Thirteen (Love by Numbers Book 4) (28 page)

She pushes past me, a bag in both hands and then looks over her shoulder and gives me a sassy, “Don’t you be talking about my arse or I’ll tell my sister.”

I’m standing in the still open doorway as she shows herself around the apartment and pops her head around my bedroom door. “Oh,” she steps back out, “I guess the naked twin means that’s not my room.”

I push the door closed with my foot and trail behind her. “Would you like me to show you to your room? Well, it’s Nate’s room but it’s yours for a few weeks, he just warned me not to let you ‘girlify anything up’, so I guess that means don’t mess with his shit.”

She ignores my offer of a tour and finds Nate’s room within seconds as I follow her like a lost dog. “Does Nate have a girlfriend?”

“Yes, he does. Why?”

She dumps her stuff on Nate’s bed and checks out the room. “I guess he already has someone to ‘girlify things up’ so I’m not taking any blame for any new throw cushions I may or may not add, to make this room more comfortable and less…” she picks up a stray sock from the floor, holding it with her fingertips, “manly.”

Dropping the sock in the laundry hamper she does a full three-sixty spin and adds, “Maybe I’ll just spend an hour or two cleaning this room up before we go to get our stuff. You can use the time to carry on doing whatever, or should I say
whoever,
you were about to do.”

My mouth gapes open, even I don’t have a comeback for that.

“And by whoever, I mean my sister, so don’t ever let me catch you doing anyone else. Now toddle off. Nic’s busy.”

She ushers me out of the room and closes the door in my face.

This girl has been here less than five minutes and is already turning my world upside down and inside out. I’m not sure I’m going to survive the next few weeks. I may die of an oestrogen overdose.

Death by twins.

Fuck.
The old Harry would have loved to tell Jake all about that story. The new Harry, well he’s happy with just one twin. In fact, more than happy. Lilah is all I need and then some.

“I take it she’s already making herself comfortable?”

I’m still staring at the closed door when my half of the twindom wraps her hand around my waist and leans into my side.

“Yep, I think you could say that’s an understatement.”

She looks up at me, “Thank you. I know we come as a bit of a package deal and I know that we can be quite hard work, but thank you for this. I’ll make it up to you, I promise.”

I kiss the top of her head and walk her away from the door, back towards our room.
Our
room. Yeah, I like it.

“If by make it up to me you mean let me have my cake and eat it, then I’m holding you to that promise,” I lay her down on the bed and slowly cover her body with mine, threading my hands through her short, soft hair.

“I have to get back to work, but I’ll be home later and I’m warning you about my intent to collect what you owe me.”

I place my mouth to hers but she doesn’t reciprocate and her whole body stills beneath me.

Leaning back to look at her face, I’m just about to ask her what’s wrong when she says, “Can you come with us after work and get some things from our place?” Her eyes move nervously away from mine and she worries her bottom lip between her teeth.

“Hey, look at me, Bunny Girl.”

I gently cup her face until her eyes find mine once more. “Even if you wanted to go alone, I wouldn’t let you. You’ve got me, Lils.
All
of me. I’m here for the tough stuff, the fun stuff, the sexy stuff,” I wiggle my eyebrows at her until a ghost of a smile twitches at her lips, “and all of the stuff in-between.”

“You have such a way with words, Harry Brown.” She sighs and traces a single fingertip over my face, stopping at my lips. “Kiss me, then go back to work. The quicker you leave, the quicker I get to have you back.”

So I do just that. I kiss her with no intentions of leaving her, ever.

When she’s had enough of me, I’ll just stalk her from afar, in a totally non-creepy way because I don’t want to get arrested. I wouldn’t do well in prison. With a face like mine, too many blokes would want to make me their bitch.

I
don’t know how I managed it, but I’d completely forgotten how bad the damage was to our apartment. I’d erased all the destruction from my mind as one might
Tipp-Ex
over a spelling mistake.

The place is ruined and the majority of our belongings destroyed.

What hurts more, when I walk into the aftermath of Wayne’s rage, is that I only have to see this second-hand, Nic lived through it. She saw his hate; she experienced his malevolence, and he took something from her that night. He took away her right to feel safe in her own home.

As I survey the mess all around me, I feel lost. Where do we go from here? Harry’s warmth seeps through my clothes as he wraps his arms around my waist and rests his chin on top of my head.

“Just grab the things you need, don’t worry about cleaning this up. I’ve arranged with the guys to help me clear this place on the weekend.”

“The guys?” I lean back against his chest, twisting my head to look up at his face.

“Josh, Isaac, Liam and Jake if he’s home. We’re going to take care of all this for you, but I need to know if you’re planning on coming back here or if you’re going to find somewhere else?”

I’m astounded by how much this man gives me without expecting anything in return but I still can’t help myself from teasing him; it’s who we are.

“You trying to get rid of me already?” I lay it on thick, puppy dog eyes, turned down mouth, the works.

