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Her stupid, stupid, stupid heart, which melted a little bit every time she thought about him on his knees in front of her, chewing his way through that damned duct-tape dress. Or putting her tired, abused feet on his lap and rubbing them until all she felt was a warm pleasure that tingled along her every nerve ending.
God. Leave it to her to make the situation around her father’s illness even more messed up. It would be a miracle if she didn’t give her father another heart attack while he was still comatose from his first.
Reaching out, she took her father’s hand in her own, then laid her forehead down on the edge of the bed. “You need to get better, Daddy. You need to get through that surgery tomorrow, do you hear me? Heath already broke my heart once when I was seventeen, and it looks like he’s fixin’ to do it again. Don’t you go breaking what’s left of it. Do you hear me, Daddy? You have to get better, because I don’t think my heart or any other part of me could take it if something happened to you.
“I love you, Daddy. I love you so much. And I promise, as soon as the doctor clears you after the surgery, I will make you the biggest, healthiest chocolate cake on the planet. Okay? So just get through this, do you hear me? Just get through it.”
“He’s going to be just fine, Lyric.” Her mother’s voice sliced right through the room, and Lyric turned to find her mom and sister standing in the hall, watching her. “I keep telling you that. So stop crying and show me some steel in that too-long spine of yours.”
Trust her mother to take any opportunity to swipe at her about her height. And everything else, for that matter. Then again, if she didn’t, she wouldn’t be Livinia Wright. And that would be a shame because, for all her mother’s faults, Lyric’s daddy loved her like
a quasar loves a supermassive black hole—dense, overpowering, and completely defying logical explanation.
As her mother continued to snipe at her from the door, Lyric tuned her out. Now wasn’t the time to fall into old behaviors, especially since she already felt like she’d been rode hard and put up wet. Not in the good way, unfortunately, like say if Heath had been the one doing the riding …
With that uncomfortable, and tantalizing, thought in her head, Lyric pushed to her feet and went to meet her mom and sister in the hallway. She wanted nothing more than to stay by her dad’s bed until he woke up, but she’d been in here long enough. She knew she had to share him. Besides, it wasn’t like she was going to win an argument with her mother. The woman was relentless and played dirty. Columbian drug cartels weren’t as vicious as her mother. All of her loving-advice-turned-terrorism was done with a smile and a “don’t slouch, dear,” which made no sense, because she’d always thought Lyric was too tall. Harmony was exactly the same height, and she was never too anything.
Sharing him, however, didn’t mean caving to her mother’s demands. Which was why, two hours later, when Livinia insisted she go back to the house with her sister, Lyric dug in her heels. Her mom was paler than Lyric had ever seen her and looked like a stiff breeze would blow her over.
“I’ve got this, Mom. You and Harmony have been here twenty-four hours already. Go home, get some sleep, and then you can be here in the morning to talk to Daddy before the surgery.”
“I’m fine, Lyric.” Her mother made each word sharper than the last. “You’re the one who looks like a working girl at some Fort Worth Wranglers brothel.”
Lyric didn’t take offense—partly because criticism was as close as Livinia got to showing affection, and partly because her mother was right. The TexAss boxers really did send a message all their own.
“All the more reason for you and Harmony to be the ones to go home. You can’t have me wandering the hospital looking like this. Just think what your friends will say. I’ll spend the night in here with Daddy, and you and Harm can bring me clothes when you come back in the morning.”
Livinia grimaced as she looked Lyric up and down, the expression on her face revealing just how much she hated the idea of her daughter going anywhere dressed in a man’s athletic tee and crude boxers. Harmony attempted to mimic the look—her sister knew which side her bread was buttered on—but couldn’t disguise the gleeful gleam in her eye. The one that said she was enjoying every second of their mother’s discomfort.
Or maybe it was just that she wanted a pair of TexAss boxers too … and a matching set of wrist cuffs. You never could tell with Harmony. On the outside she looked like the perfect lady, but underneath the coordinated linen separates, she was all badass ink and even more badass attitude.
Maybe Lyric should try to find her a pair of boxers that read BadAss. Then they could match.
“The sooner you get out of those clothes, the better.” Livinia looked down at Lyric’s shoes, probably because they were the only thing she approved of. “Your hair looks like it was attacked by vultures looking for two-day-old roadkill. And your—“
“I think Lyric’s right, Mom.” Harmony wrapped an arm around their mother’s shoulders and started guiding her toward the waiting-room door. “You’ve been here round the clock. Why don’t I take you home and get you some of your special tea?”
By tea, she meant three fingers of good Kentucky bourbon. If Lyric had to spend her entire adult life living in the same town as their mother, she certainly would have done her best to keep the woman nice and lubricated too.
It was funny. She’d wanted nothing more than for her mother to leave, but as soon as Livinia did—and, bless her heart, took her cutting Southern manners with her—Lyric didn’t quite know what to do with herself. Everything seemed off without her mother’s criticisms ringing in her ears. Maybe this was what victims of Stockholm syndrome felt like.
Wishing she had her phone for about the millionth time in the last few hours, she sank down into the visitor’s chair with the copy of Cosmopolitan Jeannie had managed to find for her. After skimming the table of contents, she turned to page one hundred forty-four. Just because she didn’t currently have a boyfriend didn’t mean she shouldn’t know about the thirty-one tricks to giving a good blow job. She turned to the page. Trick one had a diagram. She laid the magazine flat in her lap. With her left hand she was supposed to make the “scissors” gesture from rock, paper, scissors. With her right hand she was supposed to make the Hook ’em Horns sign, which in some Latin American countries means your wife is sleeping with someone else.
So … how did this make for a good blow job?
Thirteen tricks later, some of which she really doubted were anatomically possible, there was a soft knock on the door. She looked up to see Jeannie leading two orderlies carrying a sleep chair into the room.
“Just put it over there in the corner,” the nurse instructed. “It’ll be a tight squeeze, but it should fit.” She turned to Lyric with a grin. “It’s not the most comfortable place to sleep in the world, but it’s a lot better than that chair you’re in now.”
“Thank you so much, but you really didn’t have to do this—”
Jeannie cut her off with a wink. “It’s no problem. Just tell Heath I’ll be expecting that signed football before he heads back to Fort Worth.”
Heath. Of course. Lyric’s knees trembled a little as it registered that the reason she had a sleep chair to spend the night on was because Heath had made sure to get her one. Even running out of the hospital like his hair was on fire, even running away from news about his knee that he couldn’t deal with, he’d thought to do this. He’d thought to take care of her.
One more tie to the resentful seventeen-year-old she once was slipped away as Jeannie and the orderlies made their way back out of the room. It was getting harder and harder to stay bitter when every time she turned around, Heath was doing something to make this whole situation just a little bit easier on her.
It didn’t mean anything, she tried to tell herself as the magazine trembled in her hands. Or, more specifically, it didn’t mean what the Lyric who was once in love with Heath wanted it to mean. He was just being kind. Just taking care of her because he was a good friend. He would do this for anyone. It was just the kind of guy he was.
