He sucked in a breath, stalling in his approach.
I looked down at my feet.
“I don’t want to keep you.” I cleared my throat. “You had plans you’d said?”
“Yeah.” He shook his head like I was acting like a child. “Plans with my brother.”
“His brother,” Grayson repeated, as though the words wouldn’t register, and they hadn’t. Not the first time I heard them and not the second either.
“What?”
“His brother,” Grayson interrupted before Hendrix could answer. “His brother from Brixton who got into town today and surprised him at work. So Hendrix sent him to the house to wait until he got off work.”
“Your brother,” I said, the relationship finally clicking into place.
“Who did you think he was?” Hendrix asked, tilting his head to the side.
The question fell flat, though, and I could tell he already knew exactly what I’d thought. It was clear as day in my posture and my frown, and the guilt on Grayson’s face that made it clear he’d already told Hendrix the whole story.
I opened my mouth to answer, but the only sound that came out was a tired breath. Embarrassment reared its head as the main emotion in my chest, but it was a completely different kind of embarrassment from before.
I shook my head, lips pinched between my teeth. The words refused to leave my mouth.
Hendrix nodded, his lips pulling just a little bit tighter around the edges.
“I was worried when you didn’t answer,” he said, the intonation almost emphatic. How many times had he told me he’d been worried about me?
“I should have taken my phone,” I muttered.
“It was an order,” he leaned in and whispered, as if Grayson didn’t have sonar levels of hearing. “You gave me an order.”
“I know.”
He took another step toward me. “I left work early because I was worried. Because I thought something had gone wrong. Or I thought I haddonesomething wrong. That you’d gotten upset that my work took priority over you—”
“I’d never.”
“I wouldn’t know,” he cut off my interruption. “We barely know each other.”
“We know enough.”
“Do we?” He licked his lips and gave me a tired shrug. The weight of the past hours evident in his stature and his face. Mine too, of that I was certain. “Anyway. Grayson has explained everything to me, so we’re all on the same page now.”
“Yeah,” I rasped, the agreement bitter in my mouth.
“Wes is at the house and I need to get him settled and fed. I didn’t know he was getting into town today, hence the cancellation of our plans.”
“Yeah.”
“So, I’m going to do that.” It wasn’t a question, nor should it have been. Hendrix stepped toward me.
Toward the door.
He dipped down and kissed me, but his heart wasn’t in it.
“We can talk about the rest later,” he whispered, lips trailing from my mouth toward my ear. And just like a breath, he was gone, feet behind me and his hand on my doorknob.
“Yeah,” I said, even though I didn’t think he heard me.