“No, not at all. I would never…” he flusters.

I can’t keep it up long. Teasing him is fine but making him genuinely worry is another matter. “I’m pulling your leg; I know you’re not hinting at kicking us out.”

He leans in to kiss me and I welcome it. I want to ignore the chaos and mess that lays at my feet and get lost in him, but, as ever, Nic has excellent timing.

“Put her down, we’re here for a reason and snogging while knee deep in all our broken stuff, isn’t it.”

Her voice has a forced cheer to it, her banter falls flat, and I want nothing more than to go over and wrap my arms around her, but I know Nic, and that’s the last thing she would want.

“Harry has arranged to clear this place for us, so just grab anything that you want to keep. We don’t need to be here a second longer than we have to.”

She smiles brightly at me, showing her teeth, it’s another display of how well she’s not coping.

“Nic,” I call out as she disappears into her room with an industrial sized black sack. She halts and looks over her shoulder at me, her mask of false happiness struggling to stay in place.

“We’re not coming back here after this, okay?” I wait for an argument, but one doesn’t come. Instead, I get a quick, “Okay”, and she disappears into her room leaving the door wide open. I can hear her inside rummaging around and then silence. No more movement.

Harry doesn’t wait for me to pull away, he drops his arms, places a soft kiss to my cheek and says, “Go to her, I can make a start out here.”

I turn in his arms needing more, wanting to draw on the strength he provides me without even trying.

“I adore you.” I kiss him gently, running my lips over his, breathing in all that he is and all that he gives me. He opens his mouth, and I see the words he wants to speak in his eyes, but I don’t want to hear them. Not here, not now. So I place a finger over his plump lips and beg without words for him to swallow them back down. He knows what I’m asking of him; he knows because I see it when he blinks, and his eyes lock down his feelings. Knowing I’ve stopped him saying the words, knowing they now lay trapped in his throat, choking him and that he’s unlikely to set them free again, hurts more than you can imagine. So I do what I do best when something hurts, I walk away, and because he knows I need to, he lets me, even though I can feel him watching every step I take.

I walk into the mess that was once Nicola’s room and find it just as destroyed as the rest of our place. Wayne used numerous weapons during his rampage, including a cricket bat and a knife. Nic described it to the police as being the size of a machete and he used both to tear apart and smash everything we owned. What he couldn’t destroy with either of these items, he daubed with blood-red paint, creating a tableau of utter horror and ruin in an attempt to make me the weak girl he once knew.

Nic stands, stock still, among the debris. Her arms hang limply at her sides, and her head rests low on her chest. I’ve never seen my sister so… broken.

“Let’s grab some of your things and get out of here, Nic.”

I want to go to her, hold her, comfort her but I know my sister well, and any attempt at comfort will only be seen as pity. She needs to instigate it, not me, it’s just the way she works.

Her shoulders rise with a deep intake of breath, and before I know what’s hit me, she’s in my arms. Sobs break free from her chest, despite her failed attempt to hold them back.

“I hate… feeling this way, Lils. My brain knows it’s over, but the feelings, the
fear,
won’t go away.”

I know this pain, for years it was mine and mine alone, and I hate that she’s suffered even an ounce of it. “It will, Nic. I promise you it will pass. Right now everything is still fresh, still raw. It’s like a deep cut and you have no way, right now, to stem the flow of blood, but I promise you-“ I grip her arms and guide her back so I can look at her tear stained face. “I promise you, that open wound will soon scab over. It will still hurt, and some part of you will always want to pick at it, but then something amazing will happen, and the scab will fall off. What you reveal will be even more perfect than what you had before.”

She sniffs, wipes at her face with the backs of her hands and asks, “Is that what Harry is? Your something amazing?”

No, he’s more than that.

“He’s my something
extra-
ordinary.”

She can’t help the small laugh that escapes her, “I knew it.”

“Yeah? Well, that makes you better at all this stuff than me, so why are you holding back on the Dr Hottie front?”

Her face morphs in a coy smile, and I know she’s holding out on me.

“Spill it, what aren’t you telling me, Nic?”

“Well…” she drags out the word teasingly, and her eyes finally sparkle with typical Nicola mischief.

“C’mon on, spit it out.”

“He’s text me a few times to see if I’m okay.”

I can’t help but gape at her like a dead fish.

“He’s
what?
How the heck did he go from buying you a coffee, to getting your number and checking up on you?”

She shrugs and the smile on her face gets bigger. “I’m irresistible. What can I say?”

An unexpected laugh bursts from my lips, “That you are.” I hook my arm around her shoulder and squeeze, “C’mon, Miss Irresistible, let’s grab your stuff and get out of here. Then you can spill all the details about Dr Hottie. I want to see the texts and everything.”

She bends down to retrieve her discarded black sack and when she stands back up her face has a wicked gleam, “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.”

“Are you pair having a sneaky game of show and tell while I’ve been working my butt off?”