“Or because she’s strong-willed, hardheaded, and takes unnecessary risks,” London retorted. She pulled a phone from the pocket of her long white lab coat. “I need to let Samiah know what’s going on.”

As she walked away with the phone to her ear, Jamar remained in the uncomfortable waiting room chair, suffocating under the guilt weighing down on him. He’d known the more he pushed Taylor, the more she would push right back. Until she pushed too far.

He didn’t even consider what effect this could have on her work until Taylor mentioned it. He could pay her hospital bill, but what if she’d permanently damaged her ankle? If there was one thing he knew about, it was career-ending injuries.

If she couldn’t work, what would she do?

He could ask that same question of himself. What would happen if he took a blow to the knee that permanently knocked him out of commission? How would he support his family or Silas’s family? What kind of spokesperson would he be for Taylor’d Conditioning?

If there even was a Taylor’d Conditioning after those doctors got through with her back there.

Jamar squeezed his eyes shut.

He had to figure out a way to make this up to Taylor. Although he had no idea how.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Taylor swiped through the selfies she’d forced Jamar to take with her before leaving the hospital three days ago, and posted another to her Instagram account. Just because she was laid up with a bum ankle didn’t mean their fake relationship had to suffer.

She set the phone on the coffee table and went back to her comic book. As she flipped through the latest in the Nisekoi: False Love series—big ups to London for scoring her a copy—she absently reached for the bottle of kombucha Samiah had placed on the coffee table before she left to run errands. Her pull on the straw was met with nothing but air.

“Well, shit,” Taylor said, squinting at the empty bottle.

She gingerly shifted her propped foot on the pillow, trying to decide if it was worth the trouble to hobble to the refrigerator on those stupid crutches.

Her ankle had turned from a bluish red to a deep, dark purple, but at least it was no longer the size of a cantaloupe. Now it was only a grapefruit. And the persistent throb had lessened to an on-again/off-again ache, so yay her.

Taylor cut her eyes to the vial of prescription pain pills the ER doctor had prescribed and pointed her middle finger at it. Every single pill was still in the bottle. She’d popped a couple of the ibuprofen she kept in her purse for cramps—because there wasn’t a person out there tough enough to handle cramps—but that was the extent of her medicating. A measly little ankle sprain wasn’t enough to keep her down.