Wrath: A Sinful Secrets Romance, page 22
“With you. Got those legs all stretched out in my front seat. Smelling like that fuckboy soap.”
“What?” He’s laughing his ass off, just like I hoped he might. “Dude that shit is fucking Dial.”
“It’s not real Dial. It’s some get-your-dick-up Dial.”
He throws his head back laughing, and my gaze laps at that smooth, tanned throat. His Adam’s apple. Fuck, I’ve got a thing for thick necks. That’s not gonna help the problem in my pants.
“I can’t believe my soap gets your dick up,” he laughs.
“I think I said it was your legs.”
“I can’t believe I get your anything up.”
“I know.” I swallow, breathing slowly in through my nose. “Because I was…how I was with you. You’re too good for me.” It comes out rasped.
“C’mon, angel. Don’t do that. If you’re doing that, you must be scared. And if you’re scared, you shouldn’t be.”
My chest feels too tight, because I don’t know what I can say—to make him understand where I am. What’s at stake for me.
Maybe it doesn’t matter.
I catch his gaze before turning left onto the highway, and I decide it doesn’t. Nothing matters but him—being in this moment with him. At least until I can’t anymore.
* * *
Josh
He’s wearing sunglasses, so I can only really see his mouth. The way he bites the side of his cheek, then chews his lower lip. His hands move on the wheel, flexing and gripping and repeating.
There’s something going on with him. I guess he’s stuck in his head, although I can’t guess why. He’s such a prickly porcupine, and so closed off, maybe it’s a big strain for him to be as close with someone as he was with me last night. I tell myself not to worry about it, just focus on snapping him out of it.
I tap his upper arm. “Give me your hand.”
He hesitates for just a second before reaching toward me. He sort of hits me in the pec, which means he’s got his eyes locked on the road; I’m pretty sure he doesn’t want to look at me.
I wrap his hand in both of mine. “Does that feel good?” I ask him softly.
“Yeah.” It’s raspy.
“This is the football hand, huh?” I turn it palm up and run my fingertips over its callouses. “Does it get sore sometimes? Strained or whatever?”
He nods.
“What do you do for that?” I massage the palm, and he gives a soft groan.
“Fuck,” he groans. “Maybe that.”
“Yeah?” I rub between his thumb and forefinger.
“Damn, man.”
“A little tight?” I whisper.
“Always.”
I massage, and he breathes deeper. I don’t keep it up for long, because it might be hard for him to drive while I do it. I bring his hand down to my thigh and put mine over it.
My hand almost covers his. I trace the veins on the back side of his hand; one runs between his knuckles.
“I love your hands.”
There’s a beat of silence before he answers—a beat in which my heart flip-flops with fear that he’ll back out of all this, leave me to fall on my face again. When he speaks, his voice is soft. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.” Relief. “The knuckles and the veins. Hands…legs, throats. Those are my thing.”
“Things,” he says, and I’m relieved to see the twitch of a smirk.
His hand spreads out on my quad, squeezing lightly. “This is one of mine,” he says. “So damn thicc.”
I want to ask if he’s ever been with anyone but me. Not because I think I have a right to know—but so I’d have something to grab hold of. I feel like I’m falling through thin air alone. I’ve felt like this for so long with him. Even though last night was a damn dream, the fact that he’s acting cooler today scares me.
“Whatcha thinking, Millsy?”
I laugh. “I’m scared of you, too, you know.”
His face sobers. “You should stay away from me.”
“Why?” I can’t say it louder than a whisper.
He smiles at me. It’s the saddest smile I’ve ever seen from anyone. It feels gentle, like he’s giving me bad news with only his lips and cheek.
“Because I’m not a good guy.” He smiles again, this one just a fraction better. “I’m not like you.”
“Dude, I’m not a good guy either. I’m just normal.”
“I am sorry,” he says. His tone is heavy, musing, like he’s mulling over his regrets. “I’m sorry I was such a fucking dick to you. If I could, I would go back and change that.”
