If I’d set back my recovery again …
My bedroom door crept open, and Lucy popped her head inside. Fucking great! She took a cautious step into the room and stared at me lying on the ground. She was still in her PJs. But they weren’t normal PJs. She wore a tank top without a bra and shorts so short they showed her long legs and delicate white skin.
Why the hell was I noticing her shorts when I was buckled over in agony?
‘I knocked …’ Her voice trailed, and hesitation pinched her expression. ‘I wasn’t sure if you’d heard me.’
I couldn’t look at her. I was a pathetic sight, broken and groaning in pain—a pitiful excuse for a man. No doubt she’d try to help me, try to wrap me in her spaghetti arms and pick me up off the ground as if she stood a chance of carrying my weight.
Except, she didn’t.
Lucy walked across the room and sat beside me on the ground. She said nothing; she just sat. I shuffled up, reclining against the side of the bed, and we remained side by side on the floor, in silence, until the pain no longer felt as if knives were stabbing into my bones.
‘Your leg is an asshole.’
I furrowed my brows. ‘What?’
‘Your leg,’ she repeated, gesturing toward it with her chin, ‘it’s a bigger asshole than you are.’
She locked her ocean-blue eyes on mine, and her lips curled into a gentle smile. ‘You and I make an interesting pair, don’t you think? We’re as broken as each other.’
I pierced a blank look at her. Her smile fell flat, and her gaze dropped to the ground, her shoulders crumbling inwards.
My stomach sank.
Standing, she reached for my crutch and brace, placed them carefully beside me on the ground, then walked out without another word.
No one made me regret being an asshole like she did.
Lucy was standing at the sink when I made it out of my room ten minutes later, her back to me. She must have been deep in thought because she didn’t flinch as I walked up behind her. Turning off the water, she spun around and took a step, crashing straight into me.
Squealing, she threw her hand to her chest and clutched her tank top. ‘Far out! I didn’t hear you coming!’
She kept her gaze down, but I saw her trying to catch her breath. The effort it required seemed wrong.
‘Lucy …’
She wouldn’t look at me.
‘Lucy …’
Still, she ignored me.
Cupping my fingers under her chin, I lifted her head until our eyes met. She tried to look away, but I wouldn’t let her, guiding her gaze to mine.
‘Why are you breathing like that?’
‘Can you walk okay?’ she replied, blatantly avoiding my question.
Standing so close to her, I realized how petite she was, and the way her shoulders sank made her appear so fragile. As if she could crumble away to nothing. As if she wanted to crumble away to nothing.
Something about that made my chest tighten.
‘Thanks for comin’ in to check on my sorry ass,’ I said.
This time, she kept her eyes locked with mine, and her cheeks flushed with the slightest tinge of pink. Unlike last night, I couldn’t convince myself to move my hand away from her face, fully aware of the softness of her skin against my fingers.
Her nipples poked out through her thin white tank, and I saw the contours of her small, perfectly rounded tits. I imagined what color her nipples were, how they’d feel in my palm, what they’d taste like.
My gaze fell to her gently parted lips …
I dropped my hand and edged away from her. Heat flushed my neck, and I spun toward the dining table to divert my line of sight.
It had been way too long since I’d had sex.
I cleared my throat. ‘What are your plans for the day?’
She leaned against the sink, drawing my attention back to her perky nipples. ‘Nothing.’
‘I was thinking I’d take you out. You know, like Lillian wanted.’
‘Is your leg okay for that?’
I shrugged. ‘I’ll survive.’
She lifted her arm to rake her fingers through her hair, and scars on the inside of her left wrist caught my attention. Something twisted in my gut.
How had I never noticed them before?
She clutched her left wrist, covering her scars with her right hand, and tucked her arm against her stomach. ‘Will it be okay if I bring my drawing pad?’
I nodded absently, still considering her scars. ‘Sure.’
