Page 37 of A Smile Full of Lies
Her brow creased.
“Knox—”
“Where. Is. It.”
I didn’t wait for her to answer. I was already heading down the hall, lighting the way. I knew this house. I’d walked theserooms before she even trusted me to be inside. I’d gotten her grandmother to the hospital before the stroke finished her off.
And now she thoughtsuffering in silencewas the play, rather than coming to me?
Dragging her home with me kicking and screaming it is, I guess.
The bedroom was too dark. I lit the corner where the closet sat, then flicked the beam over the old dresser to the side of the closet. Half its drawers were open and a stack of folded clothes sat on top of it. Sparse. Like she’d stopped functioning from grief and couldn’t quite bring herself to put the folded clothes in the drawers.
She stepped into her bedroom behind me, small and quiet and stubborn as hell.
“I didn’t want to be a burden?—”
“You’re not,” I snapped, not even looking at her. “But this? You struggling like this is fucking unacceptable, Ros.”
Her silence said everything. I didn’t give her time to argue.
“You’re moving in with me until your money situation is straightened out.”
She hesitated for half a second — just long enough to piss me off more — before moving toward the dresser. She paused and turned, grabbing a duffel bag from under the bed, then started folding clothes into it. Too neatly. Like if she focused hard enough, I’d disappear.
I didn’t. I wasn’t fucking going anywhere. I’d allowed this to happen, so she’d have no choice but to move in with me, and I wasn’t going to give her the opportunity to play it any other way.
I grabbed her charger off the nightstand, looped it tight, and shoved it into her bag. Then I pulled her favorite Final Girl hoodie from the back of her desk chair. She always wore this one to our weekly movie nights. It still smelled like her shampoo.
She kept her eyes down, quiet and embarrassed, refusing to meet my gaze. It fucking gutted me.
She didn’t want me to see the empty fridge or the barely-there wardrobe that said she’d been scraping by with very little for far longer than I realized, before I’d decided to use it as leverage to get her under my roof.
“You should’ve used your spare key to my house,” I said, my voice quieter now, but still sharp. “You could have gone to my place. That’s what it’s there for.”
She zipped the duffel bag without looking up.
“You weren’t home.”
I turned to face her, letting that sink in.
“I don’t give a fuck if I was home or not, you still should have let yourself in and made yourself at home.”
Her head lifted and she frowned at me, shaking her head like she was confused.
I stared her down.
“You’re always welcome in my house. You should’ve gone next door thesecondyour power got cut off.”
Her expression crumpled. Just a flicker. But it was enough to make me want to break something. Preferably every man who’d ever made her feel like asking for help meant she was weak.
She moved to sling the duffel bag over her shoulder. I caught the strap and took it from her without asking.
“Let’s go,” I said, already walking.
There wasn’t a goddamn thing left in this house she needed tonight, and it was time she realized that. It was past time for her to realize that all she really needed was me.
The grass was soft underfoot, still damp from the late-afternoon humidity that hadn’t burned off before sunset. The coastal October air clung to us: thick, unseasonably warm, and too still. The weather hadn’t gotten cold yet. It was just heavy, like everything else tonight.
