Lie to Me (15 page)

“Not going anywhere,” he says, not even looking at me. He’s found the remote. “Not until you can walk on your own.”

“Marcus, that could take days.”

I can see a slow smile spreading across his face. “Yeah.”

“You can’t stay here. You can’t. I can call Maria, she can—”

Marcus grumbles, turning to look me dead in the eye, and those eyes silence me. He is just achingly beautiful. And warm, and strong, and unyielding, in everything.

“Maria has a herniated disk and can’t help you up those stairs,” he says. “She can’t carry you if you fall, and she doesn’t know to watch you to make sure you don’t do anything stupid, like trying to walk before the swelling’s gone down. Lo, look at me.”

I already am. I don’t think I could look away.

He says, “Is there anyone else you want here day and night?”

I see the muscles in his neck tense, all the way down his traps, to his shoulders and arms. His jaw is clenched and he’s staring at me, waiting on the next words to come out of my mouth.

Is there anyone else?

No. And there never has been.

“No,” I say quietly.

“Then you’re stuck with me,” he says.

I guess I am.

chapter 10

MARCUS

I sleep like a baby in Harlow’s house.

That Chase couch is known to be evil, always switching up its lumps and soft spots, so that just when you think you’ve got it figured out, nope—your back is screwed. And it kinda smells like an old couch. And it’s at least ten years old.

But I sleep like a baby anyway. Right up until I hear something crash to the floor upstairs.

I get up those stairs so quickly I’m out of breath. Going from a deep sleep to what amounts to a long jump up a flight of stairs will do that to just about any athlete, I promise you. That, and I’m worried as hell. I throw open the door to Harlow’s room, not even thinking to check any of the others—how did I know she’s still in the same room?—and she looks up at me from the floor, grimacing.

“Ta-da,” she says.

“What were you trying to do?” I say. “Break your foot off all the way?”

I let her wrap her arms around my neck and lift her carefully off the floor, trying hard to ignore that she still sleeps in a tank top and shorts. I’m just glad the hotel concierge was able to bring over some of my own things. Sweatpants are better than boxers right now, though not by much.

“If you must know,” she says, “I was trying to go to the bathroom.”

“Your crutches are right there.”

“I didn’t think I needed them.”

I shake my head.

“Lo, you can’t fight a sprain. It’s a goddamn sprain. It’s going to stay a sprain until it heals. You can’t just beat it into submission.”

She doesn’t say anything as I help her get set up with her crutches, and it takes me a little too long to realize that maybe she didn’t want my help. Or that maybe she wanted to see if it wasn’t too bad, and I would have to leave if she could show me that she could walk. I wince at that. I know why she’s feeling so raw. I’m not the most articulate guy in the world, not when I’m put on the spot, and believe me when I say that I did not expect Lo to ask me to take her back home and fuck her.

I was caught off guard, all right?

And the reason I said no, even though my dick screamed at me about it, was because it didn’t feel right. It felt…defensive. Like it would have put more walls up than it knocked down. It would have been a short-term thrill that might have done more damage. And I’m playing the long game, here. Or at least I’m trying to, with all the self-control and discipline I can manage. I want this woman. I want her to be happy. At the very least, I want her to think about me and feel no pain.

I saw in her face that a quick hate fuck wasn’t the way to do that.

Which seems reasonable, now that I’ve had time to think it out. But in the moment all I could say was “No,” like it was this bad thing. And I do know Harlow Chase, and I know she has not been in the mood to talk about it. Lo’s always preferred a cooling down period. She would have shut down if I’d brought it up and been totally unable to listen to reason.

Which is why I wait until I have a captive audience.

“You know why I said no, right?” I say right outside the bathroom door.

“Are you serious right now? While I’m peeing?”

I smile. “You wouldn’t listen otherwise.”

She doesn’t say anything for a bit, just maybe curses under her breath. I can’t quite catch what she calls me.

Finally she says, “It’s not rocket surgery, Marcus. You said no because you didn’t want to. It’s not a big deal, just drop it.”

“Rocket surgery?”

“Yes, it’s very advanced surgery. On rockets. Stop being a dick.”

