Many thanks to everyone who has reviewed and given your (sometimes very strong) opinions. And also, to my unofficial beta, LadyLogicCanoe (previously known as Shreek) for find what was wrong with the chapter when I simply couldn't.

Chapter 7

Friday morning I was awakened by the ringing of a phone. My phone, probably, but that kind of thought was nowhere near my head. What was near my head was everything I had consumed the previous day. Literally. At some point during the night I must have vomited in my sleep. My first sight when I opened my eyes was the pool of bile and half-digested food. The stench arrived a moment behind and my stomach was rolling again. It was all I could do to dash across the apartment to the bathroom, one hand clamped over my mouth and the other arm wrapped around my middle.

I emptied what remained in my stomach and was washing my face when the trill of my phone reached my waterlogged ears – at least I hoped they were only waterlogged and not vomit logged as well. Anything was possible when you slept on a pillow of your own vomit. I might have gone in search of my phone then, had I not caught sight of myself in the vanity mirror. There was vomit all through my hair. The phone was going to have to wait. There was no way I could let that fester there. The stench alone would have me retching again within minutes.

An hour later I emerged, pink skinned and fresh, from the shower. The scalding water and steam had helped with a lot of the hangover symptoms, but I was still left with a queasiness I knew only the cure could … uh… cure….

The phone was ringing again. Or still. I'll be the first to admit that I wasn't paying attention to anything outside the bathroom up until that point. Studiously avoiding the living room, where I knew there was a God-awful mess waiting to be cleaned up – or added to, depending on how well my stomach held out – I made my way to the kitchen in search of my phone. What I found there, though, had me frozen in my tracks just inside the arched doorway.

The scent of Bulgari shower gel drifted across the space and straight into my nostrils, infusing my brain with the memories of all the individual moments we had spent together. I allowed myself a brief moment to steel myself against his powers of attraction, closing my eyes and blowing out a breath. When I inhaled once more, it wasn't Bulgari, but the smell of coffee and … I almost moaned. He'd brought the cure.

"Babe," he said quietly, standing from the small breakfast table.

"What are you doing here?" I demanded, crossing my arms over my chest in a defensive measure. I was feeling particularly vulnerable this morning; not at all the fiery ball of anger I'd embodied when last I was faced with Ricardo Carlos Manoso.

"I thought you could use the cure," he explained, gesturing to the paper bag emblazoned with the iconic golden arches. "And I wanted to apologise for the way I've treated you."

"I'm not ready to accept your apology," I stated bluntly. And I wasn't. As much as it pained me to push him away, I couldn't get past the fact that he'd practically ignored me for three weeks, during which time he'd made a major, life-changing decision on my behalf and didn't bother to even warn me. I needed more than sixteen hours to come to terms with his betrayal. I had to close my eyes once more against the ever so slight change in expression that crossed his face. He'd clearly been expecting me to forgive him. "Please leave. I have things to do."

"Babe."

I shook my head, eyes still closed and had to throw a hand out to grab the wall so I wouldn't fall over. My balance was still being affected by the alcohol trying to leave my system"No. I have nothing to say to you at the moment," I informed him.

"Will you give me a chance to ex-."

"No," I intoned, finally opening my eyes to stare past his head. "I need time. I can't just flip a switch and pretend like everything is okay." Slowly, I inhaled a deep breath and repeated. "Please leave."

To my surprise, Ranger gave a short, almost jerky nod and turned on his heel toward the front entryway. I stayed put, not trusting myself to move until I heard the door open and close, the locks sliding into place. Almost as soon as he was gone, my phone was ringing again, and I realised that it was coming from the entryway, where I'd left everything when I arrived home last night.

By the time I'd made it to the door and dug the phone out from my bag, which had been placed neatly on the shelf above the shoe rack, the ringing had stopped. Such is my luck. I tapped on the missed call icon in the corner of the screen and almost blanched. Seventeen missed calls. Another tap brought up the list view of the log and I relaxed a little. They were all from Tank, Lester and Bobby. Not my mother. Thank god.

I would have called them back, if it weren't for the fact that I didn't know which to call. The most recent three were from Lester, and I hadn't received a call from Tank in over two hours. Sighing, I figured they would be calling again before long, so decided to take the phone back to the kitchen with me to get stuck into the deep fried medicine that was the only good thing to come from Ranger's appearance this morning.

Just as I predicted, the phone rang once more when I half way through scarfing down the salty foods, drenched heavily in ketchup.

"Hello?" I greeted around the chicken nugget I'd just popped into my mouth.

"Steph," Bobby returned. "How are you?"

"Fine," I assured him, but even I could hear the resignation in my voice.

Bobby made a noise in his throat that I didn't recognise. "No, really," he insisted. "Are you okay? We heard you had an unscheduled meeting with Ranger yesterday afternoon."

"Confrontation," I corrected on a sigh. "Argument."

"That too," he agreed. "So are you holding up okay? Hank was pretty concerned by how calm you were when you left."