“Could you, though?” It’s the kind of stupid, pseudo-philosophical question my brain churns up all the time. Could he—in a hypothetical, time-machine scenario—change how he acted?
He looks pensive. “That depends, I guess. On what else I could change.”
“Do you have a lot of stuff you’d want to re-do if you could? In this hypothetical time-machine scenario?”
“What do you think?” he says flatly.
“I don’t know. I don’t know all that much about you. Even though I want to,” I add.
He gives me nothing. This is why I’m so off-kilter. I watch as he adjusts his grip on the wheel and navigates into the middle lane of traffic. He grabs his phone off his lap and frowns down at it. “Get off here in twelve more miles. That sound familiar?”
“Yeah. You don’t need the GPS, though. I can get you there.”
He nods once and stares out at the road for a while. “Feel free to play some music.” He hands me the plug-in for an iPhone.
Just like that, the conversation’s over?
I try to stay chill and fuck around on my phone. I don’t know exactly what music he likes, beyond classic rock, and I don’t want to just play something random. I scroll Instagram to have something to do. Looking at it in the car makes me tired.
“You falling asleep?” he murmurs. “Put your seat back.”
I force a smile. “Okay, Dad.”
He reaches over and runs his hand up into the back of my hair. “Get some rest. I’ll go slow.” A moment later, his hand reaches for mine. “I’ll go with you. If you want.”
I shut my eyes so I can feel his hand around mine. “You don’t have to.”
His hand tightens on mine. “I will.”
Somehow, I can’t bring myself to look up at him. Embarrassment, I guess. And all my desire for him. I’ve been tripping over my feet around Ezra since the first day he got here—even during the times that I felt like I hated him. He’s so magnetic. His hand around mine right now makes my heart beat faster. Not a bad thing; he just supercharges me.
I keep my eyes closed until I feel him changing lanes, and then I open them, confirming that he’s exiting. I let his hand go. We’re getting close.
“Whatcha thinking?” he asks softly.
“Nothing.”
His hand comes back to my leg, rubbing briefly before he needs it to drive. We’re turning left into the parking lot now…driving by the big, red and blue hospital sign.
He parks in the deck and walks around to my side of the Jeep. When I get out, he takes my hand and squeezes. “You’ve got this, dude.”
“Thanks.”
He lets my hand go, but we walk mostly in step with each other on the sidewalk toward the entrance. As we step into the revolving door, his hand goes to my lower back. Then we’re in the lobby. Colorful and tall and open. I’m hit by the memories of this place—of coming here with my mom. A woman pulls a kid by in a red wagon—they have these wooden wagons kids can ride in—and my throat cinches.
Ezra’s hand is at my back again. “Where we going, brother?”
Oh yeah. “Second floor.”
In the elevator, he steps close to me and wraps an arm around me, pulling me up against him so my face could touch his chest if I wanted. His hand rubs a big, firm circle on my back as his lips brush over the top of my head. “Over soon,” he tells me. “When we go, I want a milkshake.”
“Me too.”
We sit in the waiting room together. He shows me some memes on his phone. When they call me back, he asks if he should go, too.
“You don’t have to.”
“You want me to stay out here?” His brows draw together, and I can’t bring myself to ask him to go back with me.
“For now, I guess so.”
I go back, and all the old stuff. Weight check, blood pressure, blah blah. They do the EEG, and I don’t really like the nurse. She seems too chipper. The thing comes back normal.
“We’ll just do an MRI,” she says, like it’s no bfd. “We don’t have you down for general anesthesia, just IV sedation. Is there someone in the waiting room you’d like us to get?”
“My stepbrother.” My voice wavers a little on it. Maybe it’s not a good idea to bring him into this.
I think of his hand on my back when we moved through the revolving door and shut my eyes as a nurse swabs the top of my hand for an IV.
“Just a quick stick,” she says.
I grit my teeth, but she’s right. It is quick. Nearly painless.
