. And then the followup was a yellow custard concoction that really did resemble phlegm.

I’d passed the majority of the meal off to my brother and dad, who happily took the food because the portion sizes were too small.

I really couldn’t see how they got off charging two hundred bucks for this.

Five courses was nice and all, but the portion sizes were jokes.

I could eat a Whataburger meal with a large fry and still be hungry. And they thought a piece of meat the size of four AA batteries was going to cut it? Yeah, no.

I made a mental note to stop by Whataburger on the way home from my parents’ and returned to the meal.

Luckily, the night went off rather smoothly after that.

The auction was a success, and Ryan upped the winning bid to almost a quarter of a million dollars before a football player ended up winning the painting done by a local artist for this event specifically.

In the end, I wasn’t the least bit sad that the night was coming to a close.

“Well,” Ryan said as he stood. “It’s been fun. But I have a game tomorrow in Atlanta. Hope y’all have a great rest of your evening.”

Saylor was the only one to say goodbye to Ryan.

The rest of us said goodbye to Brooke.

Well, all of us but Hayes, who leaned back in his chair and watched them go without a word.

I breathed a sigh of relief and felt my shawl dip, exposing my likely-bruised arm.

When I yanked it back up and glanced around to see if anybody had seen, the only person I saw staring was Hayes.

And he looked pissed.

Even more pissed than before.

“I gotta go, too,” Hayes mumbled. “Have a good one.”

Ryan hadn’t even made it all the way across the floor yet, having been caught by another baseball player.

Hayes slipped past him easily and kept walking, disappearing into the darkened corridor that