Without another word, she turned and stomped toward the house, and I took that as my sign to get the fuck out of there while I still had some of my sanity intact.
12
Stella
It was five o’clock onThursday afternoon. Normally, I’d still be at work, but I had somewhere else to be, and thought it would be a good idea to walk. A storm had blown through the city earlier, and I’d been hoping that meant it would cool off some. Nope. Instead, it was still hot, but with the added bonus of being so humid it felt like you could chew the air.
Several days had passed since the party at my parents’, and Theo and I had barely spoken since. Just enough for me to tell him when to pick me up tomorrow and what to expect from our next evening together.
Over the past five days, I’d been desperately trying to balance my current stress load: meditating every morning, doing yoga every night before bed, limiting caffeine to one mid-afternoon matcha, eating the blandest diet humanly possible, and completely avoiding the news and social media. Every time I started to feel even the tiniest bit anxious, I began my breathing exercises, even if I was mid–tattoo session, which had confused more than a few clients. But this, I’d found, was the only way to face a full-blown flare, which I wasdefinitelyin, thanks to that absolute shit-fuck, Theo, and the fact that I was three million dollars in debt to him.
My stomach hadn’t been this bad in over a year, burning anytime I ate too much or too little. I woke up every morning with a sore throat because I was forced to sleep upright, my mouth dropping open despite the sling I wore around my head that was supposed to prevent it.
I was constantly nauseated. Constantly in pain. I’d started limiting my appointments and taking hour-long baths after work because floating in a pool of hot water while watching ASMR videos on my tablet was the only time besides sleeping when I had any relief from this hell.
My stomach twinged, and I cut off my self-pitying thoughts, starting up another breathing exercise to slow my racing pulse while a gust of wind sent raindrops splattering down from the buildings that towered overhead.
I pulled up the hood of my rain jacket, dodging puddles, bikes, and the swaying umbrellas of other pedestrians. Strands of hair clung to my neck. A bead of sweat rolled down my back. I was starting to feel like a bog witch, but one of the best things for gastritis was gentle movement, especially walking, so I was willing to ride out the yuck until I got to the hospital.
What the hell was I going to do about this whole Theo situation? He was suchan asshole that I was desperate to find a new way out of my debt. Maybe I could blackmail him back, find out his hidden weaknesses and use them against him.
Unfortunately, I didn’t exactly know how to do that. It wasn’t like I’d stalked anyone before, and god knew I didn’t have the time to take up a new hobby. I had the shop to run, appointments to keep. I couldn’t afford to take much more time off. Literally. I hadn’t been lying to Theo when I said my inheritance was tied up. I was fully dependent on the shop’s income to pay my bills, so I’d just have to find some other way to find out more about him. A private detective, maybe? How expensive were those? Probably out of my budget.
I could abandon the blackmail plan entirely and set aside my hatred to worm my way into Theo’s good graces. Or I could get him drunk. Drug him, tie him up, and torture him. Fuck him senseless so he’d be so blissed out from coming that he’d drop his guard and answer my questions.
I set that last thought on fire and shoved it off a cliff for good measure. Rule number one meant sex with Theo wasnevergoing to happen. Even without it, I wouldn’t be tempted. Not even if he was the last man on earth. Not even if it would save my life. I’d rather die without the confirmation that he gave a mediocre wienering, at best.
Men that good-looking were always subpar in bed, because they’d never had to work for it. He was probably as vanilla as they came, missionary only, and cried when he climaxed. I’d tried to tell myself that the kiss in the tattoo shop had been a singular irregularity. A glitch in the matrix. Either that or I’d been so touch-starved that anything would have seemed amazing in the moment.
But then our second kiss at the party was just as good as the first. Which was why I’d been steadfastly ignoring the fact that it had happened, and would now go back to doing exactly that again.
A car drove past, close to the curb, hitting a puddle and sending a wave of water cascading toward me. I barely managed to leap out of the way, blaming the near-miss on Theo. If I hadn’t been so distracted by his dumb, stupid existence, I wouldn’t have almost gotten drenched.
Focusing on the sidewalk, I trudged onward, but try as I might, my thoughts kept circling back to him, as they had all week. How far would he go to get what he wanted? Who else did I know that might end up hurt by him? And was I really going to just play along with his sadistic little game without putting up a fight? If the way I froze in my father’s study was anything to go by, the sad truth was that I just might, and I hated the thought. But what could I even do? My brother’s future was on the line, along with my family’s (somewhat tarnished) name.
I still had no answers when I arrived at my destination half an hour later, passing beneath the hospital’s welcome sign and heading for the nearest elevator bank. Johnson Memorial was the largest medical facility in the city, and I’d been here so many times over the past seven years that I knew the layout like the back of my hand. I took the elevator up to the third floor, signed in at the nurses’ station for visiting hours, and strode down the hall.
“Knock, knock,” I said, sticking my head into a small room. “I hope you aren’t hooking up with a hot nurse.”
The woman in the bed closed her book and sent me a flat look. “Ha, ha, ha.”
Runa Lund was in her early forties, with the pale skin and white-blond hair that indicated her Norwegian heritage. My gaze roamed over her, instantly looking for signs of how she was feeling. Dark circles sat beneath her ice-blue eyes, and her skin was washed out, cheeks hollow, mouth pinched with what looked like pain. She’d gotten out of surgery two days ago, but I knew well enough not to visit within thirty-six hours because she was especially susceptible to medications and was always too loopy to do much more than mumble and giggle.
This time, she was in for TMR (targeted muscle reinnervation) surgery to ease the phantom pain she felt in her legs. Both had been amputated above the knee, but her right one gave her more trouble than her left, and she’d decided to have that one (hopefully) fixed first.
“Don’t give me that look,” I said as I sank into the chair next to her bed. “It’s not like I haven’t caught you getting freaky with hospital staff before.”
She slapped my shoulder with her book. “How many times do I have to tell you he was fixing the EKG electrode on my chest?”
“Sure he was,” I said, sliding my chair out of her reach. “You know, I bet I could find another person tocheck your electrodeagain, if you’re feeling frisky. These private rooms come with all sorts of perks.”
I dodged sideways to avoid the book flying toward my head.
“That’s literary abuse,” I said, scooping it off the floor and tossing it back on the bed.
“I am two seconds away from pushing the emergency button,” Runa threatened.
I held my hands up. “Fine, I’ll behave.”