“I wanted to, Lo,” I say.

She gets quiet.

“I always want to,” I say, shaking my head, thinking about how much I want her. “Always. Christ, if you only knew the things I think about doing to you.”

I don’t hear anything from the bathroom now, just dead quiet. I didn’t tell her anything she shouldn’t already know. But that doesn’t mean she can handle it.

Finally the door opens and Lo is standing right there. She won’t look me in the eye at first, but her chest moves up and down in a way I can’t ignore. Her skin has this kind of glow in the low light, this shine to it, something I can follow along her delicate collar bones to her graceful shoulders, the tops of her soft breasts. I think back to when I would have been allowed to touch her, when I had that right, and it makes me crazy that I can’t right now. It's insane that I can’t just reach out and make her feel all the things she deserves to feel. But if I tried now it would just hurt her more.

“Well, thanks for the confidence boost,” she says, adjusting her crutches. “But it was a terrible idea, so it’s just as well. I’m going back to sleep.”

I step aside and watch her make her way down the hall, seeing that she’s already getting used to the crutches a little bit, even if she hates having to use them. She moves off like that, determinedly alone, but she looks at me, once, right before she goes back into her bedroom.

I don’t know why I do what I do next. I don’t really think about it. Don’t need to. My feet are moving, and they seem to know where to go. I open the door to Lo’s bedroom and take a second to look over her, lying there, looking away from me out the window, the way I looked over her so many times when things were bad. Just to see that she was ok. And then I do what I did for a little while back then, which is lie down on the floor next to her bed.

I hear her turn over, and I know she’s looking at me. I know she’s thinking about all those other nights I spent lying on her floor, or on the bed next to her, just so she could sleep. And I’ll damn well do it every night she needs me to feel better. Just like I know she needs me now, even if she’d never admit it.

That couch is going to mess up my back, anyway.

After a while she says very softly, “Goodnight.”

And that’s that.

***

“Harlow, there’s no way you can work tomorrow,” Shantha says, looking at Harlow like Lo has been speaking in tongues. “And there’s no way you can canvass the neighborhood. Have you lost your mind? Both of those things require ankles.”

I smile and do a fist pump. “Who’s right? This guy.”

Lo rolls her eyes, but it’s not in a hostile way. I know Shantha’s watching the two of us, that she came over here to help her friend out and check up on the situation, and I swear Lo’s been downright civil all day. Like she’s accepted that she needs someone to help her, and I’m not evil incarnate anymore, so it might as well be me.

The key thing being that she no longer outright hates me. And she’s stopped asking me direct questions about why I left.

I’m not sure what I did to earn that, since my plan to show her how I never forgot about her all this time hasn’t come into place yet, but hell, I’m going to freaking enjoy it.

“Don’t worry, Lo, it’s a minor sprain,” I say. “You’ll be good to walk in a few days if you don’t do anything dumb.”

“Thank you for the vote of confidence,” Lo says. “Shantha, can you put the flyers up, then? I can make a few phone calls, but…”

“Yeah, no worries,” Shantha says, standing up with an air of having accomplished something. She looks me over again and says, “Take good care of her.”

“What?” Lo says. “You’re not staying for dinner?”

“I gotta get back to the bar, sweetie, you know that. We’re shorthanded.” Shantha smirks and then winks at me.

I get up to open the door for her, and as she’s walking out Shantha’s whole demeanor changes. She gives me the coldest side eye I’ve ever seen and says, “That is my best friend, Marcus. My family. The only family that accepts me as I am. Do not fuck with her. Understood?”

I blink. I’m a big guy, a fighter, and I work for Alex Wolfe. So it’s not often that people threaten me, even implicitly. It’s almost refreshing.

“Understood,” I say, trying not to smile.

“Good. Thank you for taking care of her. Honey, I’ll call you tomorrow!” she shouts out, and struts down the street.

Funny, right? That “accepts me” line. Seven years ago I might have been a dick to someone like Shantha. Now? I keep thinking about how I get what she means when she talks about the family that accepts her. You can't put a price on that. I should know.

