The Proposition (The Plus One Chronicles) Read Online Free PDF Page A

problem.” He let go of her hand and rubbed the space between his eyes. “I don’t want Kel to wake up alone or I’d drive you home. Let me think.”
    She didn’t want him waking up alone either. She could call her dad to come get her, but her parents would freak out if they knew what had happened tonight. They’d convince themselves that the carjacking was more proof she wasn’t smart or competent enough to take care of herself. She couldn’t deal with their doubts about her right now.
    But she could deal with this.
    “I’ll call a twenty-four-hour cab service.” They were safe. People used them all the time. She could do it. It was time she started doing these things.
    Diego dropped his hand. “I don’t know, Kat.”
    She glanced at Kellen, thought about how she’d frozen when she had needed to do something, anything, to try and keep him from being stabbed. She didn’t want to be that woman anymore. Didn’t want to be that broken. Shifting to Diego, she said, “It’ll be fine. I’ll text you once I’m home.”
    She could do it.

    ***

    Sloane stared out the window into the darkness. In the hospital bed behind him, Drake Vaugh’s breathing was ragged, that of a much older man than his fifty-some years. Sloane had flown in specialists from around the country, and they all said the same thing.
    Three to six months.
    His mentor was losing the biggest fight of his life.
    All Sloane’s wealth and power were worthless. Bringing his hand up, he rubbed the old ache where his nose had been broken a few times.
    “It’s nearly two a.m. You’ve been standing there for an hour.”
    He turned, dropped his hand and looked at the shrunken man in the bed. Drake had kicked off the sheets, leaving him clad in only a hospital gown, revealing thighs that had once rivaled tree trunks had withered to twigs. “Better question is why you’re awake.” He’d kept vigil in this room a half dozen times and Drake hadn’t woken.
    “Working up the energy to get out of this bed and put you on your ass as many times as it takes to get you to spill what’s troubling you.”
    Sloane walked over and dropped into a chair. Stretching out his legs, he laced his fingers behind his head. “Ready when you are, old man.” Nostalgia crept up on him, slipping into his chest and making it fucking hurt.
    Not the kind of pain Sloane could deal with, the kind where he worked his body until his muscles screamed. Yeah, that pain he could handle.
    This pain? Not happening. He would not go morose over this. He’d just find more doctors, had to be one out there somewhere who had an answer. People beat cancer all the time.
    “Totally would,” Drake said. “But they got me hooked up to all these wires.”
    Sloane snorted. “Excuses.”
    Drake moved his hand around until he found the remote, clicked a button and the light behind his bed snapped on. He raised his bed. “Spill it, Michaels.”
    He knew Drake was a sick man by the gauntness ravaging his face, the shadows chasing the vitality of his eyes. Yet sometimes with the right turn of his head, Sloane caught a glimpse of the man who fourteen years ago had lifted a six-and-a-half foot Sloane off the ground and heaved him into a wall. Then he’d dragged him onto a workout mat and forced Sloane to vent the violent rage boiling inside him.
    When Drake had pinned Sloane in a pool of his own sweat and blood, the man had gotten right in his face and said, “Either you control violence or it controls you. Choose.”
    Sloane had lived by those words ever since.
    But right now he needed to appease the man waiting for him to spill his guts. Unwilling to talk about Kat just yet, Sloane chose a topic that was close to Drake’s heart. “It’s Isaac from our Fighters to Mentors program. One of the other kids in the program came by the gym and told me Isaac’s skipping school, searching for ways to make money.” Drake had been mentoring Isaac, but since he’d gotten too sick, Sloane had filled in,