End of Story(49)

He looked at me for a moment then reached past and opened the front door to the building. “I honestly didn’t mean to pressure you. Let’s talk about something else.”

“All right. When was the last time you lived on your own?” I asked.

“Guess it’s been four or five years.”

“That’s a while. It’ll be an adjustment. Having the space to yourself can be great. But not having anyone to talk to can get a little lonely.”

“I’ll be fine, Susie.” He gave me a half smile. It wasn’t very convincing. “I’m thinking of buying a houseboat at the marina. Someone I know through work is moving to Colorado and needs to sell.”

I raised a hand to shield my face from the afternoon sun. “A houseboat? Cool.”

“Yeah.” But he still didn’t seem exactly happy. He gripped the back of his neck. “It’s good that Tore and Cleo are moving in together. I hope it works out for them.”

I just smiled and waited. And it worked.

“You’re right, I’ll miss my brother, but...life goes on.”

“This is true. And it’s not like he’ll be far away.”

“Exactly.”

“You’ll be fine.”

“Yes,” he said. “I will be fine. Can we stop talking about feelings now?”

“Yes.” I grinned. “Thank you for sharing, Lars.”

By ten o’clock, I was pacing in my black knee-length sleeveless body con dress. My wedges made a satisfying sound against the wood, a nice, angry smacking noise that soothed my soul. Because there’d been no sign of the man. No call, no text. I tried phoning and got his voice mail. I did not leave a message. My emotions had run the gamut from fury to fear and back again. Where the hell was he?

I’d snuffed out the candles when they started to burn down and the risotto I’d made for dinner had probably dried out. I hope he had a good excuse. No. He would have. Lars wasn’t the type to just let me down. Though it was hard to convince myself of that after three hours of waiting and thirty years’ worth of bad experiences. This was exactly why I didn’t want to date. Hurt made you take a step back from the world for your own protection. But there was nil distance between me and my burgeoning feelings for this man now. Dammit.

Maybe he changed his mind about our friends-with-benefits situation. Maybe he had car trouble. And his cell broke so of course he couldn’t call. Oh, no. Maybe he was sick. Though he’d been the picture of good health today. Whatever. I would trust in our friendship. There was bound to be a perfectly rational explanation. Fingers crossed.

The woman I’d like to be would have kicked off her heels, poured herself a glass of wine, and settled down in front of a good movie. Bid adieu to anxiety and made the night enjoyable all on her own. She didn’t need no man. She didn’t need anyone. That girl could slay dragons (emotional and otherwise) all on her own. Meanwhile, I kept pacing.

Kat bravely hid under the couch twitching her tail. All of my clomping back and forth did not please her.

My phone buzzed in my hand and I jumped. “Hello?”

“Susie,” Cleo said. “Don’t freak, but there’s been an accident.”

The emergency ward on Saturday night was bedlam. Machines beeping, people talking too loudly, a drunkard yelling, and people moaning in pain. And beneath it all was the sound of his voice behind a curtained-off bed in the corner. Thank God. Perhaps now my heart could calm the fuck down. It had been on the edge of either an attack or a break for the past half hour. The drive from home had been one of the longest of my life. My hands had gripped the wheel so tight my fingers started cramping.

The overwhelming scent of disinfectant didn’t help. Last time I’d been in one of these places I’d been identifying Aunt Susan’s body. An experience both horrible and horrifying. But Lars wasn’t going to die. There would be no sudden second phone call to tell me he’d taken a turn for the worse. Everything was fine. Cleo had said she and Tore could handle it, but I needed to see him. To know that he was okay. And him asking for me just reinforced my need to be there.

“Hey,” Cleo greeted me behind the curtain with a wan smile. “Breathe.”

“I’m breathing.” Though hyperventilating would be a better description. “How is he?”

“Not bad considering he got hit by a car.”

On the bed, a shirtless Lars lay among the white sheets. Jeans covered his bottom half. He looked paler than normal. There was a brace around his neck, a cast on his left wrist, a freshly stitched cut a couple of inches long on his cheek, and bruises and grazes everywhere. The dark marks on his torso were horrific. Holy shit.

“This is the princess I was telling you about,” said Lars with all due seriousness.

“She’s very pretty,” the doctor tending to him said and gave me a smile. As if to say she’d seen and heard it all before. The tag on her white coat read Dr. Kelly Lopez.

“Don’t tell her I call her Princess, though. It’s just in my head.”

“Got it.”

Tore leaned closer. “They gave him the good stuff.”

Lars shuffled on the bed and winced. He might be high as a kite, but he was still feeling some pain. “We’re going to get married, but then we’ll get divorced.”