So I like Shantha. I like that Harlow has her in her life. But I won’t lie: I’m glad to have Lo to myself again, even if it’s only because she injured herself when I said something dumb.

Messed up, right?

I don’t care.

“What’re the flyers for?” I ask Lo as I come back into the living room.

For the first time all day I see Lo stiffen. Get wary. Like she’s remembered that I’m the bad guy, working for the enemy, here to mess with her. And with all that probably comes all the other stuff I’ve done.

I
am
the bad guy.

“The flyers are for how we’re going to deal with the developers,” Lo finally says.

I hold up hands. “None of my business,” I say. The last thing I want her to think is that I’m…what? Doing my job?

That’s the thing. It is my job to convince her to sell, and it’s the best thing for her. But I put it out of my mind, just like I’ve ignored all of Alex’s calls since I got here.

“Isn’t it exactly your business?” she says quietly.

There’s not much I can say to that. But I can look her in the eye.

Then I smile.

“Not right now. Right now, my business is dinner,” I say, and haul her up from the couch, catch her in my arms. I just want the easiness we had back so badly, and we used to do this all the time. I help her get set up with her crutches and catch the look she’s giving me.

“Wait, you think you’re going to cook?” she asks.

“Yeah, and I’m gonna do it well,” I say. “You heard the doorbell. I got groceries delivered.”

“Yeah, I understand that the raw material for dinner is in the house. I’m questioning your ability to turn it into something edible.”

I can’t help it, I start to laugh. “I promise, Lo,” I say, putting a hand over my heart, “I’ve changed.”

Harlow tries to look serious, balanced over her crutches with her hair falling around her face, looking better than any other woman on the planet in just a tank top and sweat pants. But I know she’s remembering, too. She’s trying not to laugh.

I tried to cook her dinner once before. For her birthday. Her seventeenth birthday.

“I’ll reserve judgment,” she finally says, and follows me into the kitchen.

***

Harlow ends up helping me, sitting at the kitchen table, chopping up veggies for the ratatouille I’m going to make along with some pan-fried duck. Yeah, I’m trying to impress her, but so what? We settle into an easy rhythm, and I gotta wonder about it. Just yesterday she was ready to kill me every five minutes.

I don’t know, I guess I can feel it, too. Part of it is how we’re kind of reliving the past, in a way. It feels comfortable. Easy. This—cooking dinner for her? This is such a clear memory for me, one I’ve been thinking about a lot. One I thought about when I decided to cook dinner tonight.

Man, her seventeenth birthday.

It was her first birthday without her folks around. Can you imagine a heavier birthday? She’s staying with this nice foster family, just kind of barely getting by, and then her birthday rolls around and no one knows what to do. And me, I was just as lost as anyone, but I wanted to make it the best birthday it could be. I was determined. If I could have trained for birthdays, I would have.

So I get this great big idea, I’m going to make her dinner and ask her what she wants, and then I’ll figure out a way to get it for her. Easy, right?

I asked the Mankowskis if I could use their kitchen and if Harlow and I could have some time alone, and they seemed kind of relieved, like they didn’t know what to do, either, but they trusted me. This wasn’t some stupid seduction thing. I loved Harlow, and I was too damn careful to even think about trying anything physical on her until she was ready.

So there I was, pretending I knew what I was doing, Harlow sitting at a different kitchen table, watching me find a way to fuck up ravioli.

I still remember what she said to me. She said she felt bad about making everyone else feel bad.

“What are you talking about?” I said.

“Ok, example. Today, in English,” she said, swirling the one glass of wine she was going to have. “You remember Lisa, right? My year?”

“Yeah, one of your friends. Used to come by the gym.”

“Well, she’s one of those people who remembers everyone’s birthday, and makes a big thing about it. She gets everyone Valentine’s Day cards and Christmas cards and Hanukkah chocolate and everything. She’s Hallmark’s dream. So today, in English, she comes up to me after class while I’m reading.”

“You still read books you’re not supposed to be reading during class?”

“Whatever, the Board of Ed should get better taste in books. But Lisa comes up to me, right, after I’ve just finished the chapter where Vronsky chases Anna Karenina to St. Petersburg—”