‘And can we please go somewhere far away, somewhere nowhere near the city.’ Her voice lowered to a whisper. ‘Somewhere there aren’t any buses.’
I nodded, knowing exactly where to take her.
We settled into my car for the hour-long drive toward the ocean, having both dressed and showered. I connected my phone’s playlist to the car stereo, then headed south. Driving out of the suburbs, we eventually hit the windy roads of the national park. Lucy didn’t speak as we drove. She stared pensively out of her window with her hands tucked neatly in her lap. It wasn’t until we were almost there that she even moved.
She turned to face me. ‘This music gets tedious after a while.’
My eyebrows shot up. ‘You mustn’t be listening to the lyrics.’
‘Yes, I am. I’ve listened to every word—where I’ve understood them. Still, every track sounds the same.’
I shook my head and laughed; she sounded exactly like Lillian.
‘Obviously, you don’t get hip-hop music then.’
Out the side of my eye, I saw her shrug. ‘I get it. I just don’t like it.’
‘Let me guess. You’re into commercial dance crap?’
I flicked a glance toward her skin-tight black jeans, fitted black tee and black bob.
‘I take that back,’ I said, returning my attention to the road. ‘You’re into emo-goth-metal.’
I could tell she wanted to laugh from the hint of humor in her voice. ‘Billy, those are three different genres of music. And I’m into neither. Besides, don’t you know that to assume something makes an ass out of you and me?’
Again, she reminded me of Lillian.
‘No,’ she continued, ‘I’m into folk music and indie rock.’
I could have run off the road.
‘What!’
‘Yeah—sweet acoustic tunes. Really soulful, heartfelt lyrics. Singer-songwriter sort of stuff.’
Reaching for my phone, I handed it to her. ‘Here, go into my music app and play me something you love.’
Cautiously, she took the phone from my hand and held it for a while without saying a word.
‘You’ll hate it,’ she said eventually.
‘Why should my opinion matter to you? You’re into what you’re into, and I wanna hear what you like.’
She released a hesitant sigh. ‘Your phone is locked anyway.’
‘Passcode is nineteen ninety-three.’
Her voice dropped to a disbelieving whisper. ‘You told me your passcode … just like that?’
‘What? It’s not like I’d give it to anyone.’
I didn’t know how to explain that I trusted her with it. I didn’t understand why I trusted her with it myself.
‘Is that your birth year? You’re twenty-six?’
‘Yep.’
‘How old is Lillian?’
‘Twenty-eight.’
‘She thinks I’m under eighteen. I know I’m not.’
‘I don’t think you are. You don’t look it. She just wants to play it safe.’
Lucy nodded thoughtfully. ‘Has that got something to do with Jade?’
I stopped at a red light and turned to face her. She stared at me with questioning eyes, but I wasn’t going to talk about Jade.
‘Are you gonna play a song for me, or what? We’re only five minutes away now.’
Lucy fell silent while she navigated my phone. As I approached the turnoff for the ocean lookout, the softest, most heartbreaking piano melody began playing from
the speaker. A man’s voice—raw and deep—came in after several bars. Suddenly, the mood in the car felt heavier, darker.
I pulled into the lookout parking lot and turned off the engine but allowed the music to keep playing. Neither of us spoke. Lucy stared out the windscreen, her expression blank, and her eyes distant. The piano reached a peak, and the singer’s voice rose for one last chorus before the music faded, delicate and painful.
I pulled the key from the ignition, and Lucy let out a weak laugh. ‘Like I said, not your style.’
Not even slightly.
‘It’s just so damn … depressing.’
Rolling her eyes and laughing, she replied without missing a beat. ‘That’s what he always says.’
My heart stilled.
Lucy’s expression dropped.
I swallowed hard. ‘He always says that? Who’s he?’
Had she just remembered something?
She stared at me with desperation in her eyes, as if begging me to make sense of what had just happened.
