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I hoped that the chipper tone I used would be disarming, but who knew when it came to Bri, plus she had blunt force trauma to her head by way of office supplies.
Maybe if I was extremely agreeable, she wouldn’t keep asking. One could only hope.
She traced the white leather with her fingertip. “Is it your couch?”—she asked next—“Are we in your apartment?”
“No.”
“Did the stapler put me in a coma I’m not aware of, are you a mirage, and why am I laying dangerously close to your lap and why do you look ready to confess to homicide right now? Oh God, did I help you bury a body and just black out from the sheer trauma of the next challenge?”
I sighed, then did this rough exhale that kind of felt like I was about ready to have a panic attack and not because she’d be pissed, but because I was barely holding on by a thread as it was.
Concussed people should not be trusted with me.
At least not gorgeous ones I used to be in love with.
Used.
Right. Used. I was going to have to repeat that word a lot if I had to keep being her partner and work in close quarters with her, a penthouse suite out of a dream did not help, they even had the tiny ice in the freezer, the kind that she loved and used to force me to pick up on the way home from work from the one and only gas station in town that had it.
I always told her she was lucky I was on that side of town.
I was never on that side of town.
It was a simple lie in order to see her wide smile when I got back to the apartment. The gas to get there cost more than the ice itself, but that smile? Priceless.
The awkward throat clearing coming from my mouth probably wasn’t helping the situation while Bri really did take a look around, only to nearly fall onto the ground ass first as her legs got tangled in a blanket. “Huh? Seriously, where are we and why are you here? Is this part of the game?”
I licked my lips and leaned forward, grabbing the blanket from the ground and tossing it onto the couch. “I’m your nurse for the night, apparently you got a concussion from the stapler and you need to be woken up every few hours, I think this is the part where I say no man left behind—but really, Max gave me a key card to one of the penthouse suites away from the contestants so you could rest and I was given the task of making sure you don’t die.”
“Has anyone ever told you how charming you are?”
“Oh daily, grandmas love me too, by the way, sometimes they even give me a piece of gum just for smiling.”
“Gross.”
“Some might say cute.”
“Some might say you need to get a life if that’s what you find exciting.”
I rolled my eyes. “Whatever, you’re alive, you’re welcome for staying with you for the night. Are you hungry? Do you need to shower, actually scratch that, I’m assuming you need to shower after sweating your way through all of that but there was no chance in hell I was going to take a passed out girl under water after stripping her clothes off and this is so going downhill the more I speak isn’t it?”
Bri smirked. “I think it started going downhill with the grandma conversation and just veered off a cliff when you said passed out girl in the shower and stripping.”
“Yup.” I nodded. “On that note…” I stood and grabbed the remote from the other couch. “Should we just go for it and watch a crime drama?”
She tucked her legs underneath her body and pulled the blanket over her. “You know I’m a sucker for the ones where the women are the killers.”
I plopped back down next to her. “Why do they always use poison again?”
“Mmm, easy.” She snatched the remote from my hands and turned up the volume, then handed it back forcefully for someone who had a head injury. “Women for the most part aren’t as strong as men physically and well, we don’t really like to get our hands dirty, so for the most part we’ll choose a weapon that’s sneakier oh and also men are dumb-dumbs, they see tits, ass, and a meal in front of them and the last thing on their mind is arsenic.”
“Huh, I had you for more of a Wild Parsnip or Hemlock sort of gal.”
Bri winked. “You just earned points for even knowing that.”
“How to poison someone? Thank you, best compliment I’ve ever received might have to write it down and frame it for my living room.”
“You lead a sad, sad life, don’t you?”
