Tell Them Lies (Three Little Words Book 3) (2 page)

A
ll doctors’ offices
smelled like complete shit. Like someone took a bottle of hand sanitizer, the shitty smelling kind, and dumped it over the chairs, the walls, and embedded it into the carpet. Kieran shifted in the non-descript chair, with the subtle leaf pattern that was probably supposed to make the person sitting in it forget that they were in an oncology office.

It wasn't working.

He'd spent hours sitting in those chairs, preferring the sterile environment of the waiting room to the area where his mom was getting her chemo treatment. And yeah, he could leave, go run errands or some shit while she was hooked up to that machine and sucking down grape popsicles, but
just
in case she needed him, no way in hell would he be anywhere else.

The phone in his pocket buzzed, so he dug it out and grinned at the screen.

He could see Hailey typing, and he had to cover his mouth with his hand. For some reason, it felt inappropriate to smile so big in a cancer office. The Lush Twins were two of the most dedicated clients at the small gym Kieran owned, but they had the tendency to want to sip from a flask in between rotations. They were sisters, only about a year apart. Both divorced, and made absolutely no secret about the fact that they wouldn't mind some, uhh, 'after hours' training with Kieran.

Enter full body shudder of horror.

And then his phone went silent. Kieran rolled his eyes and lifted up off the chair to tuck his phone back in his back pocket. Hailey was probably just sensitive enough to take him seriously. His youngest employee at the age of twenty-three, a full thirteen years younger than him, Hailey was probably the one who was least used to his bluntness. Life was too effing short to bullshit anyone.

And just like that, the blonde from the grocery store a few days earlier zipped right up into his brain. Hell, she'd been so perfect, in her little sweater set and skirt, her impeccable ponytail, and her complete lack of a veneer. When she'd snapped at him in the checkout aisle, he'd about fell to his knees to beg for her name and phone number. Street address. Social security. Middle name. Favorite color. Anything, really.

Considering how long it had been since he'd felt that kind of desperation for even the tiniest scrap of information about a woman, he'd become a total creeper, looking for her in the darkened parking lot and coming up regrettably empty.

And really, what would he have done?

First, brought her whatever carton of ice cream he'd apparently denied her. Maybe smear it across that collar bone. Lick it off.

He shook his head to make the images vacate when he found himself getting a raging hard-on. A guy could get away with a lot while waiting for his mom here. Not a boner.

His mom's usual nurse appeared at the door that led back to the treatment area.

"The queen is ready?" Kieran asked when he approached where his mom sat in a wheelchair, smiling up at him. It always pinched him a little, in the place that possibly held his heart, to see her like this. The lung cancer that she'd been diagnosed with a year ago had about knocked him on his ass. Her, too.

Considering they were it, they were the entire fricken family, a stage three diagnosis had been just enough to shove him into complete panic.

All of it starting with a cough that she just couldn't get rid of. It shouldn't have led to this, her third round of chemo to try and shrink the inoperable tumor that affected her breathing. And seriously, chemo? That shit got old, real fast. Not she ever complained about it.

"I'm ready," she responded, pushing her smile further across her pale, wrinkled face.

"Don't fake smile at me. It pisses me off. If you need to puke all over me, just say so."

Maxie, the nurse, waved them off with a laugh, and Kieran pushed the wheelchair over to the large automated doors. His mom reached a hand back to pat his hand, letting him know she was fine to walk to the car.

"You know," she said while they walked across the black concrete to his car, "you should be nicer to me in front of Maxie. She'll think you're guilty of elder abuse."

Kieran snorted, and grabbed her hand to wrap it around the crook of his elbow while they made their way to his car. It was warm for late March in Michigan; the winter had been blessedly easy. All the snow was gone. Nothing was green or popping yet, but sun and clear skies and warmth could make up for a multitude of dead grass and empty trees.

"I should probably just remove all my tattoos then. I look like a prison escapee. She should really just report me and save you from my evil clutches."

The laugh that came from her mouth was quiet, but it was enough to make him smile. His mom did not laugh nearly enough the last few months. It was glaringly obvious to him that the only reason she was putting her body through all of this crap was for him, so he wouldn't be left alone. And it pissed him off.

Honestly, he'd rather die himself than see her wasting away like she was. She was a better person than him anyway, it'd be a nice trade up for the world in general if she could stay. He helped her sit in the passenger's seat, then jogged around to the driver's side. After he clicked his seatbelt on, he turned to her before starting up the engine.

"Now what? You want to go home, or do you feel like you could eat? I could stop and grab us some dinner."

"Yeah," she said with a nod, "maybe some soup? I could handle that without ruining the perfectly clean upholstery of your machine."

"Good. Puke is a bitch to clean."

She rolled her eyes, and then leaned her head back to rest while he drove. Maybe it was bad, but he didn't even ask any more how her chemo treatments were. He knew they sucked. And she wouldn't want to
tell
him that they sucked. He hated what it was doing to her body, and not at all convinced it was doing any good, and she
knew
he hated it. So they just never talked about it. It was an uneasy truce, but one that was working for them.

Kieran swung the car into an empty parking spot, and helped his mom out the car, through the doors and into an empty booth. By the time he'd sat back down with two bowls of Broccoli Cheddar soup and French bread, she looked tired and pale, leaning back against the upholstered booth.

"Mom?"

With a slight jolt, she sat up, blinking rapidly. "Sorry. I didn't sleep too well last night."

"It's okay," he said, taking much more care than normal to dip a corner of the warm, crusty bread into the steaming soup. "You know, if you'd let me move in, I'd be able to be there if you couldn't sleep."

When she narrowed her eyes and sipped from her spoon, he grinned. Did he want to move back in with his mom when he was thirty five? Hell to the hell no. But, if she needed him, then he'd gladly sleep on the lumpy mattress in the guest room of her condo.

