He shrugged, a playful smile teasing his lips. His eyes were telling a different story, though, one that was tinged with uncertainty and worry for whatever rejection he was expecting to come.
Had I been so damn avoidant that he’d believed I’d do something like that? Even after all ofthis?
‘Friday was really rough for me’. He’d told me that much over the radio.
How deeply had I hurt this man after running away?
Turning away from the stove, I reached forward to slip my fingers into his hair, bringing him down to kiss me. His lips fit against mine perfectly, his head tilting to the side just enough to deepen it and send a shiver racing up my spine.
Whatever these next three months brought, I’d do whatever I could to make things up to Marlow. He meant too much to me to let me see him suffer, even due to my own insecurities and self-preservation.
I hoped I could make things right.
Even if it was only until he got better and moved on to big and brighter things after me.
CHAPTER 25
Marlow
“I’m fine, Ma.”
The phone’s speaker rattled against my ear as she let out a long, labored sigh on the other end of it, the tell-tale cue for the beginning of a lecture being wound up for the proverbial batter making their way up to the plate to crack the home run hitter over the grandstands.
To think I once believed I was in the clear of being my mother’s problem child after I graduated. Naive, apparently, considering my track record. Turns out, I’d only just been getting started on sending her to an early grave with the chronic stress of being out of her house and running wild out in the world to my heart’s content.
Being a free bird sometimes meant consequences for not just me, but everyone else who loved and supported me, too.
A rather sobering thought, now that it was all sinking in.
“Marlow Alexander...” I winced at her tone. “I don’t care how well those pain meds are working. I am coming over there totake care of you until you get that damn cast off. And that’s final.”
Yeesh. Talk about a mother’s undying love.
Under any other circumstance, I would’ve loved to invite her over to wait on me hand and foot, just like any other spoiled only child in my position. The promise of home cooked meals on the regular, complete and undivided attention from my first and only caretaker just like I had when I was a child, and an overwhelming amount of praise over simple things like lifting a single finger to do something, was incredibly tempting.
Who wouldn’t want to take up an offer like that?
It was every mama’s boy’s wet dream.
The problem was that I had a grand plan already in the midst of enacting that I wasn’t going to let anyone, not even my own dear mother, fuck up. And that was to convince Blake to stay here with me in Ellington Heights forever.
“I’m really okay, Ma. I swear. I’ve already got someone here to help me.”
She huffed. “I thought you said you sent Niles to Cancun?”
“Someoneelse.”
My body twanged with a dull shot of pain, rolling up from the base of my spine to settle where my bruised rib was. Forcing myself to breathe through it while straightening back up from where I’d hunched myself over trying to retrieve a sock from the floor that I’d accidentally dropped on my way to getting myself dressed took way more effort than I was expecting.
Goddamn, that kills.
This is what I get for being stubborn and not letting Blake help me.
Silas insisted my ribcage hadn’t been cracked in half during and even after being airlifted to his hospital, telling me several times over that it was all in my head before I’d been discharged, despite me ragging on him to check again.
How the hell did he know there was nothing wrong without actually opening me up to see if there was some kind of hairline fracture just sitting there?
Of course, every time I’d brought it up to him, he’d slapped me with a curt,‘I’m not slicing you open to prove your delusional ass wrong.’