‘I … I don’t know where that came from. It happened when we were talking about music … it ignited something.’ She stared into nothing, shaking her head over and over, her voice so low I thought she was talking to herself. ‘It just came out … it came out of nowhere. Something unlocked. I can feel him in my brain somewhere, but I don’t know who he is. I … I …’
My breakfast stirred in my gut, making me feel queasy. Deep lines creased her forehead, and the look on her face said exactly what I was thinking, what neither of us said with words.
If there was a he somewhere, where was he? And why hadn’t he come for her?
‘I’m starting to remember, Billy.’ Her voice quivered with what sounded like excitement as much as it did with fear.
Our eyes locked, but in the car, the distance between us felt way too small to play this game.
Forcing myself to break the connection, I cleared my throat. ‘Come on,’ I said, needing to take a deep breath.
In the distance, beyond the gravel track and over the cliff edge, the sun glimmered on the surface of the water. Lucy’s black hair blew crazily around her face as she clutched her drawing pad and pencils to her chest, but she didn’t seem to mind the wind. The moment she spotted the ocean over the lookout, a smile I’d never seen swept across her face, spreading until her eyes beamed like the sun. The pebbles on the track made it awkward to use my crutch, but Lucy strolled so idly, so blissfully lost in her surroundings, it didn’t seem to bother her that I wasn’t moving as fast as usual.
She inhaled an appreciative breath, leading the way to a seat overlooking the endless horizon, the one closest to the safety barrier.
‘How deep do you think the drop is?’ she asked.
‘I don’t know. Two hundred meters, maybe.’
She didn’t say anything for a long while after that, nor did she move. This ability she had to stay completely still for so long freaked me out.
The wind blew fiercely; it was deafening at times. Waves rolled below the cliff edge, one after the other, in the darkest parts of the ocean.
‘It’s beautiful,’ she said finally, out of nowhere. ‘It’s the kind of place I could disappear.’ She pointed into the distance. ‘Right there, where the water and the sky blend into each other.’
She spoke in a hushed whisper again, in a volume that made me wonder if she was talking to me or not.
‘Is that what you want?’ I asked. ‘To disappear?’
‘I think we both know that if it weren’t for Lillian, I probably would’ve done just that.’
Not far from the lookout, a family was having a picnic at the small reserve beside an outdated playground. I studied them for a moment before replying.
‘Lillian is good like that, even if she does care too much.’
Lucy released a hollow laugh. ‘And you don’t care at all, right?’
I cared. Not that I’d tell her that.
The sun shimmered against Lucy’s skin, giving her an angelic glow, and her eyes glimmered in its reflection, matching the deep blue of the ocean. A smile crept across her face, the kind that made my insides do weird things, and I couldn’t look at her anymore.
‘Has it occurred to you that I know absolutely nothing about you?’ she said in the most assertive tone I’d heard from her. ‘That I’ve been living with you for one week, and all I know is your name?’
I wanted to reply that I knew even less about her—that I didn’t know her real name—but even I wasn’t asshole enough to do that.
‘What do you want to know?’ I asked.
‘Whatever you want to tell me.’
‘I’m a builder.’
‘As in a home builder? A carpenter? Is that why your hands are rough?’
She’d noticed that.
I flicked her a glance, unable to stop my grin. ‘Yeah. I’ve been a carpenter since I left school at fifteen. My mate and I run our own operation, and we have a team of seven working for us. But I’ve had to take a few months off because of my leg.’
‘Is he okay with that?’
‘We’re good mates. He understands. I’ve been running all the admin side of things from home, so I’m still kinda working. I haven’t done that this past week because—’
Her expression fell flat, and she gave me a weak nod as she looked away, whispering under her breath. ‘Because the homeless amnesia bird has been living with you? Don’t worry. I shouldn’t be around much longer.’
Something squeezed inside my chest, and before I knew what I was doing, I’d opened my mouth to say her name. ‘Lucy …’
She waited on me to speak, but I had nothing else to say, and unintentionally, I dropped my gaze to the scars on her left wrist.
