Selfie (17 page)

“Yeah,” she conceded. “What’d I get you?”

“You got me here.” I waved my arms around the rental, but we both knew it was bigger than that. “And I don’t know what you threatened the paparazzi with, but I’m telling you, I feel remarkably unmolested.” The unthinkable hit me. “Do you think I’m just passé?”

She laughed, and the sound had an edge of hysteria. “I think the producers of this show and the town made a deal with the devil, that’s what I think. But yeah—I’ve been pulling some strings, baby.”

I felt suddenly weak. “I’m . . . I’m not going to disintegrate when you go home, am I?”

Because she was another living, breathing person in the house.

“No,” she said, completely serious. She patted my cheek and then looked in wonder at the necklace. “Your heart is just as whole as it’s always been.” Then she met Noah’s eyes and nodded. “You’d think that in his profession he’d be Mr. Cynicism, but he’s not.”

“I figured that out,” Noah said dryly.

She patted his cheek—it was his turn—and then she held my gift to her chest. “I’m going to go have a little heart-to-heart with Vinnie,” she announced, and before I could gasp—shock, horror, bewilderment—she ran up the stairs.

“You didn’t do that,” I told Noah, meaning it. “She’d already decided she was going to be tight with Vinnie’s ghost before I got home yesterday.”

“How about you?” he asked.

“Vinnie and I reached détente.” I looked around the rental again, happy with all the new stuff, but suddenly constrained. “Did you bring your bike?”

He winked and nodded. He’d come dressed in cargo shorts and a hoodie again, and, hello, it was a uniform.

“You want to get out of here?”

“I thought you’d never ask.”

He drove us out to the Forks area, to the Bogachiel Rain Forest, and I’m sayin’, if you’ve never biked through a state park, well, you’re missing something.

Driving through is nice—on the way to the trail you get the light, you get the sights, and if you lower the windows, you get the air, delivered in your face at full power.

But if you’re riding a bike along bumpy roads, looking at fields of wildflowers and breathing air regularly scrubbed by hundred-year-old trees . . .

It’s like being reborn.

And then Noah took me off the gravel road and onto the trail.

For a moment, I hated it, hauling my scrawny ass up that hill, one pump at a time, thighs and glutes screaming, arms trembling on the handlebars as I grunted, growled, and screamed up the hillside.

“God, you’re noisy,” Noah panted. “If you’re this noisy during sex, it’s a good thing
you
don’t live upstairs from anyone.”

“You . . . should be . . . so lucky . . .” I wheezed, stopping gratefully at the top of the hill where he was perched.

“Yes,” he said, with one of those slow blinks of his that indicated he’d just had a very different thought. “Yes, I should.”

For a moment, in a quiet forest, we stared at each other, and all of the things I hadn’t said lingered between us.

“Are you sure that’s a trail?” I said, desperate for
something
and looking at the downhill slope with a sort of bare patch through the fallen logs and big fucking rocks and not seeing anything resembling a path.

“Yes.” He nodded.

“That’s not a trail.”

“Watch me.”

And he threw himself and his pretty pink bicycle down that hill like there were werewolves on his ass.

With a startled “
Yeehaw
!” I did the same thing.

Oh yeah. I’d forgotten what this shit was like. Parasailing, horseback riding, wakeboarding—these were some of the rewards of keeping fit. The bike thumped down the hill, and I gave up trying to ride it and stuck with trying not to kill myself, shrieking all the way.

Glorious—fucking
glorious—
right up until the tree root rose up like an evil goblin. If I’d had more control, I would have jumped it, but I didn’t, so I went ass over teakettle, sticking my foot hard while I tried to control my spill.

I ended up on my back, staring at the peaceful filter of leaves and needles, watching the sun dapple the forest floor with shade as the quiet returned and the world stopped roaring in my ears.

“
Connor
!”

Noah was running up the hill toward me, bicycle over his shoulder, and I had a moment to think he looked really amazing, rugged and hot and . . . well, worried as hell, as he bent over me in concern.

