AllFreeNovel
Share Us
"No," she said in a breathless little voice that shot right to my dick in a completely inappropriate response given the shit situation.
"Okay," I said, forcing my hand to move and pulling the material back down to cover her. "Here," I added, moving out of the bathroom for a second and coming back with one of my tees a second later. "There's blood all over yours," I added as she took it.
Granted, I could have gone across the hall and gotten her her own clothes, but somehow I wanted her in my shirt and she didn't object. "Take your time," I added as I went to the hall and reached to close the door. "I'll be right back."
With that, I shot out into the hall and grabbed the bags, dropping them carelessly onto the kitchen island then going back across the hall to find her damn cat. I found the carrier and brought it with me through the apartment until I finally found him sitting in the corner of her bedroom closet. When I got close, he let out a hiss and struck out with his little razorblades claw. "Like it or not, scratch me to hell or not, your ass is getting in this carrier," I told him, snorting when he immediately seemed to shut up. I stowed him away, grabbed the obsessively clean litter box out of the bathroom, and headed back toward my own apartment.
And I found her in the kitchen in my tee, carefully unpacking my bags.
"You were really planning a special night, huh?" she asked, her tone sad.
"Still am," I said, putting the carrier and cat box down and opening the door, watching the little flat-faced ball of fur dart off to explore and hoping he wasn't the type to scratch things all to hell.
"That's... nice, Ryan," she said, shaking her head, not able to keep eye-contact. "But I can't expect you to keep that promise now that you know I, ah..." she waved a hand, unable to say it even.
"Look," I said, exhaling hard, not the type to really sugarcoat shit and wanting to be straight with her. But there was another part of me that just wanted to say fuck all that and tell her not to worry about that. For better or worse, the logical part of me won out. "I don't fuck with drugs. I don't like them. I don't like what they do to the people who use them and how that affects the people around them. It's not my scene. That being said, I'm not judging you for doing what you needed to do to survive. Trust me, I fucking get that. It doesn't change the fact that I want to drink champagne and watch some stupid fucking ball drop in Times Square tomorrow night."
I swear you could see the tension draining from her. Her shoulders lowered; her jaw unclenched; she stopped frantically trying to organize the mess of bags.
"Okay?" I asked when she said nothing.
"Okay," she agreed, nothing more than a squeak of a sound.
"Once more and make me believe you believe it," I said, smirking as I moved toward the kitchen and started putting away the food.
"I believe it," she said, handing me the hummus I had picked up to go with either the pita, vegetables, or four different kinds of chips I had also grabbed. Not being a snack person, usually too busy to do so and just eating two or three whole meals a day, I had fuck-all idea of what I was doing in that damn food store.
"Ryan?" her small voice met me a few minutes later as I bunched up the plastic bags and shoved them into some plastic thing Anita stuck inside my cabinet for collecting them, a purchase I thought was asinine at the time, but turned out to be pretty practical.
"Yeah?" I asked, turning back to find her watching me.
"What am I supposed to tell Bry?" she asked, genuinely sounding like she needed an answer to that.
And, well, when a woman with a busted face who kissed you like she fucking meant it down to her soul was worried about something, yeah, you fucking handled it for her.
"Don't worry about Bry. I'll handle him."
"No, Ryan. That's..."
"I'm handling it," I cut her off. "No use arguing about it. You've got to have a killer headache right about now," I added, reaching into the cabinet beside the sink where I kept a bottle of aspirin. "Here, take a couple of these and go lay down with an ice pack," I said, handing her the pills and going for the icepack, wrapping it in paper towels and handing that to her as well. "I need to make a couple phone calls and then I will check on you."
"You don't need to..."
"I'll check on you," I cut her off again, voice a little firm and she gave me a grateful smile and headed down toward the bedrooms.
