Page 9 of Cruel Love

“Yeah. You would grumble about it sometimes. Maybe you can get him to open up to you?”

“He did a little. Something about our grandad.”

“Okay, maybe that’s it.”

She looked unconvinced, but I let it drop because my head started to pound again. And it was a reaction I took note of. Anything heading in a relationship direction or if someone brought up Grandad, and my head hurt. There was a reason, and I paid attention to what my body was telling me.

I wanted to push myself—and Aspen—a little more. “How did we meet?” Because when we got off the phone a little while ago, I could have sworn her reaction said we were more than friends.

“Oh.” Her eyes widened.

I had my answer. We were more than friends. I grinned but held back as much as I could. I didn’t want to scare her away. I needed to know the parts of my life that had been lost in some weird void.

“It’s what I already told you. We met at the party at the cove in July.”

There was more to it. She just didn’t want to say. “So we messed around?” There was no way I wouldn’t have tried if I’d encountered a hot girl like her.

She blushed.

I was even more convinced. “You’re my girlfriend, aren’t you? Otherwise, you wouldn’t be coming around.”

“Um.” She sank her teeth into her bottom lip then released it.

If she answered yes, I wondered if I could convince her to mess around some. The urge to touch her was intense, but the brewing headache amped up another degree.

“No. I’m not, not really.” She glanced at her phone. “I’ve gotta go. That paper…”

“Sure.” I closed my eyes against the pain. I didn’t believe her. Even if we weren’t dating, we were something.

“I’m going to go, but I’ll call tomorrow. I hope you feel better, and congratulations on how far you’ve come with PT. That’s huge, Phoenix.”

I murmured thanks before forcing my eyelids open as she bent over me to kiss me on the cheek. I wasn’t having that. I turned at the last second, colliding my lips with hers. One hand went behind her head, and I held her in place as my mouth slanted over hers. When she gasped, I took advantage and deepened the kiss.

Everything about it was fantastic. The way she responded, tasted, and felt was familiar yet new. It was the best fucking kiss I’d ever had in my life.

I didn’t want to, but the headache was brewing to the point that I knew it would be unmanageable. I released my hold on her, breaking the kiss and letting her put some space between us. “Stay.” Aside from the pain, I wasn’t ready for her to leave.

She shook her head then ran out, but not before I caught a flash of pain on her face. Another sign that we were more than she was letting on. With nothing left to do for it tonight, I pressed the call button for the nurse. When she came in, I asked for pain medication. I needed to pass out and rest to push myself even harder in the morning.

I was going to do some serious fantasizing, and it would be all about Aspen.

CHAPTER SIX

ASPEN

Holy crap, kissing Phoenix was a religious experience. On shaky legs, I rushed from his room to the connecting bridge that took me to the garage, then the elevator, and finally to my car. I felt a connection, a need to be with him the entire time. I wanted to turn around and accept his invitation to lie beside him and let him embrace me. But I couldn’t.

He would find out about the baby. And even though I had been planning to tell him little things—not that I was pregnant with his kid but other stuff—I thought better of it. He was getting headaches, and I knew even though he didn’t tell me. I didn’t want to make things worse. He needed to heal and get out of the hospital.

I sat in my car, completely stalled, unable to leave or stay. The situation with Phoenix paralleled how I felt overall: suspended in time and with no real direction. Everything felt different, and he was different—not the physical challenges he faced because those were long and terrifying—but the kinder, less defensive side he showed me was new, and I liked it.

He didn’t know the results of the amniocentesis. He’d missed out on pictures and ultrasounds, and I thought he would want to be a part of that. Deep down, even as annoyed as he’d made me with his attitude and lack of punctuality, I understood that he would be there for our baby. And that was all I had wanted.

Right?

Yes, that’s it. My stance hadn’t changed.

I wanted to give myself a chance to get to know him and to let him do the same with me, especially without the barriers we constantly threw up around each other before the accident. It wasn’t lost on me that maybe we had a chance, since even with his memory of our time together gone, he still wanted me.

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