Why Lie? (Love Riddles #2) (12 page)

“Will they X-ray everywhere else as well?” she asks.

There’s a serious possibility that my mom wants Sydney out of all of her casts more than Sydney does. For some reason, my mom is certain Sydney will take me back, even after hearing what a mess I made.

“Not sure, Mom.”

“What are you going to do when you get back to your place?” she asks.

A chuckle has me lifting my gaze to look over at my dad. He’s sitting on the loveseat on the other side of the room, watching us and loving every minute of it.

I drag my hand over my face before saying, “How about we talk about you? How was your day? It’s sunny out. Do you want to move to the deck?”

“That’s my cue to stop bugging you, isn’t it?” she replies.

Stretching out my hand, I rest it above her elbow. “You’ll never bug me, Mom, no matter how hard you try.”

Her mouth gets tight in the way it does when she’s trying not to cry. “All I want is for you to be happy.”

My throat starts to clog. “I know that.”

She pats my hand with hers and smiles at me. “So, think you can talk her into coming to visit me?”

My dad doesn’t chuckle this time, he full on laughs.

Her head turns in his direction and she jokes, “I’m happy I’m amusing you over there.”

Then, she looks back at me. “Well?”

Now what?

My staring at Heath’s door isn’t going to bring my grandparents back. They aren’t going to suddenly rethink abandoning me with him, no matter how hard I wish they would.

At least Gigi had the decency to help me wash my hair while Heath went to see his mom. I’m ashamed to admit I had forgotten about how sick she was.

When Gigi told me he still visited her every day, in addition to driving all the way to see me, I felt something not unlike guilt at ignoring him. Here he was dealing with colossal crap and I was holding a grudge. Out of everyone I knew, other than Gigi and Pops, he was the only person who had visited me every single day. Even my parents only flew out and stayed for just over a week.

In their defense, it wasn’t like there was much they could do. My mom offered to fly back out to take care of me, but I told her not to. She’s a worrier and would have driven me crazy. Plus, she’d likely try to put weird crap like seaweed or bone broth in my smoothies. Last thing I want to do is feel like I have to vomit with my mouth wired shut.

Heath hadn’t even asked my permission. He’d come to see me whether I wanted him there or not. As much as it sucked to admit, there was a lot I needed to thank him for.

“Can I get you anything?”

I look from the door to his face, his light blue eyes gray in the darkening room. He needed to stop being so nice; it was putting a hitch in my whole hating him plan.

Distance would be helpful.

With a tilt of my head toward the hallway, I say, “I think I’ll go lie down.”

He stands. “Here, let me help you.”

Before I can argue, he’s behind me and pushing me to his spare bedroom.

“You don’t have to,” I murmur, my right hand gripping the arm of my chair.

If he heard me, he makes no indication. My head twists to the right as he passes the spare room, and wheels me into his room.

“This is your room,” I hiss.

“I know, the bed is bigger so you’ll be more comfortable,” he explains from behind me.

I’ve spent every night since the mudslide in a twin-sized hospital bed. The double in his spare room will already be plenty big in comparison.

“The bed in your spare room will be fine and you already moved the TV there,” I argue.

“My dad upgraded the TV in their den. I brought their old one back with me to go in here. It was bigger than the one I had.”

No, I cannot sleep in his bed.

“I’ll pull the blankets back,” he says, moving past me and straight to his bed.

My brain cries out for him not to touch the sheets I’ll need to sleep against. It will be impossible to block him from my thoughts if they smell like him. I banish that thought, realizing that by being in his house in the first place has already done that. The whole place smells like his cologne, somehow clean, woodsy and spicy all at the same time.

Being surrounded by the subtle hints of his scent is torture. I know exactly where that scent is the strongest: on his skin. Worse, I know what each and every one of those places taste like. I had sought them out, pushed him back onto my bed and licked, kissed, and nibbled his skin in search of the places where his irresistible scent was the strongest.

Gulping, I focus on my lap, praying that he can’t see how his nearness still affects me. That’s why I’m not ready when his hand is suddenly under me, lifting me up as his other arm cradles me against his chest. He then settles me gently onto his bed.

This is the first time I’ve been in his bed. All of our time together had been spent at my place. That should have been a red flag that he was trying to hide our . . . relationship is not the right word, our whatever we were.

“This is weird,” I murmur, my right hand pulling away from the fabric of his sheets as if it burns.

He ignores me. “I’ll be right back with the TV.”

I stare at the spot were seconds ago he stood. What would he do if I got back into my chair and wheeled myself to his spare room? Would he just pick me up and carry me back here? I can’t sleep in his bed. I can barely wrap my brain around the idea of sleeping in his apartment at all.

His bed? No.

I was under the impression I’d be in his spare room. Did that plan somehow change when he was at his parents? That seems like a cruel and unusual punishment. My head against his pillows? Does someone hate me?

That’s the only logical explanation I can come up with. It’s not fair to be tempted considering what he did. The thing that scares me the most though is his motivation. Is the only reason he’s doing all of this because he feels guilty?

It won’t take a rocket scientist to figure out he was the reason I was up at the cabin in the first place. Are his visits and his need to take care of me now coming from him feeling obligated to?

“This won’t take long to set up,” he says, walking back through the door, a decent-sized flat screen TV in his hands.

It was definitely bigger than the one currently in the spare room.

He keeps talking. “I have Netflix and all the movie channels or if you want, I can rent something on pay per view.”

“You don’t have to do this,” I softly argue.

He straightens a cord that goes from the cable box to his TV still in his hand. “I know that. I want to do this.”

“What if I don’t want you to do this?” I press.

“Set up the TV?” he asks with a teasing smile.

