“What if they’re lying? What if I’m terrible for Jessica?”
“Are you?”
“No. But how do you know that for sure? Why would you trust me?”
“She’s still alive. House is still standing. You’re driving me to the phone store.”
She stares at me while I watch what seems to be my logic filtering through her brain. Her eyes start to water, and her entire expression tightens while she blinks and turns forward again and pulls back onto the street. She’s breathing hard. The splotchy red stains are spreading down her neck, and her knuckles are white on the steering wheel. At the next three stop signs, she brakes so hard that we’re both thrust forward against our seatbelts.
Tell her, I hear Caden say in the back of my head.Just tell her you don’t want to be alone.
Great plan.
Everything about her says she wants to be alone.
Or at least not with me.
I keep my head forward as we leave the residential area and approach a major road lined with restaurants, markets, and strip malls. About a mile left to get to the right strip mall.
A dozen or so stoplights.
She hits the button on the display, then another button, and pop music comes out of the speakers. It’s so drowned out by the sound of the air conditioning that I can’t tell what song is playing.
Probably wouldn’t know what it was even if I could hear it.
Ziggy’s still breathing heavy. She’s also blinking too much.
Fuck.
Is she having morning sickness?
Was it something with the text message she got?
Or is it me?
I open my mouth and get an instant side-eye glare.
So I keep my jaw shut until we pull up to the store.
She stops in the fire lane right at the door.
No messing around.
Justget your fucking crutches and get out of my car.
At least, that’s what I presume she’s thinking as she finally looks at me again.
Fuck it.
I look her straight in the eye. “House could use some life for once. Stay. Long as you need to. I don’t—I don’t want to be alone there, but I don’t—I don’t know where else to go. I don’t—I’m the guy who takes care of other people. I’m not the guy who needs help, and I don’t—I justdon’t.”
That wariness is back in her expression. “This—me—I guess we’re both having a bad day.”
Shiiiiiiit.
There’s no mistaking the way the wheels instantly start turning in my brain.
An attractive woman in my orbit is having a bad day.