Instantly, she tucked her arm across her body. ‘It’s not what it looks like.’
‘I don’t think it looks like anything.’
‘I’m sick of the assuming looks I get from people.’
‘Do you know what caused them?’
‘No. But I know it wasn’t me.’
Sighing, I reached for the bottom of my t-shirt, not believing what I was about to do. I stood and lifted my t-shirt up my chest, tucking my jeans down an inch, so my left hip bone was exposed. Lucy’s cheeks flushed a gentle shade of pink as she studied the scar on my hip. She reached toward it, then swiftly tucked her hand back onto her lap.
‘Barbed wire.’ I winced at the memory. ‘Three years ago I fell onto a pile of discarded barbed wire. I was wearing my work gear, so most of it only gave me surface scratches, but my shirt lifted, so the skin in this area got torn up pretty bad.’
Her eyes darted from my scar to her arm, then back again. ‘Your scar looks just like mine.’
I nodded and dropped back onto the seat, hoping that exposing myself was worth it. ‘If the scar on my hip was on my forearm, I’m sure I’d get the same looks.’
‘Lillian thinks I’ve been harming myself.’
‘That’s because a lot of the young people she works with do.’
Lucy fell into a pensive silence. She remained motionless, keeping her unflinching gaze locked on where the water met the horizon. Eventually, I spoke just to break the silence.
‘Lillian has to think the worst,’ I said. ‘It’s why she didn’t let you go from the hospital that day.’
Lucy flicked me a determined stare. ‘Who’s Jade?’
Back to that.
I blew out an impatient breath. ‘Can you just leave that alone?’
‘No.’
‘What do you think? That Jade is the link to solving your memory problems? Because she isn’t.’
‘No. I don’t think that. But I don’t understand why—’
‘Just leave it. Some things are best not knowing. Don’t ask Lillian about her, either. She doesn’t need that.’
Lucy’s gaze fell away, and I could see her trying but failing to control her breathing.
‘What made you bring me here?’ she asked.
‘My mum used to b
ring us here as kids.’
‘Why?’
We’d somehow gone from discussing Jade to this.
‘She had a tough time when my dad left, and she used to bring us here to get away from everything that reminded her of him.’
Lucy nodded like she understood but said nothing. I sensed she was about to fall into one of her quiet moods again, so I continued talking despite wanting the conversation to end.
‘If you want to know what a real asshole looks like, check out my dad.’
‘Why’d you say that?’
I spat out a bitter laugh. ‘Any man that leaves his wife and kids without so much as a backward glance is the lowest kind of scum.’
‘Some people aren’t meant to be parents. It doesn’t make them scum.’
My tone hardened. ‘That’s exactly what it makes him. He didn’t want to be a man and step up to his responsibilities.’
‘Maybe he thought you’d all be better off if he wasn’t there? We don’t know why people do the things they do.’
I clenched my jaw. No one had ever tried to defend him before, and it made talking about him harder to stomach.
‘I know that he hurt my mum, and that’s enough to make me hate him.’
Her voice dropped to a whisper. ‘He may have hurt her more if he’d stayed.’
I had no response to that, and this time, I didn’t try to stop the silence that drifted between us.
Time passed without either of us speaking, and the sun intensified as it crept higher across the sky. I feared for Lucy’s skin, noticing her cheeks were now blotchy and red.
‘I reckon we need to go. You’re burning.’
‘I really love it here,’ she said absently, speaking toward the ocean. ‘I’m not sure I’ll ever want to leave.’
Something about the way she’d said that—the way her voice faded—and the faraway look in her eyes, made me uneasy.
‘Lucy …’
She didn’t reply.
‘Lucy?’
She didn’t flinch.
‘Hey—Lucy.’
She turned toward me, her eyes blank, seeming as if she’d only just heard me even though I was sitting right there beside her.
I squeezed the handle on my crutch.
Call me Lucy: An Enemies to Lovers romance Page 8