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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, Iwillkill 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.
8
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.
With a sigh, I forced myself to pick it up. As soon as my hand closed around the neck, a lump appeared in my throat out of nowhere. Maybe this accident had fucked with my head more than I’d thought. Cole hadn’t let me see the scene, but there had been pictures taken by the police, pictures my insurance company needed also, and yeah…I hadn’t realised until the moment I’d seen them just how fucking lucky I was. How had I managed to walk away from that accident unscathed, apart from some shallow cuts and bruising that was painful as fuck but would soon be nothing but a memory?
The thoughts were too much to process. I sank to the floor, cradling my guitar on my lap, and lost myself in the soothing process of tuning it. When it was ready to play, I ran my thumb over my guitar pick, gently strumming the strings as I tried to decide what to play. My fingers made the decision for me, playing the opening bars of “Somewhere Only We Know” by Keane.
As I strummed the guitar, I began to sing softly.
I was in the zone, and it took me a while to realise that there was another presence in the room. Raising my head, I saw Cole, frozen in the doorway, his gaze fixated on my guitar.
My fingers slipped on the strings, causing a screeching sound, and I growled in frustration. “What the fuck do you want? Get out.” Why had I left the door open?
He blinked, his eyes flying to mine before he staggered backwards. “Sorry,” he whispered, and then he disappeared.
I tried to get back into the zone after that, but of course, fucking Cole had ruined it. Giving it up as a lost cause, I made my way down to the kitchen for a snack, and my least favourite person was there, perched on a stool at the kitchen island, rubbing the spot between his brows as he stared at his laptop screen.
“Why do you have to do that here? There’s a desk in your room. Use it,” I said irritably, heading over to the fridge.
“I’m used to working in the kitchen. There wasn’t enough room for a desk in my old house, so I did all my homework at the kitchen table. I guess it’s a habit that’s stuck with me, even now with this charity work.”
His voice was musing, and I wasn’t prepared to have a civil conversation with him right now. Or ever. “Maybe you should make a new habit,” I suggested as I reached into the fridge for a punnet of ripe red strawberries. Fucking delicious.
There was no reply, so I took that to mean our conversation was over. Good. I portioned out some of the strawberries to eat and grabbed a bowl from the cupboard. As I was running the tap to rinse them, I felt Cole’s eyes on me.
“What are you doing?”
I rolled my eyes. “Washing strawberries. What does it look like I’m doing?”
“Those are my strawberries,” he said, as if he actually had ownership of any of the products in my dad’s fridge.
“I don’t see your name on them.” Picking up the biggest, ripest strawberry, I turned to face him and bit down into the soft, juicy flesh. “Mmmm.”
He stared at me…at my mouth, and when my tongue came out to swipe across my lips, making sure I caught all of that delicious strawberry juice, I could’ve sworn his eyes darkened.
“They’re mine. I bought them this morning.” His voice suddenly had a rasp to it, and why the hell did my dick decide that it would be a perfect moment to perk up?
“Too bad.” I lifted the remaining half of the strawberry to my lips, and then everything seemed to happen in slow motion. There was the scrape of a chair, and then Cole appeared in front of me, biting down on the strawberry that I was about to place in my mouth.
I forgot what words were becausehis fucking tongue was touching my fingers.
