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“Big brother.” Standing at the edge of his bed, I smirked as I gently shook his shoulder.
He reacted instantly, springing up in bed with a growl, then grimacing in pain. “Why the fuck is your ugly face the first thing I’m seeing this morning?”
“I made you coffee.” I gave him a fake smile. “My face is not ugly, by the way. Are you jealous of the way I look?” I nearly said “not as ugly as yours,” but that would be a lie. Despite his perma-scowl and over-reliance on hair bleach, he was unfortunately blessed in the looks department. Not that I’d ever tell him that.
Instead of replying, he did his usual gesture of giving me the finger before grabbing his coffee. I noticed that his black nail polish was all chipped and messed up, and something about it seemed wrong. I ignored that thought, moving on to more important things. Taking a seat at the side of his bed, I opened my mouth to speak, but before I could say anything, I found myself being shoved hard, crashing to the floor and knocking my head.
“You asshole. What was that for?” It took everything in me not to drag him out of the bed and pound him into the floor—with my fists. The only reason I held off was because he was injured.
“Stay off my bed.”
“Fine.” I picked myself up from the floor, shooting him a glare, and took a seat in his desk chair, wheeling it over so it was next to his bed. In the meantime, he’d arranged himself against the headboard, knocking back painkillers with the glass of water I’d left out for him last night.
“Why the fuck are you here? I know it’s not to bring me coffee. I’m fine now, I don’t need you playing nurse anymore.”
That was debatable. But on with the reason why I was here, he was right; it wasn’t to bring him coffee.
“I want to know why you chose me, out of everyone.”
His shoulders stiffened. Lowering the glass of water, he switched it for his coffee mug, drawing his knees up under the covers and hiding his face behind the mug. “You were my last and only choice,” he said flatly.
“But how? Surely you had friends you could call? Someone you like slightly more than me?”
“I like everyone more than you,” he growled. “Dad’s on his honeymoon, my mum’s off on her spiritual journey, and my friends…look. I was in a lot of fucking pain, okay? I didn’t want to be crashing on someone’s sofa or in a shitty spare bed with springs poking into my back. I wanted to be here, in my comfortable bed, with my own private bathroom. You being forced to be at my beck and call was an unexpected bonus.”
He’d spent most of the time sleeping, so I hadn’t exactly been at his beck and call, but whatever. I thought back over what he’d said. It made sense. “Okay.” With a shrug, I got to my feet. “Thanks for letting me know. If you’re feeling fine now, then you obviously don’t need me here anymore.”
I’d made it all the way to the open door when his voice sounded again. “Wait.”
I turned back to him, and our eyes met. He moved, and the duvet slid down and…fuck. Across that lean, lightly toned chest was a myriad of bruises in blues and purples.
“I’m not…I’m not fucking fine, okay,” he bit out. “But I don’t want or need you looking after me anymore. Go and do whatever shit you want, I don’t care.”
“Huxley.” I took a step towards him, trying to remember the instructions the paramedic had given us just before we’d left. “You need to apply compression to that bruising.”
Glancing down, he swore under his breath. He’d clearly been keeping those bruises hidden from me, because every time I’d seen him, he’d either been under the covers or wearing a T-shirt, but now there was no hiding them.
“I fucking tried, but—”
I held up my hand. “Here’s what’s going to happen. I’m gonna help you wrap your chest, and then I’m going to leave you. It goes both ways. You don’t want me here; I don’t want to be here. But, Hux, if you dare to fucking injure yourself any worse, and your dad finds out, I will kill you.”
It was only after he’d been staring weirdly at me for the best part of a minute that I rewound what I’d said to him. Shit. I’d called him Hux—where had that come from? We weren’t, and would probably never be, at the name shortening stage.
Ripping my gaze away from his, I crossed his bedroom and entered his en-suite bathroom to find the roll of stretch bandages. When I returned and took a seat on the edge of his bed, I steeled myself for him to kick me off again, but he remained where he was, staring at a fixed point on the wall rather than looking at me. Which was good.
I unrolled the bandages, and then cleared my throat. His jaw clenched, but he lifted his arms enough that I could get the bandages around his torso. Shifting closer on the bed, I reached out. At the first contact of my fingertips on his skin, we both inhaled sharply. My heart rate was speeding up. I’d never been this close to him, never touched him without there being any hostility behind it. Carefully, I began to wind the bandages around him, doing my best not to touch him without a layer of fabric between my skin and his. When I’d finished, I wasted no time in shifting away from the heat of his body. Both of us were breathing more heavily than normal, and all I wanted to do was to get away from him. To purge my mind of the knowledge of his warm, smooth skin, the way his heart had beat under my palm as I was wrapping the stretchy fabric around him, the way his thigh had been pressed against mine, his breath hitting my hair as I lowered my head to fasten the bandages.
“Now get the fuck out of my room.” His voice was hoarse.
“Fuck you. I’m going.” Without another word, I launched myself off his bed and out of his door, making sure to slam it as I left. The crash reverberated around me as I stalked down the hallway, down the stairs, and then out through the front door. I had no idea where I was going—all I knew was that I needed to put as much distance between me and Huxley as possible.
7
HUXLEY
Cole stayed out of my way for the next few days. Sometimes I’d hear the shower in the upstairs bathroom, and occasionally I’d hear his footsteps padding past my room, but that was it. Every day, though, without fail, I’d come downstairs on a hunt for food, and find takeaway food in the fridge that I just needed to reheat. The fucker somehow seemed to know the foods I liked, or maybe it was just that the accident had left me with a new appreciation for all the necessities required to keep me alive. Things like food, drink, sleeping in a decent bed, weed, my guitar…
My guitar. It sat there accusingly, staring at me from the corner of my bedroom. I’d left it here when I’d decided to move out, knowing that I couldn’t keep lugging it from house to house, expecting it to still be in one piece when I eventually decided to settle. I loved playing it—it was a form of stress relief for me, along with the weed—a way to balance the thoughts inside my head, to give me some peace. Even if that sounded weird, depending on the music I was playing.
