His face scrunched.
Maybe not.
“The kind of therapy I’m proposing would be more like a workout.” I gave him a smile. “You like to work out, right?”
No response. Just the same bland stare.
“Only we’ll be working out your face instead of your arms. Think of it as bench presses for your lips. Curls for your tongue.”
One brown eyebrow arched as the side of his mouth curled at one corner. It wasn’t exactly a smile, but interest lit his eyes. I thought about what I’d said and scowled.
“I didn’t mean it like that.” If he thought I was flirting with him I could hang up the idea of ever helping him speak. Though the idea of his tongue on mine was… Gosh. Distracting. I repressed a shiver.
That hint of a smile vanished from his face. I wish I could say it satisfied me to see it go, but he had an amazing smile. He used to smile often. Before the accident, he was a grinning idiot most of the time. The problem with that godlike, grinning specimen was that he’d had a big mouth and a forked tongue. He’d impaled me with it once. I hadn’t forgotten.
“Aren’t you even going to try?” I asked.
He returned the juice carton and slammed the fridge door.
“Cade.”
He spun on me. “What!”
Stunned, I blinked at him a few times. He spoke. One syllable—one very frustrated syllable—but Cade had parted those fantastic lips and spoke.
He’d said a couple of words here or there when I first started coming around, but lately he’d clammed up. His patterns were back. If I poked him, then he growled like an angry bear. If I cheered him on, he’d shut down completely. That left me with only one option. I had to be bossy.
“Sit.” I pointed at the black leather love seat in front of a TV resting on the floor, its wires lifeless around it. I was momentarily surprised he hadn’t hooked it up yet.
Eyes the color of melted caramel locked on mine as he prowled over to me in three long-legged steps. The closer he came, the more erratic my heart beat. Then he bypassed me entirely, walked into the bathroom and shut the door. A moment later the water for the shower came on.
Sighing, I plopped down onto the love seat and unzipped my backpack. At least I knew to bring my homework so I could accomplish something while I was here.
You win this round, Wilson.
Chapter Two
Cade
The space above the garage was meant to be an apartment for a renter. My dad had envisioned making extra income by renting the room before he’d been swept up in illegal gambling instead. In the years while I focused on becoming a lawyer, he’d lost interest in the idea of renting, or maybe he’d forgotten about it. He’d only ever used this space as storage.
I hadn’t slept much lately, so on the nights I lay awake, I’d come up here and clear it out. Half the shit went into the garbage—stuff no one needed, like extra garden hoses and malfunctioning holiday lights—and the other half went onto shelves in the garage. Some of those boxes were filled with my mom’s stuff. I doubted she’d want it back, but I kept it anyway.
Well. Joyce. She wasn’t technically my real mom.
Now the only boxes up here were mine. I finished unpacking another, transferring my T-shirts and sweatshirts into a dresser drawer. I kicked the empty box off to one side. I’d carry it to my old bedroom and pack up my closet next. Moving from the house to here wasn’t my idea of living the high life, but my current job as a busser at Oak & Sage didn’t afford me the luxury of renting my own place. That would change, and soon, but in the meantime at least I had some privacy.
I made the bed next, stretching a set of navy-blue sheets over the mattress while surreptitiously checking out the therapist on my couch.
Tasha Montgomery.
Blond-haired, blue-eyed, great body. She wasn’t easy to overlook. She was tallish, but not too tall, which I liked. A lot. I’d first noticed her on campus at Ridgeway University on the arm of Tony Fry. That jackhole walked all over his women—and yeah, he had more than one. I figured Tasha knew.
My first interaction with her was memorable, but not in the way I wished it was. I’d approached her at a frat party before the accident. My intention was to flatten her with a grin, disarm her with my charm, and have her in my bed shortly thereafter. Tasha hadn’t been charmed or flattened. She’d been pissed. Snapping her head around to face me, she’d told me point-blank to leave her the hell alone.
Granted, my offer for her to ride the “Cade train” wasn’t polite, no matter how sincere I’d been. I’d pegged her as a rich girl who would go for the grin no matter what I said. I’d bragged to my buddies as much before leaving them to approach her. I’d been showing off. I wasn’t proud of my behavior.
I’d since learned I was right—Tasha was a rich girl—but also wrong. She never went for the grin. She’d believed she and Tony were going to ride off into the sunset like some rom-com movie couple when it’d been clear to me—and anyone else watching—that he was biding his time with her while biding his time with a few someone elses.
Being cheated on sucked. I knew firsthand.
Since my ex-girlfriend, Brooke, had left me behind, I’d been with a lot of girls, but never did I ever date more than one at a time. That didn’t make me a nice guy, but hey, at least I wasn’t a cheater. For a while I’d blamed being an asshole on heartache. Now, I blamed myself for chanting “YOLO” like a frat douchebag who didn’t know the future could change in the blink of one of Tasha’s blue, blue eyes.
I glanced over at her, unsurprised she’d followed me up here. Though her suggestion to “exercise” my tongue did surprise me. I liked our old routine. The one where I sat on a beanbag chair and played video games while she perched on my unmade bed, her homework spread out in front of her.
I’d dragged the love seat upstairs with Devlin’s help, but I hadn’t bothered plugging in my game system yet. I’d been too busy packing, cleaning, and, lately, working on my new/old car.
Tasha was doing a good job of ignoring me at the moment, which I thought I preferred. Our interactions were that of an old married couple, like we’d grown tired of each other and no longer spoke. Only in my case, I no longer spoke because rare was the occasion I benefited from it. In the past it had gone something like this: I stuttered. Tasha morphed into teacher mode. I clammed up.
Nothing like being seen as needy and pitiful by a girl I liked way, way too much. Have I mentioned that I liked her liked her? There was no way to act on it, and having her near hadn’t cured me. I was hot for teacher.
Most couples I knew didn’t exactly have it together. My dad, Paul, and the woman I thought was my mother, Joyce, had split up years after she’d accepted his affair and me as the by-product. She and I had been distant since the divorce a little over a year ago but were more distant now. She was humiliated that she’d lied to me for years and I was pissed that she’d lied to me for years. Her attempts to reach out after my accident were not met with enthusiasm on my part.
In the kitchenette, I opened the lone cabinet over the sink to find it bare. I hadn’t bought snacks of my own yet. I’d have to raid Dad’s snack stash instead.