BOND

26.

Been pushing love away 

To save myself the hurt 

Ain't much heart left to break

~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.

As soon as Alex was out of sight, Joey tore open the thin layer of bandages wrapped around his hand and threw it in the dumpster outside his house. Alex had made too much of a big deal and gotten everybody's hands wrapped up by the nurse saying that they were 'seriously injured' and she should take care of them in the best of her ability.

Joey however found the bandages unnecessary. It wasn't that hard of a fight anyway. Grant and his bimbos didn't have the balls or aptitude to lay one hit on him, especially with Mark on his side, and the two of them had gotten out pretty much unscathed other than their banged up knuckles.

He thought back to the fight and smirked as the memory of him and Elena bumping into each other in the nurse's office resurfaced. Her attention was on the cream she was applying to her hand and he had just stood up to move out. Needless to say, it wasn't either of their best moments of poise.

She had ditched the rest of the day, he'd seen Taylor sneaking her out. He looked over at her driveway and saw somebody else's car parked out. Burying the concern that immediately rose up in him, he went into his house. Not even five minutes later the doorbell rang and he groaned at having to get up from the couch he had just made himself comfortable on.

Elena was standing on the other side and the sight was so unexpected that he did a double take and still couldn't wrap his head around it. "Why are you here?" the question came out with more hostility than was intended.

He could practically see her wimping out and debating to go right back to her house but then that wasn't the girl he knew, and she pushed past him and walked halfway into his foyer.

He waited, not meeting her eyes as she fumbled over what she wanted to say. Michael was still over at her house but school had ended and she knew that it was about time that Joey would be getting back. With the weight of everything Michael had told and the one thing he hadn't she had rushed over, not sure she could wait anymore. Now, with his gaze on everything but her, she didn't know what she could say for it to be different.

"Mike told me about..." she couldn't bring herself to finish the sentence.

Joey ground his teeth and looked at her, his blue eyes stormy enough that she could make them out from where she was standing. "Nosa Costra," he couldn't keep the distaste he had been taught to associate with that name out of his tone and she flinched at his unrelenting front.

"I didn't know, Joey," she said in a low voice, not convinced that he would believe it or not.

"Yeah, no shit," he rubbed a hand over his face and did a cursory glance of the room before his eyes came to rest on hers. "For the past ten years I've been taught to think later and kill first anybody even mildly related to that name."

She swallowed audibly as he took a step in her direction and eliminated a fraction of the space, "I don't know what to say."

His mood soured further because he knew that she didn't. "Do you get what position this has put me in?! How bad this could be for you? Or did Mike leave that part out?"

Her protective instincts were quick to kick in, "I don't have the faintest idea of what you're going through right now, Joey, but let's not pretend that either of you is an angel. This is not about him."