"I don't want you there any more than you want to be there, honey. And you already pay the private duty company to come help me out. You're doing plenty."

It was tough to swallow, that all he could do was cart her to chemo appointments and pay for some house cleaning, meal prep and med management. The girls from the health care company were friggin' awesome, no doubt about that, but it grated on Kieran that he wasn't doing more for her.

He was her only son. He should be doing
everything
. But he also owned his own company, and that wasn't exactly a tiny time commitment.

"Besides," she continued, completely oblivious to him doing a running checklist of how much he sucked, "it's not like you're busy with a girl, are you?"

Good Lord. He wanted to dig that spoon into his eye so that he didn't need to see that hopeful, searching look in her eye. For years, she'd been dropping hints about grandchildren for shits sake. He hadn't even had a girlfriend, not a real one, for five years. Just, you know, scratching the itch when necessary. And here she was, slowly withering away in front of him, wanting something, anything for him so badly.

"I am," he said before he could think twice about it.

"Really?" Oh God, forgive him. She looked so happy.

"Uh huh. I, uh, didn't want to say anything until I knew she was on the same page as me."

And yeah, Blondie from the grocery store had not been on the same page as him. Not the same page, or the same book. Probably not the same bookstore even. And as soon as he'd blurted out those two words that would condemn him to lying to his dear, beloved, sick with cancer mother, it was her face that he saw. Those pale blue eyes that had damn near stabbed into his brain.

"Oh, honey. Where you did you two meet?"

The eyes that had been clouded with exhaustion about five minutes earlier were bright. Fricken' sparkling. Like diamonds or sapphires or some shit.

"The grocery store. She, uhh, she was standing in front of the ice cream, kinda spaced out, you know? And we just got to talking."

Lie. Lie, lie, liar, liar, pants on fire. He was going to hell. For sure. He just bought his VIP ticket.

"What's she like?"

It would have been manly to keep a stoic face and list some random generic traits. But instead, he smiled like a dumbass and just started rambling.

"Beautiful. Like, angel-level beautiful. I wasn't even sure she was real when I first saw her standing there. But she's, uhh, she's smart. It was obvious right away. And she gave me shit within like five minutes of meeting her. Which made me act like an ever bigger ass than I normally would."

She chuckled. She chuckled and Kieran felt his heart damn near skip. It was one of the best sounds he'd heard in a while. Even better than when Blondie had snarked at him. But this little excursion, while lovely for her mood, would only get harder if she kept asking questions.

"Hey, we should get you home."

"What time is it?"

"Just after six."

"Oh! There's a class at the library by my house that I want to go to."

"No way."

She smacked a hand on his forearm. "I feel okay, honey. The soup helped. It's a class on quilting, and I've wanted to go before."

Clearly, he didn't look convinced, because she got that annoying, stubborn tilt to her chin. Kinda like the one he was probably sportin' at the moment.

"Ma..."

"Kieran..."

And the standoff commenced.

"You should go home and rest."

"I'll be sitting in a chair, watching someone talk about quilting. It's not exactly strenuous."

"You slept for four hours straight after your last chemo treatment."

"So, aren't you glad I'm feeling well enough to do this?'"

"Damn it, woman." He rubbed at his eyes, feeling incredibly exhausted all of a sudden.

She winked. He rolled his eyes and started clearing their trays.

One of the Panera employees was watching him, and not being very shy about it. He wasn't an idiot. He knew he wasn't ugly. And of course, the ink that he'd been accumulating since he was eighteen only perpetrated that hallowed bad boy thing that so many chicks drooled about.

Not that that was why he did it. It wasn't. He liked telling the story of his life on his skin, recording it in a way that the world, or maybe just a select few who could see the important bits, were allowed to see.

But the girl staring at him from behind her cash register, wearing her brown visor, only saw traces of ink, dark hair and a man who was eating soup with his mom. He probably looked like the best thing since hunks of French bread next to a bowl of soup. So he sent her a little smile, and laughed under his breath when she averted her gaze immediately.

"Quit flirting, you have a girlfriend now," his mom said from behind him.

Taking her arm again, Kieran steered her back to the car, quite clearly avoiding that statement. First, he hadn't been flirting. A friendly smile was not flirting. Because if that was the case, he flirted with every female who made eye contact with him.

They had been on the road for a few minutes, Kieran still thinking that a damn quilting class was the most horrible idea ever, when his mom turned to him.

"So, what's her name?"

Fu...rick. Yeah, he was trying to swear less at his mom's request. Blowing out a breath through his tightened lips, he looked over at her when he stopped at a red light.

"Mom..." he said, hearing the resignation in his own voice. Truly, he didn't want to keep lying. But how could he
not
? With her looking over at him like that?

"Sorry," she broke in, waving a hand at him. "I know I shouldn't pry. But honey, do you even know how happy this makes me? That you have someone?"

Someone for when she died. It was the unspoken end to that particular sentence, and it just hung there in between them, his car doing nothing to absorb the implication. He tried to swallow, but it felt like someone had jammed a dry, leather bag of rocks down his throat.

"Yeah, I know it does." It was the least he could do at this point. Not argue with her, say she'd be fine. Because even though neither one of them had admitted it out loud, at least not to each other...she wasn't going to be fine. He'd done the research. The tumor in her lungs was inoperable; the objective of the chemo at this point was comfort, not cure. The likelihood that it would spread increased every single day that ball of evil sat in her body, digging in deeper and deeper.

When he turned the car onto the curved entrance to one of the district library branches, he had to pull down his visor to shield his eyes. The brightness of the sun, still in the sky at this point of the day, reflected off the rectangular windows that were spread evenly throughout the clay colored brick building. A few cars dotted the parking lot, but it wasn't busy by any stretch.