Page 23 of The Broken Hearts Club

“Let’s go inside and get this cleaned up, so it doesn’t get infected.”

“Okay.”

He followed me up the stairs, but I only made it halfway before I tripped again. I yelped when I caught myself with my scraped up hands, and he muttered, “That’s it.”

With that, he spun me around and threw me over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry, while I exclaimed, “You’re going to hurt your injured shoulder!”

“That’s the other shoulder. This one’s fine.” He plucked off my slippers one at a time and chucked them into the yard. I tried to protest, but he said, “Nope. Those things are a hazard.”

“They’re not, though.”

“I’ll buy you a new, less dangerous pair.”

“But I like Scooby.”

“Like him from afar. He’s been set free, turned loose in the wild like a rehabilitated raccoon.”

We bickered all the way to his bathroom, where he finally put me down and produced a ridiculously huge first aid kit. I asked, “What did you buy that for, Armageddon?”

“It’s good to be prepared.”

“You’re prepared, alright,” I said, as I held up several rolls of gauze. “If the slippers had killed me, you could have mummified my entire body.” He tried to frown at me, but a grin slipped through despite himself.

I dropped the gauze back into the kit and hiked up the legs of my sweatpants. My knees were discoloring and were definitely going to bruise, but I hadn’t broken the skin, so I let the pant legs drop again.

After I washed my hands, I took a seat on the edge of the tub. Miller knelt down in front of me and went to work applying antibiotic cream to my scraped up palms, followed by a weird patchwork of bandages.

While he did that, I studied the sweep of his dark lashes, and the cute little line of concentration that appeared between his brows. Then my gaze dropped to his full lips. I wondered if they were as soft as they looked. I’d really like to find out…

He interrupted my train of thought by sitting back on his heels and saying, “You’re all set. Want some ibuprofen?”

“Nah. I’m⁠—”

“Fine?”

“Yes.”

“Are you really, or are you just saying that?”

“I’m close enough.” We both got up, and for lack of any better ideas, I asked, “Want to watch a movie or something?”

“Sure.”

He used the monitors in his office as a TV, so we got comfortable on opposite ends of the couch. He scrolled through pretty much all of Netflix, and whenever he stopped on something, I said, “Seen it.” After doing this about twenty times, he turned to look at me, and I added, “But I can watch it again.”

He started to play the movie, and I said, “It’s really surprising when the killer turns out to be her sister.” Miller shut off the movie and stared at me. “But you knew that, right? This movie came out, like, fifteen years ago. I thought everyone knew that.”

“Or maybe we could just talk, instead of trying to watch a movie,” he said.

“Love to.” He put down the remote, and we both shifted around so we were leaning against the arms of the couch. Our feet met in the middle, but I resisted the urge to play footsie.

I asked, “What do you want to talk about?”

“You’ve heard all about my love life. Now it’s your turn, tell me about yours.”

“There’s not much to tell.”

“What was your longest relationship?”