Page 45 of More Than I Can Bear

Art Boy, no, River, looked up when I appeared, but not for long. He turned back to cooking what looked like the most perfect bacon and eggs in the world cooking in the fry pan.

“Hungry?”

He was like a siren of old, luring me closer with his offer of fried food, but when my mouth opened I left out an acidic burp. I wrinkled my nose, then clapped my hands over my rumbling stomach. “Yes. No. Maybe.”

“Sit down.”

He nodded to the table where Kaine and I had eaten dinner, just one night earlier, and I shuffled over there, not able to stand up for much longer. My muscles already quivered with the effort, as if I’d gotten up early and gone for a virtuous run, rather than slept off a hangover. But when I slumped down in a chair a glass of freshly squeezed orange juice was put before me, along with some painkillers, water and a plate full of food.

“I don’t think—” I groaned.

“Try.”

River sat down at the head of the table with his own plate, and started crunching his toast really fucking loudly, or that’s how it seemed. I grabbed the painkillers and threw them back, downing a mouthful of juice along with them. The acidic burst of sweetness was both manna from heaven and too damn harsh, forcing me to swallow hard to get it down. I gasped then clamped my mouth shut as waves of nausea rose, but eventually they fell away, just leaving me feeling shaky.

“Rough morning?”

I shot him a dark look, watching him smirk, the fucking bastard, those grey eyes dancing with amusement.

“How the fuck did I get back here?” I growled. “And what happened to Kaine?”

“Kaine’s fucked off. Figured you wouldn’t want to see him right now, after… Well, you know.” He grabbed his cutlery and started cutting into his bacon, nodding his head towards a set of keys on the table. “He gave me the keys to give to you.”

I dangled them from my fingers.

“And while I had intended to leave you two to whatever mayhem you could get up to, you passed out in my back seat.” He put his elbows on the table, leaning forward. “So I carried you in.”

Somehow I remembered that, a feeling of warmth, of completeness. All the pain and confusion had just melted away, letting me drop deeper into sleep. But I just stared at him right then, brow crinkling.

“And why would you do that?”

I was getting flashes right now of what we’d done, of the goblin inside me coming out, of laughing ourselves sick over the word ‘balls’. We must’ve been so annoying.

“You know why.” He wouldn’t look at me, focussing on his food, chewing one mouthful before prompting me to do the same and I picked my knife and fork up. There was a quietness about River, but as they say, still waters run deep. Those grey eyes finally slid sideways and there was a note of challenge there, asking me if I really wanted him to spell it out.

It was on the tip of my tongue to ask, but I didn’t. I couldn’t in my current state, the answer too hard to get my head around. I was the invisible one, that was my life, but what Jack had said, what Kaine had said… It presented a whole other reality. One where I was the centre of not one guy’s world, but all three. So I went to work, forcing the food down, feeling my headache ease and the nausea slowly drop off once I had a full stomach.

But that wasn’t all.

When I pushed back from the table, River took the plates away, cleaned them off and stuck them in the dishwasher before going out to the vestibule in front of the lift. He picked a bunch of stuff up and brought it through. I frowned when I saw the dark blue Converse boxes, one, two, three… more than I could count and each one brand new. The images of the shoes on the side showed they were all in pretty pastel colours that would take my inks easily. I stared at River, a question in my eyes. He just raised an eyebrow, stacking more and more shoes to form a wall along one of the massive windows until I couldn’t stop myself from moving toward them.

My fingers flexed, all pain forgotten now, along with the exhaustion. He knew exactly what he was doing, flaunting all these perfectly beautiful brand new sneakers in my face.

“What’re these for?” I asked, unable to keep the covetous note from my voice. Goblins like to take sparklies, hide treasures, and I itched to grab a few and hide them in the bedroom.

“You know.”

“That’s all you keep saying,” I said, trailing after him as he went back through to the vestibule, then came back again with a different box. “Is this like Westley saying ‘As you w…’”

He stopped in the foyer, lips twitching at my reaction to what he was holding: a massive box of the best markers money could buy. I felt saliva fill my mouth; not due to nausea this time. I wiped the corner of my mouth with my sleeve and then tried to be cool.

“So, you’re an artist too? Those are some damn fine markers.”

He snorted, then smiled.

“They’re not for me.” And then he did the sexiest thing a man could ever do. He offered me the box of luxe art supplies.

“I can’t.” I said that reflexively. Some women wanted diamonds, some wanted pearls but I just wanted a set of 72 Copic markers in each of the sets (A, B and C) and he was offering them to me.

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