“This will run for ten or twelve minutes,” she says, putting her hand on the bag. “Then we’ll unhook you and send you back to MRI, and afterward, someone will need to meet you in the waiting room.”
Fourteen
Ezra
“Ezra Masters?”
I lift my head, startling slightly.
“If you’ll come with me…”
My heart starts hammering as I follow the nurse down a hall with doors on each side. “Your brother is getting a sedative before his MRI. When there’s a history of anxiety, we like to try to offer our patients access to a parent. Since your mom couldn’t be here today, you’ll be allowed back.”
I can barely swallow as she stops in front of a wide, metal door. “He’s not going fully to sleep. Still, when you see him in the post-procedure area, he may be tired or sleeping. His mother—your mother, or is it stepmother?—has arranged for the doctor to call her during the post-MRI visit, but you may want to be back there with him.”
I manage to nod. She smiles, thin-lipped, and pushes the door open.
Mills is lying on his back in a hospital bed. His eyes are shut and there’s an IV running into a vein at the top of his hand. He has a gown on. There are sheets over his legs, up to his chest.
My stomach pitches. I can’t get my legs to move me toward him.
“Your stepbrother is here,” the nurse tells him.
DG’s eyelids lift open. His mouth curves a little as he tries to keep his eyes open to greet me. “Hey.” His voice sounds slow. His eyes drop back shut.
“This stuff…always…hits me” —his eyes peel back open— “so hard.”
I stand beside him, looking down and feeling vaguely panicked.
“It’s okay.” I force myself to lay my hand on his arm. “Feeling okay?” I ask dumbly.
I think he tries to nod, but his head barely moves. “It’s…ll be…fine.”
Then he’s out. His head lolls slightly to the side on its pillow, and the nurse laughs. “I think it hit him. He was trying to stay awake for you.”
“He was?”
She smiles. “Just to say bye.”
I stand there as long as I think I can. Thinking of another room. Another patient. How the needle always seemed to burn.
* * *
Miller
“I’m finished?”
“That’s it,” Dr. Kelley tells me with a quick smile. “I’ll let you get dressed.” She puts a finger over her mouth, like she’s asking me to keep a secret. “Skip the wheelchair ride out this time. You can leave as soon as your stepbrother arrives.”
I pull on my clothes one piece at a time, holding onto the rail with one hand as I do. Whatever was in the IV made me so tired. Even now, after almost three hours, I feel sleepy and off-balance.
Also, Ezra isn’t here. When I woke up—apparently I slept through the whole hour in the MRI, as well as a second EEG—they tried to bring him back, but the nurse said he wasn’t in the waiting room. I called him just to let him know what’s what, but he didn’t answer. That was more than an hour ago.
After I’m dressed, I sit in one of the plastic chairs beside the wheeled bed I just got out of and send him another text. ‘Hey I’m done. Can u pick me up? Like in the circle drive/drop off?’
I have this fuzzy memory of him coming back to the pre-procedure room, saying something to me before they whisked me away to the MRI, and the nurse confirmed that when I asked. She said she didn’t know where he went after that, though.
I’m so dead-ass tired, I don’t even want to walk out to the lobby, so I sit for a second waiting for him to text back. But there’s nothing. What the fuck?
I check my phone one more time before I leave the room, and there’s one from Mom. ‘Such good news! Let me know when you boys get home.’
The doctor called Mom on speaker phone when she briefed me, because she was worried I might not remember what was said—but basically, everything looked normal. Right now, the theory for my seizure is that when I got knocked out—when Ezra pushed me off the trestle bridge—it shook something up in my head. I told the doctor I’d knocked myself out; I made her promise not to tell Mom. Apparently if you get knocked out and your brain’s already wonky, that can shake shit up.
So far, there’s no need to start meds again. So that’s the upside.
Downside: still can’t drive. Not for another six months. Which means it’ll be winter before I’m behind the wheel again, and in the meantime? Gotta rely on Ezra to shuttle me around.