“Noah? Is that you?” I was dicking with him, and he knew it.

“You asshole. Are you okay?” He scowled, and the ruggedness disappeared, leaving him unbearably cute.

“Honestly, I think my ankle is . . . amok.”

“Amok?” He propped his bike against a tree and bent down to offer me a hand.

“Amok,” I confirmed, taking his hand and pulling—while putting my weight on the ankle that did
not
feel amok.

He took me in and grimaced. “Oh, Jesus, you’re fifty percent road rash—Simon and Anna are never going to forgive me.”

“Why you? You’re not the asshole who just wasted yourself on a beginners’ bike trail.”

Noah shook his head. “Yeah, but I’m supposed to be protecting you—can you put any weight on it?”

“My ankle?”

“What else?” he asked, his sarcasm fully in place.

“Well, I’m sort of worried about my face!” God, you should hear the makeup people bitch if you got so much as an ingrown beard hair.

He squinted at me. “Yeah, we’re going to need to call Junior before you go in to makeup, but don’t stress. He’s good. Now try the ankle.”

I tried—gingerly—but it wasn’t going to happen. And the road rash wasn’t a joke—my chin, my cheek, my back, my knees—everything fucking stung, but I’d never been afraid of physical pain.

“Fuck,” he muttered, as I tried and winced again. It was starting to swell visibly, looking like a ripe peach under my sock. “How are we going to get back?”

I looked at my bike, and the thing must have been built of ogre spit and adamantium, because nothing was bent, broken, or incapacitated. Hell, the paint was barely scratched.

“Okay,” I said, using my reason and not my poor-poor-pitiful-me skills. “Bike still works—I was mostly coasting anyway. The road reconnects at the bottom of the hill, right?”

He cocked an eyebrow at me, like he didn’t like where this was going. “Yesss . . .”

“So, you ride down to the bottom and go get the car, and I . . . you know, sort of coast down the hill and wait for you.”

“That’s a horrible idea,” he said, like I hadn’t seen it coming. “‘How’d you lose
Wolf’s Landing’s
hottest property, Mr. Dakers?’ ‘Oh, I deserted him in the middle of the forest and he got eaten by a bear.’ ‘That was a bad idea, Mr. Dakers, how did that happen?’ ‘Well first I took him mountain biking and broke him, and then he couldn’t outrun the fuckin’
bear
!’”

“Bears don’t eat people,” I told him.

“Yes, they do.” He nodded so I would take this seriously.

“Well not often!” I laughed. “Now come on! I’m not getting heli-lifted off a bike trail for a sprained ankle. Now go down the hill and get our ride, and I’ll just sort of . . . you know . . . do what I always do and fuck along feeling sorry for myself.”

He shot me a glare. “You do
not
feel sorry for yourself!”

I snorted. “Tell that to the twenty-three million people who’ve seen me on YouTube.” Yeah. I’d checked the stats that morning. Wiping out on the mountain bike was a picnic with pie, it really was.

He grimaced. “Look, I’m not going to—”

He still had one hand around my waist from my abortive attempts to walk, and I put my near hand on his shoulder, hoping it looked like camaraderie. “C’mon, Noah—don’t take it so seriously. I’ll be fine.”

He grunted and avoided my eyes. “I don’t want to do this.”

“Clearly.”

“You . . . you should not be left alone.”

“Yeah, but I already tried suicide by mountain bike and failed. You’ve got nothing to worry about.”

He swung his head around again, eyes blazing, lower lip thrust out in fury, and my brain caught up with the obvious. He
had his arm around my waist
, and we were
standing really close
.

So close I could feel the whoosh of his breath as he gasped in anger.

“Wha—”

He kissed me.

Surprise didn’t even begin to . . .

He
kissed me
. Mouth crushing mine, hand coming up to hold my head still, tongue sweeping in to taste me.

I gasped and let him go deeper, harder, until I closed my eyes and conceded to the inevitable fact that I
really wanted this kiss
.