He wants me to come out and say it.

“Take care of me.”

He drops the cord and crosses the room to me.

Sitting on the edge of his bed, he places a hand on either side of my neck, his thumbs coming to rest below my ears. “I want to take care of you and I want you in my bed, long after your casts come off.”

He did not just say that.

I stare at him. Inside my chest I can actually feel my heart twist. How can one beating jumble of flesh melt and freeze all at the same time? His words are almost irresistible but I know what happened to Eve after she was tempted by that snake.

He won’t draw me in again.

As pretty as the picture he paints seems, I know how those colors will bleed and run in the rain. “You don’t always get what you—”

He cuts me off before I can finish by lightly, so very lightly, pressing his lips to mine.

How can a kiss hurt more than a broken bone?

The pain isn’t physical. His lips are feather light against mine; it’s mental. It’s a rip, a tear in the shield I’ve wrapped around myself.

I wasn’t prepared for a gentle assault, none of my defenses worked. My fingers itch to reach for him, to grab on tight and hold him to me, to never ever let him go. He’s quicksand though; he has a way of dragging me down before I’ll have a chance of getting away.

Pulling my head back, I stare at him as he slowly opens his eyes and stares back.

“Do you want to pick the first movie?”

I blink. What?

Wait, is that seriously what he just said?

“I’m not watching a movie with you,” I grumble.

His expression is innocent as he replies, “You won’t even know I’m here. I just want to check out the picture quality.”

“The picture quality?” I ask.

He hooks a thumb over his shoulder and answers, “On the new-to-me TV.”

“What if I want to take a nap?” I ask.

He shrugs. “You can sleep through anything so I’ll keep the volume down.”

“Why don’t you let me sleep in your spare room?”

He pushes off from the bed and moves back to fiddling with the cords on the back of the TV. “I want you here.”

His answer is as simple as it is confusing.

“Why?”

He doesn’t hesitate and replies, “You already know the answer to that.”

That has me holding my tongue and turning his words over and over in my head. He continues to work on his TV while I watch. It’s not fair that even doing something so mundane, something as boring as hooking up a TV to a cable box and DVD player, he can be so attractive.

His gray T-shirt fits snugly across his broad shoulders and when he lifts one arm to reach a cord on the other side of the TV stand, his shirt lifts to expose a sliver of tan skin at his waist.

His soccer shorts hang low on his hips, drawing my eyes to places they should not go, let alone linger. If there wasn’t a giant pulsing red flag all over him, I’d chain him to a bed and keep him for my own personal enjoyment. Once I have these freaking casts off, at least.

Darn pulsing red flag. As long as that thing was around, I wasn’t going anywhere near him.

“Since you’re tired, I’ll pick the first movie,” Heath says, pulling me from my thoughts.

His eyes are on me and the smirk on his face makes me wonder if he caught me checking him out. My eyes go squinty and his smirk only deepens. All you have to do is keep your distance, I remind myself.

He leaves the room, returning shortly with a DVD case in his hand. Once he loads it into the player, he comes and stretches out beside me on the bed.

“What are you doing? My voice is as shrill as I can manage behind the wires.

“Getting comfortable,” he explains, trying and failing to look innocent.

“You cannot lie in bed with me.”

He rubs his hands over the stretch of bed between us. “If you promise to stay on your side, I promise to stay on mine.”

Annoyed, I look around his room, anywhere but at him. A hole on the same wall as where his new TV sits catches my eye.

Before I can stop myself, my curiosity gets the better of me. “What happened to your wall?”

When he doesn’t reply, I look at him. His eyes are on the hole.

I start to repeat my question when he replies, “I punched it.”

He punched it?

Holy crap.

I’ve seen Heath pissed. Once I witnessed him and Jake Whitmore almost come to blows at Lola’s. That had been a shock then and seeing the evidence of his anger here in his apartment doubles it.

“Why?”

You’d think with a mouth wired shut I’d talk less.

His eyes move from the hole to lock onto mine. “I heard you took off with some guy.”

He did not just say that.

“You did not just say that.”

“You asked,” he mutters.

“Let me get this straight,” I hiss. “I leave because you get engaged and that pissed you off enough to punch a hole in your wall?”

I purposely do not admit the guy everyone thought I took off with was imaginary and that I actually crashed on Cecil’s couch. No, let him think I was sexing it up with some random guy. Serves him right.

“That engagement was a mistake. You have to believe that by now..”

I cross my good arm over my chest and glare at the TV. He is impossible. There is no point trying to reason with him. I’m just going to ignore him and take a nap.

Hopefully, if I’m asleep, he won’t be able to piss me off.

Unfortunately, all that talking made my jaw start to hurt. I lift my hand to cup it.

“Need a pain pill?” Heath asks, all frustration gone from his voice, now only concern in its place.

Glumly, I nod.

He gets up. In a flash, he’s back with one of my pills and a glass of water with a straw. Without argument I accept his help. In my defense I’m in pain.

“Can I get you anything else?”

When I shake my head, he gets back onto the bed.

Remote in hand, he starts the movie, a superhero action flick. Not that I’ll ever admit it to him, but it’s one of my favorites. Who doesn’t like a superhero movie?

As intent as I become in watching it, sleep still tugs at me. Settling further into soft pillows that smell like the man I wish I could forget, I drift.

A cannon blast or some sort of similar explosion from the movie startles me from my nap. Blinking open my eyes, I’m met with a wall of gray chest. Somehow as I slept, I either moved closer to him or he moved closer to me.

We’ve met somewhere in the middle of his bed. My good side snuggled close to him, his arm draped over me, a warm solid weight across my middle.