Mockingbird (A Stepbrother Romance #2)(36)

What am I doing? I can't do this to her. I can't. The way she's touching me now, stroking my chest, nestled under my arm. When I look down she looks back at me with, what? Adoration?

How can something so awful be so perfect? How can she not sense that I'm here to destroy her?

What am I going to do?

Oh, great. She's asleep.

She starts snoring. Even that is endearing. She looks like an angel when she's sleeping. Her hair is all tangled, she's flushed and sweaty, and so gloriously naked, her big breasts resting against me, her skin so silky as she breathes in her sleep. She snorts and shifts and the snoring stops, but her breath tickles my armpit. It's never been like this before. We didn't even go all the way and all I want to do is wrap my arms around her and protect her. She looks so delicate like this, something truly rare and precious.

It takes some doing to detach from her, but I manage it. I lay her down on the couch and wrap her up in a blanket, and she curls up into the fetal position and settles there. I tug my shorts back up and sit next to her, wondering what in the hell I'm going to do about this. I don't want to hurt her.

I sag, my head falling into my hands, and feel the world spinning around me. This was such a mistake. I should have just left when I had the chance, and now… now what is she going to think? The way she looks at me, nobody has ever looked at me like that before. She sees me, if that makes any sense.

She keeps rubbing her feet together. Her toes must be cold. I pull the blanket over them and she stops, makes a soft sound, and stills in her sleep.

Time to go, Apollo. Get up and walk out, call her later.

I'm supposed to search the house for the codes but I don't even know where to start. I can't bring myself to leave. I should go somewhere, do something.

Somehow, I manage to sit there for an hour or more, staring at nothing. No answer presents itself to me. What am I going to do?

Then she wakes up. She yawns, looks over, and smiles, wraps the blanket around her wonderfully naked body and downs the rest of a can of warm, probably flat orange soda, and puts her head on my shoulder. Her arm slides around my waist.

I know, rationally, I need to pull away from her. I can't. I hold her back, lean back into the sofa and look past her.

"What's wrong?"

"Nothing."

"You're lying."

I flinch. You're damn right I'm lying. I'm here to rob you. You're the means to an end. This is just a job.

Except it isn't anymore.

The concern on her face only makes her more beautiful. Then she does it. She touches my cheek, runs her hand over the stubble and smiles.

"Talk to me. I don't know anything about you."

"What is there to tell?"

I have a cover story. We went through it together, point by point, but the details are slipping away from me now, like trying to grasp too big a handful of sand. I can't tell her the truth.

"Where are you even from?"

"Bayonne. I grew up in a housing project with my mother."

"Housing project? I thought…"

"That we're rich? I guess we'd have to be, to be donors, or whatever, right? My father is. My mother wasn't. He wasn't around when I was younger."

"That's awful. Where did he go?"

"He never told me," which is almost accurate. My father's life before he took me into it is a void. I don't know how much, if any, of what he's told me is true. What he has told me amounts of a few scant details, pieces of a puzzle that don't always fit.

I wrote off the inconsistencies as indicators of truth, to be honest. The real world is never perfect, things never make absolute sense. That's the foundation of a good lie, knowing the difference between something that makes too little sense to be true and something that makes too little sense to be false.

My deep breath turns into a sigh.

"She got sick. Lung cancer."

"Did she smoke?"

"No. Didn't help."

"Oh." Her hand presses to my chest as she rubs her cheek into my side. "I'm sorry."

"Not your fault."

"I'm still sorry. That's awful. How old were you?"

"Thirteen. Dad came for me then. Took me under his wing. I think Mom got word to him somehow. He came and took me after the funeral. I didn't have anybody else. Mom was an only child and her parents were dead."

"Why didn't he help you while she was alive?"

I have to roll that question around a bit. You know, I don't know the answer. He didn't have to be there. He could have at least sent money, kept us in better conditions, done something about her care when the insurance dropped. It was like he never checked on us at all.

"I don't know. I guess he took me in because he felt guilty."

"You seem a little distant with him," she sighs. "Look, I…" her voice catches, just a bit. "I like you a lot, but I don't know about him. I may be fighting with her but she's still my mom. Is he going to hurt her?"

I pull her close to me.

"I don't know. I think he feels stronger about her than he wants to admit."

That much is true. He's been acting off this whole time, ever since the last job. I don't know if it's affection for Carol or not.