I moaned and let him plunder my mouth for another second, another minute, another breath, until
I
wanted more, and I turned my body, putting weight on my stupid ankle.

I let out a high-pitched shriek and stumbled. He caught me, holding me tight against his side, shoring me up when my body let me down.

There was a moment of roaring silence.

“You need to start down now,” I said into it, not meeting his eyes. “Help me get on the bike, I’ll be fine.”

“Connor—”

“I can’t talk about that.” Oh, boy. I’d rather ride down the hill, swollen ankle and all. I’d rather do it twice. I’d rather ride back to town.

“Connor, nobody can see us here—”

“This has nothing to do with the press,” I snapped, and for once, I was being completely truthful. “Not a goddamned thing.”

“Then what—”

“What do you think?” Jesus. He’d been the fucking elephant in the car since Noah had picked me up. “
Who
do you think?”

Noah let out a frustrated growl, and stared at the sky. “You know, you’d have an easier time getting over him if you could ever, just once, fucking admit what you were getting over.”

Oh, a thousand things surged to the tip of my tongue—some of them true and some of them cruel—but he didn’t give me time to say them.

“Here—get on the goddamned bike.” His words were surly, but he was gentle as a nurse as he held the bike and helped me swing up. I’d injured my left foot, which was lucky because I tended to use my right to prop up on. We worked for a moment to see if I could put my foot on the pedal, but that hurt too much. Instead, he pulled a towel from his pack and slung a loop of fabric around the strut of the bike, then, gingerly, he helped me stick my toe into it.

That worked. I could coast down the hill, taking most of the drag and the steering with my right foot, and my left foot was extended slightly out, with enough flexibility to move it so I didn’t hyperextend my knee.

“You good?” he asked, worry etched between his eyes. In spite of the thing—the thing I didn’t want to think about—that had just happened, I smiled.

“You fret too much,” I chided, winking. “Now get down the stupid hill and get my chariot.”

He shook his head, and then, like he had a right to me, he grasped my chin and gave me a hard, quick kiss. He hopped on his bike and left before I could formulate a response to that. The trip down was going to be so much worse than I let him believe.

I had to stop to get sick about halfway down. I’m not proud. Pain, exertion, and the fact that I hadn’t eaten yet all combined to make me puke stomach acid in the brush.

The going was slow, miserable, and awkward—and by the time I reached the road, I could feel the sweat stinging in every pore of my body, not just the parts missing skin.

And all I had room for in my head was his kisses, and the things he’d said before and after the kisses, and the way I still missed Vinnie.

All of it.

And hey—the sprained ankle too.

But still, as confused as I was about Noah, about Vinnie, about my entire freaking life, I have to say that when I saw the car coming around the corner on the winding paved road, I thought he was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.

He helped me into the car and gave me some more water to rinse my mouth with, as well as some cloths and antiseptic so I could work on the road rash while he put the bike on the back. I unhooked my helmet wearily just as he got into the front, and he reached behind him and ruffled my hair.

“To the doc’s?” he asked, hopefully, but I shook my head.

“Sprain,” I muttered. “RICE—rest, ice, compression, elevation. You know the drill.”

“But you have to be on set in four days!” Bitch, bitch, bitch.

I shrugged. “I don’t trust doctors.” That was the simple of it. That Vinnie had gotten his prescription meds from a guy who’d treated his tennis elbow with oxy was the more complex. “Trust me—I’ll be okay.”

He grimaced. “I don’t believe you. If you can’t put some weight on it by tomorrow, we’re going to the doc.”

I smiled, closed my eyes, and nodded, thinking,
One more reason to see him tomorrow. After Jilly leaves, of course.

Maybe it was that thought—that I’d be alone and hurt in the house and Jilly would be gone—that prompted what happened next.

It didn’t happen immediately. Immediately, I closed my eyes and let the shadows pattern the throbbing red of my lids. Immediately I let Noah’s music—lots of Motown and blues—slow the thundering of my blood.