“Right. Okay. Is there anything I can do now?”
“At ten o’clock at night?”
“Is it that late?” He pulled out his phone. “Shit. It is. I’m sorry.” His eyes popped back up to mine.
My phone buzzed in my hand. It was a text from Presley. She hadn’t gotten back to me earlier.A little better, but not much. What happened to hiring more help?
“Everything okay?” Elijah asked.
“Yes, fine. Work stuff.”
“Something I can help with?”
“No,” I said.Icouldn’t even do anything at the moment.
“What about food?” he asked. “I can get you food. Are you hungry at all?”
I shook my head and backed toward the door, grasping the handle behind me. “I already ate. But I’ll see you at therapy, yeah?”
“I can come back tomorrow. I’ll come—”
“Please,” I interrupted. “Please don’t…”Make promises you can’t keep.I kept those last words to myself because that would give away too much. Make him realize that my throat was burning and my eyes were stinging right now. I was just tired. I didn’t need a person. People had the ability to disappoint. To not follow through. Like he had proven today. I could take care of myself. Could take care of everything. I just needed sleep.
“Okay,” he said.
I pasted on a smile. “Looks like I don’t hit that hard after all,” I said, noting his jaw was not discolored in any way. Not even the slightest bruise.
“It was probably this great nurse I had who held some ice to my face,” he said.
“Or your Wolverine powers.”
He smiled, the guilt finally gone from his expression, and took a step back. His eyes scanned the house around me as if this gave him another piece to the puzzle he was assembling about my life in his head. “I’ll see you soon.”
I nodded.
CHAPTER 16
By “soon,” he meant early the next morning. I had been up for a while, but I’d just gotten my mom out of bed and was starting the coffee when, like the night before, there was a soft knock on the door. I was still in my pajamas. But like every morning, directly out of bed, I had already combed my hair and brushed my teeth.
“Who’s there?” Mom asked from the couch.
“I’ll check.”
“It’s too early for people,” she said.
“Agreed.” I pulled my hair into a low pony with the hair tie around my wrist and cracked open the door.
Elijah stood there with a plastic bag in his hand. “Hey.”
“Hey yourself,” I said.
He held out the bag. “Breakfast. You haven’t eaten yet, have you?”
“I haven’t.”
“I got you that omelet you had at the diner last week.”
He remembered my order from the diner?
