Page 117 of The Shake Off

I think her cheeks flushed from being caught out, but she could just be about to vomit again.

“Have you been snooping, is that what you’re saying?”

“You leave me in your apartment every morning, alone.”

“You have been snooping!”

“No, I haven’t. I walk past the bookshelves to get out of here, but I’m not going to lie and say I wasn’t curious. I want to get to know you better. I want to see what’s behind the bulletproof armor you wear.”

“Oh, because I don’t want you as a boyfriend, I must be wearing bulletproof armor. I see your ego hasn’t lessened. Hope your head doesn’t get stuck on the way out.”

I grabbed my backpack off the kitchen counter and yanked open the front door. “I’ll fit just fine, thanks.”

“Glad to hear it.”

I stopped as I reached the top of the stairs, and turned.

“This is bullshit, Payton, and you know it. How about you call me when you’re feeling better, and you’ve unstuck your head from your ass? Enjoy your hangover.”

“I will!” she yelled.

It didn’t give me any joy knowing the sound of the door slamming behind me would have had her clasping her head again.

Okay, maybe it did… a little, but she puked onmeand I’m the one who gets broken up with?

I never thought I’d say this, but Payton Lopez is a dick.

And I think I might be in love with her.

TWENTY-THREE

PAYTON

I’ve faced death and come through the other side.

I also think I’d lost ten pounds – or would have done – if I hadn’t eaten my body weight in Ben and Jerry’s while watching The Holiday on repeat. Anything was better than baseball.

It had taken me three days to leave my apartment. Even though I’d only walked outside, hopped in a cab, and come straight around to Kit’s place, I was seeing it as a victory.

It was how I came to be sitting on a lounger on Kit’s terrace, overlooking Central Park, wearing a pink bandage around my arm while a two-year-old attempted to listen to my heartbeat. However, even if the stethoscope wasn’t made from finest oak, and painted with a little red and white cross, I’m not sure she’d have heard anything.

My chest was empty.

“Sick, Payton.” Bell’s pudgy little hand rested on mine, while simultaneously whacking me on the cheek with the end of the stethoscope. “Oops.”

Kit pushed up the bandage wrapped around her head for the tenth time. “Bell, sweetheart, be careful of Auntie Payton.”

I pulled a blanket around my shoulders and smiled gratefully at Kit. “Thanks.”

“Come here to feel better, and you leave with concussion,” she chuckled.

Maybe a concussion would knock some sense into me.

The pair of us had gotten off lighter than Barclay though, whose tail was wrapped in two green bandages while a Velcro heart rate monitor was attached to his leg. We’re not sure what had happened to him, but it wasn’t looking good.

Bell, wearing her white lab coat, flung the stethoscope around her neck, and trotted off to her mobile ambulance in search of the antidote to whatever she’d decided was wrong with me.

As long as it didn’t involve alcohol, I’d take it.

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