“Do you remember passing out last night before I took you to the hospital?” Dylan asks, a line appearing between his brows.
“I don’t remember fainting, but I remember feeling really dizzy.” So dizzy that I couldn’t stop myself from falling. I’m really lucky I didn’t get a concussion. “Like the doctor said, I was just really, really tired, but it’ll get better.”
Dylan gives my lower leg a squeeze through the blanket. “The doc also said you need to rest for at least a week. But on the way back to your place last night, you started on about going to the store in the morning, so I kind of took charge. I spoke to Ruby, who was all for it.”
“Took charge?”
He upnods at our surroundings. “Bringing you here. Because to be honest, Jade, that job is making you sick, and I really don’t feel like losing my fucking mind when I find you passed out again or worse.”
I sit up a little higher. “But we can’t close the store. We’ve got bills to pay, and we’re behind on all of them. My dad can’t possibly—”
“Ruby’s coming back today to run things while you’re staying here.”
My lips fall open. “No.”
He shakes his head. “Doctor’s orders.AndRuby’s—her running the store this week was her idea. She’s also gonna come by later today and visit you. She doesn’t know about us, by the way; I didn’t know if you’d want me to tell her. I said I was offering the place to you because it’s empty and quiet, and you’re Hayley’s friend. I can make myself scarce when Ruby visits.”
He chews the inside of his cheek as his words sink into my head. “She doesn’t know aboutus,by the way.”
Is there anus?
That thought is eclipsed by another. I can’t stay here for a whole week while Ruby leaves behind her job, her home, and her boyfriend to work at the place she left behind for a good reason.
“Dylan, I really appreciate all this,” I begin, “but I can’t do that to Ruby. She’s got Flynn, and—”
“Flynn’s coming back too. Ruby said he’s got the week off flying, so it’s all good.”
My exhausted head falls back against the striped cushions. Right now, I don’t even have the energy to argue. “Maybe I can stay here for a bit. Just a day or two.”
A smile hints at his mouth. “And maybe I can do things to entice you to stay longer.”
I raise a brow. “Things?”
The strokes of his palm over my legs become a little firmer. “Make you gourmet meals…let you have free reign over the TV…give you full-body oil massages.”
“Now you’re talking,” I say with a weak smirk.
Our flushed gazes cling tightly together for a long moment before he sits forward to push the coffee mug toward me. “All in good time, heathen. Think you’re up to drinking that first?”
“Shit yes.” I edge my way up into a sitting position and reach for the coffee. “Come to me, baby.”
* * *
Dylan staystrue to his word about everything. For several days, he makes all my meals, lets me have free run of the TV, and only leaves the cabin to get groceries or when Ruby and Flynn visit. He sleeps with one arm draped over me in the master bedroom, but he makes no other moves to touch me—insisting I rest, which isnotwhat I would have expected from this guy at all.
Is this how Dylan behaves with all the girls he has flings with? Lures them into a honeypot of attentive sweetness and criminally sexy smiles before one day slipping on his helmet and riding off into the sunset, never to be heard from again?
I’m not ready to face the answer to that question. All I know is that I like being around him. Even when he’s outside taking endless photos of toadstools clinging to tree trunks and random squirrels darting around the forest while I’m glued to the couch watching trash TV, all I feel is… calm.
This isn’t like me.
I’m usually go-go-go, an energizer bunny who’s permanently charged. Sure, it did take a while for me to settle my thoughts here at first and to stop panicking about the store and Ruby, but Dylan was right—I needed to give my mind and my body a rest.
I also can’t deny that I like the stillness here. I like the view of the fall leaves outside and the grassy trail leading down to the springs. I like the wild, earthy smells of the trees and the whistles and calls of the birds. I seem to have passed out at the store and woken up in some sort of dream world where, for the first time in my life, I actually want to do nothing and let someone take care of me.
A specific someone who’s looking a little too good in that white T-shirt, his inked bicep bulging as he fiddles with the dials of a camera on the kitchen counter.
The mindless reality TV episode I was watching begins to fade away as a sharp ache of longing stirs in my belly. How can I have spent this many days in Dylan’s company and not even kissed him yet? I mean,lookat those lips. As if he heard my thoughts, he bites down on his bottom one as he focuses on his camera.What a freaking tease.