"I'm fine, Bobby," I said, sipping on the Coke Ranger had left. "I'm… shattered and broken and…" I inhaled slowly, acknowledging the way my breath shook. "Hungover." Recalling my wake up call, I added, "And there's a mess of, of… vomit in my living room waiting for me to clean it up. But I'm fine."

"You drank last night?" Bobby asked. "It must have been a lot. You don't usually toss your cookies."

I murmured agreement while dragging a fry through sauce and trying not to think of the way my sick had clung to my face and hair. "If I do," I commented, "I'm at least usually awake for it."

"Shit, Steph," Bobby said, sounding far more worried than he had a moment ago. "That's really dangerous! You could have choked to death." He paused a moment and I imagined him slowing his heartbeat in order to calm down. Clearly, I had not choked and died, so I was alright. That was the important point of the matter. "Do you need me to do a drive by McDonald's and get you the cure?" he asked. It was very sweet, and had I not already had the cure in front of me, I might have taken him up on the offer. That and the fact that I couldn't stand to see the pity in his eyes when he saw how much of a mess I was at the moment. My life had gone from pretty okay to a complete shambles in the last twenty four hours and I didn't need any more witnesses to my downward spiral.

"Thank you, but no," I assured him firmly. "Ranger…" I had to pause a second to even out the trembling in my voice. "Ranger already… brought it."

"Oh," he uttered, sounding surprised. "I'll go so you can get back to him, then."

I shook my head. "He's not here anymore," I explained. "We… I don't think we're together anymore. I can't stand to look at him. What he did… I just… It was a low blow."

Bobby murmured something, taking a moment to form real words. "None of us wanted to sign the contract," he informed me. "Lester, Tank and I all tossed the forms on Ranger's desk and refused. We argued with him for hours, but ultimately, we need our jobs, so we had to sign. Clearly we each decided that even though we couldn't help you during work hours, it didn't mean we had to cut you out of our lives completely. I'm so sorry things turned out the way they did. I should have told you."

"No," I countered. "It's not your fault. I – He –," Another sigh escaped me. "Ranger should have told me. I should have taken the time to go see him sooner. I had a feeling something was going on, but he just, um, he kept saying he was really busy with the expansion." I squeezed my eyes shut, thinking of the way Ranger had looked at me when the elevator doors slid open. The usual desire was there, but there was a tension around his eyes. He wasn't happy to see me. "I didn't want to be that annoying girl who demands so much of his time," I told Bobby. "Apparently, I was anyway…" The

"Steph, Ranger was out of line," Bobby insisted. "And he's gonna get his ass kicked for it. No one agrees with how he handled this."

"Fine," I sighed. "But you don't need to worry about me… helping me anymore. I don't want you to put your jobs and lives in jeopardy. I'll be fine on my own."

Bobby's voice was half an octave higher when he responded. "Don't be ridiculous."

Shoving a bunch of fries into the sauce, I took a deep breath and let him know, with more confidence than I felt at that moment, "I can do this without you all holding my hand. It's time for me to stand on my own two feet." And with that I hung up, turning the phone all the way off to avoid further calls. I wasn't in the mood to talk anyway. I was barely in the mood to be awake, but I knew that I couldn't sleep until I'd done something about the mess on the couch. Maybe I should just through the whole thing away. It wouldn't be the first time I'd disposed of an item of furniture because it got gross bodily fluids on it.

I finished off my breakfast, and sculled the luke warm coffee Ranger had poured before grabbing the only pair of rubber gloves I owned – though I don't remember ever actually buying them – and got to work on the living room. A while later, I had all the carnage from the night before double bagged and sitting by the door while I tried to decide whether the couch was salvageable. Most of the puke had actually been contained to the comforter, with a portion on one of the cushions and a bit of a splatter down the front. I'd already removed and bagged the offending cushion cover, but there was a large wet patch on the cushion itself. Probably, it would be okay if I scrubbed and turned it over, but my head kept visualising the bile seeping into the cushion fibres and staying there. In comparison, the spatter on the front of the couch itself seemed barely worth mentioning.

Eventually, I decided that I could save the couch, but I would need to get a new cushion and cover. Hopefully that would be cheaper, too. Funds were running low. I had no idea how I was going to survive without the help of Ranger and the Merry Men. Probably, I was going to have to bite the bullet and get a job at the button factory like my mom always wanted. Unless….

The idea came to me so suddenly, I expected to see a lightbulb hovering over my head if I looked up. It was perfect. It solved my problem of not being able to successfully do my job without the help of the guys, and had the added bonus of giving Ranger a big heaping helping of F You. Maybe I could prove to everyone that I didn't need to be babysat. I didn't need them to constantly pick up the pieces of my life. I could do it on my own. It was going to be a long road, and I didn't even really know where to start, but the decision was made. I was going to get training. I was going to turn myself into a kick ass bounty hunter and rub it in Ranger's face.

I'll be back with more next week. Until then, don't get shot!