“If you call me Snack Bitch, I swear to God, Theo...” I’d had about all I could take tonight.
We passed through the living room, and he paused just long enough to get a good look at Amos in his cage. “Why would anyone ever want to keep a bird as a pet?”
“He was my grandmother’s.” I dropped my voice, not wanting Amos to overhear the next part even though I knew he probably wouldn’t understand it. “And no one else in the family wanted him.”
Theo grunted and shouldered open the bedroom door, passing into the en suite and setting me down beside the shower while he turned it on.
“I’m fine now,” I told him. “You can leave.”
He shot me a look like I was stupid. “Please. It’s not anything I haven’t seen before, and if your mother has taught me anything besides how to mispronounce even the most basic words, it’s that you suck at taking care of yourself. Where do you keep your trash bags?”
“Beneath the kitchen sink,” I grumbled.
He left the room, and I crossed my arms over my chest, starting to shiver again, suddenly freezing without his body heat. I needed to get out of this ruined dress, but I had a feeling Theo meant for me to put it straight in the trash, so I stripped off just the bodice because the wet fabric clinging to my breasts felt like the coldest part of me.
A minute later, I heard a rustling sound before he slipped back in.
“Here,” he said, dropping to a crouch with the bag open. “Step out of the dress.”
The sight of him, practically kneeling at my feet, hit me like a bulldozer. This obnoxious, proudassholewas actually trying to help someone other than himself for once, and I couldn’t decide if I was touched or turned on.
Definitely Stockholm syndrome,I thought. I’d been forced to endure the presence of my blackmailer for so long that the lines were starting to blur between us. Physically? They’d been fucked since our first disastrous run-in. But after what he’d just revealed about his mother, I felt myself softening toward him emotionally, too. I wanted to know more. Crack open his brain and sift through the matter until I understood what made him tick, all the traumas that had led to him being such a mean, closed-off person.
He glanced up at me. “I’m trying to help you. Quit looking at me like you’re back to planning my death.”
“Have you heard my mom say ‘murderer’?”
“No.”
“She pronounces itmer-dare-er.” I told him, pushing down the waist of the dress.
“Here.” He guided my hand to his shoulder.
I braced myself on it and stepped out of the dress. He kept his eyes downcast, gathering the fabric into the trash bag. My bra and underwear soon followed. Setting the bag aside, he went to pull the shower curtain open, and my hand slipped free from him as he stood.
“Get in,” he ordered.
“Only if you say please.”
Annoyance swept over his face. “Stella, your fucking lips are blue. This isn’t the time for jokes.”
I glanced in the mirror. I’d been steadfastly ignoring my reflection, and yikes, for good reason. I looked like a corpse. Black-rimmed eyes, parchment-paper skin, bones sticking out, and yup, blue lips.
“Please get into the shower,” Theo said, low and ardent and, oh god, I liked the sound of him sayingpleaselike that.
He gave me a gentle shove forward, and I managed to stumble in, hissing when the hot water met my frigid skin.
He jerked his head inside. “What happened?”
“Nothing. Water’s hot.”
He pulled back, leaving the curtain open a crack, and started yanking off his clothes, muttering darkly under his breath about stupid, stubborn women insisting on contracting hypothermia.
“I couldn’t get back in that car,” I said.
He shut up.
I probably should have turned my head away and given him some privacy, but the sight of Theo stripping made the threat of hypothermia worth it. He pulled his shirt off, bending to shove it into the garbage bag, and I had my first real glimpse of his wide back, his skin puckered with goose bumps, muscles flexing. My gaze snagged on three small imperfections: circular scars that were about the size of... cigarettes.
