AllFreeNovel
Share Us
The flashing lights outside the window retreated.
Laurel let me lead, but then stopped short before the bed. “No, don’t. I’m a mess.” I slid a meaningful look her way.I know you are, Laurel. In more ways than one.
She pulled away from me, trying to retreat from the bed. Irritation slithered between the layers of compassion I had heaped on top of my fear for her. “Laurel, it’s my bed. I don’t care. Just get over here.”
“It’s anicebed,” she insisted.
“Get. On. The bed.” My tone caused her to roll a derisive look my way. Good. Rather that, than despair. I forcefully guided her to the bed, but before letting her sit, I reached over and swiped up a package of gauze.
As I pressed soft gauze against the bleeding wound, Laurel’s eyes traveled over the path of blood she had splattered all over the white fur rug and floors. “Shit. Oh my God, Lachlan, I’m so sorry. I wasn’t thinking.”
I held the gauze between my thumb and her elbow with a hard grip, and with my teeth, I tore open a package of neon pink self-adherent wrap. I leveled a stern look her way. “I’m not mad about the mess.”
She glanced down at her arm and then back to me. “You’re mad I took out the IV?”
I wound the pink wrap around the gauze with practiced motions. “Yep.”
“Sorry.”
I leaned to the side, grabbed a pair of medical scissors, and cut the adhesive with a firm snip. “If I take your vitals and they’re shit, you get another one.”
She grimaced. “I guess that’s… fair.”
I finished with the dressing and ripped open an alcohol pad, wiping off the worst of the blood on her skin. Although, for the sheer amount she had spilled on everything, I would have been better off grabbing a hose. “With a nasty ear infection like you have, it’s no wonder you lost your balance and dropped the bowl. I didn’t say you could get up and walk around.” She puckered her lips in annoyance. I gestured toward the mess. “Am I wrong?”
She muttered under her breath about me being overbearing.
That about did it. She thought this was overbearing? It wasn’t overbearing to care about someone at a basic level. It wasn’t overbearing to expect that she took thetiniestcare with her own well-being, but something inside this woman had shattered into pieces, and instead of mending them, she was letting them wound her over and over.
I might not have known her for more than a matter of hours, but I’d be damned if I just looked the other way while Laurel Brook slashed away at her own soul while no one was looking.
The universe had dumped her in my lap, but I’d been the one to pull her closer. I’d never been one to question fate, and I wasn’t going to start now.
Overbearing. I would damn well show her overbearing.
Eight
Laurel
Lachlan’s muted gold eyes went darker, and he shoved me onto the bed. I landed with a little “oomph,” and he kneeled on one knee in front of me. He grabbed me by the hips, his hands searing through the fabric of my thin T-shirt, and he slid me right to the edge of the bed so my feet were between his legs. “Laurel, everysecondyou’re with me, I find new reasons that you’re in need of a goddamn adult.”
I swallowed. His hands were strong and grounding. His knees braced me on either side with comforting pressure. I could have drowned in his eyes; they were like the lightest, sweetest coffee.I like this,I realized.I really, really like this.The logical part of my brain thinks maybe I shouldn’t, but it feels so good. Like getting a surprise birthday present in the mail.
Jason had been a child himself when we had married. He was a lazy, smart kid—the one who did well without trying and saw no need to go the “extra mile.” Which meant that I had raised Calla on my own, whether we had been married or not. He had no interest in boring, adult things like chores or balancing a budget. I did my best. I did. But to have someone take over for a few hours right now?
Heaven.
Especially when I worked so many hours and felt like the hustle never ended. When I wasn’t working as a paraprofessional at the school, I taught English to Chinese students overseas, which meant weird hours late at night or early in the morning. I’d worked for twenty-four hours straight many times. I’d start at three-thirty in the morning, go to school, and sometimes stay late for a reading program.
Then when I got home, I’d give myself an hour to get Calla her dinner and (surprise) a movie before running into my bedroom office to start lessons at six in the evening. It wasn’t until three in the morning when I usually collapsed into bed to catch a few hours of sleep before school.
That was my reality. It had been my waking nightmare to struggle and fight, only to realize, like a slowly drowning person, that I wasn’t going to make it. I wasn’t going to succeed and create the life that Calla deserved.
So, Lachlan doing this “let me take care of you” bit? As an independent woman, I should have hated it. Instead, I craved it. And I craved him just as badly.
But, I realized with a sinking heart, I couldn’t let Lachlan take over a responsibility that wasn’t his. My stumbling course through life wasn’t his fault. I formed my fears and anger and grief in a little ball and shoved it right back where it belonged. Locked deep, deep in the recesses of my subconscious. I molded my face into a coy, incredulous smirk. “You want to be my sugar daddy, Lachlan?”
“Don’t be flippant,” he glared.
