The Summer Deal (Wildstone #5)(30)

She wasn’t a fan.

She was currently sitting on her usual corner cot of the dialysis clinic, which was attached to the small but efficient Wildstone hospital. She was grateful for both the clinic and the staff, as without them, she’d have to drive a hundred miles each way to the next-closest dialysis center.

So maybe she didn’t hate the procedure as much as she wished things were different. A wish she’d been wishing for fourteen years.

Friends was playing on the small screen hanging on the wall. Season five, the episode where drunk Rachel and drunk Ross accidentally get drunk married in Vegas.

Deck had put it on. He wasn’t a fan of sitcoms, much less ones from the ’90s, but knew she loved them, so he always had something good playing for her.

“Okay?” he murmured, squeezing her hand, his dark eyes on hers.

“Yeah.” She managed a smile. “Thanks. I don’t really hate you.”

“Oh, I know.”

She blushed. Like actually blushed. To hide that, she rolled her eyes. She was the only patient in the clinic today, which she liked. It gave her some alone time, which she needed. It also meant that she had one hundred percent of Deck’s attention, which she also liked. He was the first and only person in her life who could make her feel like she was an amazing person. Yes, she had Max and Eli, and they’d do anything for her, she knew this, but they also had each other.

She had no one. But being with Deck made her feel far less . . . alone. She squeezed his fingers.

With a grin, he leaned over her and brushed his sexy mouth to her temple. The feel of his thick stubble gave her a cheap thrill.

“You haven’t even asked me what today’s reward for being a good girl is,” he rumbled into her ear.

“It better be a chocolate bar.”

“Aim higher.”

“An entire case of chocolate bars.”

Deck shook his head. “Higher.”

She met those dark, heated eyes, doing her best to ignore the feeling that the dialysis machine was slowly taking over her body. That wasn’t what was really happening, of course, but the sensation remained. “Is this a present for me, or you?”

He grinned. “Getting closer.” He leaned in again and nipped her earlobe. “You get to go first.” He kissed the spot he’d just bitten. “And last.”

She smiled, because they both knew she always got hers first and last—he made sure of it.

“You’ve been scarce this week,” he said.

“Well, not totally scarce . . .”

They both smiled now, remembering the other night before the midnight pancakes.

“Want to have a late lunch with me?” she asked. “I’ve got half an hour between afternoon meetings.”

“Wanna have you for lunch.”

Her good parts quivered. “It’d have to be . . . fast food.”

His smile was slow and dirty. “I do some of my best work under pressure.”

As she well knew.

He crouched at her side, checking the lines and the machine. “So . . . tell me what you’re not telling me.”

She stared at him. “How do you always know?”

He shrugged. “Just do.”

She could fool everyone but him. Which was annoying, but also . . . a secret thrill. “Just busy with work.”

“Why are you lying to me? That’s against the rules.”

Yes, they had rules. Hers being simple. They were friends with benefits minus the friends part, because he wasn’t allowed to fall in love with her. He was just the good-time guy.

His rules weren’t nearly as simple. She wasn’t to hide from him, not how she felt, or what was happening with her health, nothing. And then there was the doozy—she wasn’t to lie to him. Ever. “I’m not lying,” she said.

“You’re omitting then. Something’s wrong, something’s bugging you. Is it your new roommate? Is it because you two used to go to the same summer camp?”

She drew a deep breath. “No. But Brynn’s not just my old summer camp cabin mate and new roommate. She’s also . . . my half sister.”

Deck raised a pierced brow.

“Yeah,” she said. “Shock, right?”

“I thought you were an only child. It was just you and your mom, and the myriad of assholes she brought into your life, the ones you won’t give me their names so I can go beat the shit out of them for what they did to you.”

“Okay, first, only one of them ever bothered with me, and it’s not like he laid a hand on me. He was just mean with his words. Big deal.”

“Not all wounds are physical, Kins.”

She closed her eyes. He was right. Way too right. But she didn’t want to think about it, much less talk about it. “Brynn’s not my mom’s daughter. She’s my father’s.”

“The con artist guy who lived with you and your mom on and off until she found out he’d been cheating on her?”

“That’s the one.”

He took this in for a stunned beat. “How long have you known?”

She squirmed. “Since I was fifteen and went looking for my dad’s relatives.”

He absorbed that and shook his head. “How long has Brynn known?”

“She doesn’t.”