I try calling him as I walk toward the lobby. When he doesn’t answer, I leave a message.
“Hey. Been trying to get you for a while. Can you pick me up? Thanks.”
I blow a long breath out and run a hand through my hair. It’s all sticky from the EEG leads.
I spend a minute looking around—at all the families, parents with children. One woman is carrying a little baby car seat thing. That makes me sad. I’ve still got that heavy feeling as I walk outside and stand beside this big bronze sculpture of kids dancing. Before I can lift my hand to shield my eyes from the sun, I see a black Jeep pull into the drive. It stops near me, and the door opens.
I feel woozy climbing in, but I don’t want to let him know it.
“Fancy seeing you here,” I manage.
“Got your burger.”
He taps the dashboard, where a paper sack sits.
My chest loosens up a little. “That’s where you went?”
“Looks like it.” I frown over at him, noticing he’s wearing that peach ball cap again. It’s angled so I can’t see his eyes.
He starts out of the circle drive, and I notice there’s a soda in the cup holder.
“Sunkist,” he tells me. “Your mom said you like.”
“Did you talk to her? We’ve been trying to get you on the phone.”
“Different day.”
So, is he saying my mom told him I like orange soda on a different day? But he didn’t speak with her today while I was at the MRI? Did it take him more than two hours to get this food? Why didn’t he answer his phone?
I can’t read his face as he pulls onto the busy road in front of the hospital. Is he going to offer me some kind of explanation? Seconds pass…and then a minute. I tear into the burger because I’m fucking starving.
“Thanks. For this,” I make myself say.
He makes a grunt-like noise, and then he reaches into a compartment and pulls out…earbuds? I watch as he puts them into his ears.
Okaaay.
I don’t know how much time passes while I wait for him to act normal. To ask me how it went or…fucking anything. He doesn’t speak to me at all as we drive out of Birmingham and toward Fairplay. I can’t even guess what’s his problem.
Did I say something weird when he came back to see me?
Then, as I’m crumpling up my burger’s wrapper, it hits me: too much. I bet coming back to the room to see me before the MRI was too damn much for Mr. Emotion-phobe here. I was high off my ass, wearing a purple hospital gown with kangaroos on it. When I saw him, I bet I did a goofy smile or some such dumb shit.
I take a few deep breaths and tell myself to try to chill out. Maybe he’ll be normal again in a minute. But if not, I’ll analyze this later. When my head is clearer.
Ezra hangs a left onto the road that’ll take us back to Fairplay, his triceps popping out as he turns the wheel.
So what he’s one of God’s most beautiful creations? If it turns out this doesn’t work between us, college will have a ton of hot guys, at least some of them out of the closet. I’m imaging what my ideal type would be—someone who doesn’t look like Ezra—when he pulls his earbuds out of his ears. His eyes swing to mine, and, in a scratchy voice, he asks me, “How’d it go?”
I open my mouth, but I can’t get words to come out. Now you wanna know? I hear it in my head, but I can’t bring myself to say it. To let him know I’m hurt he didn’t ask me sooner.
“Went fine. Just watch and wait or whatever.”
“What did the tests show?”
“Nothing.”
His brows scrunch. His pretty lips press flat and pensive. “Is that a good thing?”
“I guess. Better than showing something bad.”
“Do they think it’s going to happen again?”
I shrug. As long as you don’t push me off a bridge again. “Might be a fluke thing. Never happen again.”
“Did they think it was a fluke?” he presses.
“I don’t know.” I rub my forehead. “She just said check back in later.”
“When?”
I can’t help a laugh at his aggressive—if belated—questions. “Six months.”
He nods slowly.
“If you’re worried about driving me, don’t be. I like cycling sometimes, and I’ve got a bike I can take to school. Or I can walk. It’s…what? I bet it’s less than two miles.”
“A bike?” His face twists, and his jaw drops open. “Are you serious?”
“I know it’s less cool than your Jeep, but—”
