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It was sprained.
Just a sprain.
It wasn’t broken.
I’d just made the decision to go back out and get in bed with Liner again when there was a hesitant knock on the door.
I felt my heart kick up a beat and turned, slowly making my way to the door.
By the time I got there and pulled it open, I had tears in my eyes.
Liner took one look at me and stiffened.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
I held up my foot and gestured to it with my good hand. “I think I sprained it.”
He looked down at it and hissed.
“That looks like it hurts,” he murmured.
I shrugged. “A little.”
He bent down to examine it, gingerly picking up my foot in his hand and probing it.
“How would I know if it was broken?” I asked, trying to breathe through the pain.
“You’d know,” he said. “If you can walk on it at all, I’m guessing it really is a sprain…it just looks rough.”
That was true.
“I need to sit,” I said softly. “Can we go to the bed?”
He stood up and instantly was at my side, bringing his arm around my back to cup my waist.
“Lean on me as you walk. Use me as your crutch,” he ordered.
I nodded my head and did as he’d asked, using him as a crutch.
“Your bed is freakin’ tall,” I mumbled as I stared at it. “I don’t know how…eeep!” I laughed out loud, which caused my ribs to smart, as he picked me up as if I weighed nothing more than a feather and placed me on the bed.
He sat me on the bed and was gone seconds later.
My ears strained to listen as I heard him moving around the house, talking to Monster and then letting him outside.
He came back what felt like forever later with a bag of ice in one hand and a water bottle in the other.
He gestured for me to lean back against the headboard, then grabbed the pillow he’d used last night.
Once he had the ice situated on my bad ankle, he sat on the edge of the bed and stared.
“Tell me how you got here last night.”
Not ‘tell me how you bypassed my security system.’ Not ‘what the fuck are you doing in my house.’ Just ‘tell me how you got here last night.’
“I’m not a hundred percent sure, to be honest,” I answered honestly. “Last night, we were in the hallway with the entire staff and residents of The Bridge. The tornado came…and then I can’t remember anything from there until when I was walking. At first, I felt like I was dreaming due to all the destruction. Then, when I got out of the area that the tornado had hit, it was like just any other night. As if nothing had happened but a small little rainstorm.”
“Walking,” he said. “Walking where?”
I shook my head. “That’s what I’m saying…I was just walking. I came to, and I was on the street that led to your house.”
His brows rose.
“I remember you saying that you lived next to Tara,” I said softly, looking into his beautiful eyes as I explained. “And it was between this house and that house over there,” I gestured somewhere behind me. “But then I remembered you saying that you saw me in her room…so I went to this house. I saw Monster through the window…and I broke in.”
His lips tipped up. “You’ll have to let me know how you accomplished that.”
I felt heat rise to my face.
He wasn’t mad about me breaking into his house. He just wanted to know how I’d done it so he could fix it.
“It was a necessity to know how to get out of places,” I said softly. “After everything that Tara put me through, then my father and Andy…well, I learned really quick not to be stuck somewhere that I didn’t want to be stuck. That also means that I can get out of places—or into places—that I want to. Your system was fairly easy. Just a basic alarm system.”
His eyes twinkled, then sobered. “That’s all you remember?”
I nodded, feeling horrible. “When I came to, I thought about going back. I was actually fifteen steps in the opposite direction of your house when I realized that this was the perfect opportunity…to disappear.”
His eyes narrowed. “Disappear?”
I nodded. “I wanted to see if you could help me disappear.”Chapter 9Look, I’m sorry. I simply don’t meet the minimum height requirements for your rollercoaster of bullshit.
-Meme
Theo
“But what about your daughter?”
I’d thought about that.
I’d thought about it a lot.
“My daughter doesn’t even realize that I’m her mother,” I said softly. “I think she suspects it…but I don’t think that she really knows. Plus…what kind of life is she going to be able to live where I’m in the picture? I’m more trouble than I’m worth.”
“What kind of life is she living right now?” he countered, looking like he was getting mad. For me or at me, I wasn’t quite sure. “From what I’ve observed of her, and what my PI has observed of her, your brother doesn’t really even try to be a parent to her. She’s just there…existing. That’s not how a kid should be treated.”
