When the retching finally stopped, I took the beer from her hand that she’d managed not to spill. There wasn’t a drop of vomit on her, but I was bathed in it.
Tears of embarrassment streamed down her cheeks, and a muffled, “I’m sorry,” passed her lips.
“Why don’t you lie down, and I’ll try to clean this up.”
Before she could even nod, she leaned her head back on the sofa and closed her eyes.
I pulled my T-shirt over the back of my head and contained as much as I could in the front. The pizza box on the floor gave me a place to set it so the contents wouldn’t create more of a problem. Then I slid my flip-flops off my feet and removed my jeans. I wasn’t sure how Masyn managed to throw up exclusively on me, but there was only a bit of splatter on the coffee table around me and nothing on the carpet. In nothing other than boxers, I grabbed the pizza box and went to the kitchen to rinse my clothes out. My boxers were wet and clung to my crotch. I stared down at the horrible metaphor. Once I cleaned off the table and bagged the rest of the trash with the pizza box, I put my clothes, including my boxers, in the washing machine. There was no way in hell I was getting in my truck with the stench of vomit all over me, and leaving stomach acid on my skin didn’t seem like a bright idea, either.
Thankfully, I had the swimsuit I’d changed out of in my truck, although, I might get shot going to the driveway with nothing other than a towel wrapped around me. I’d never stayed here, so I didn’t have any clothes lying around. My swim trunks were cold and only partially dry, but shrinkage was only important when there was someone around to witness—clearly, that wasn’t an issue tonight.
The timer went off on the washing machine just as I hung up the towel I’d used to shower, so I threw the load in the dryer and went to move Masyn to her bed. The soft snore coming from the couch only served as a reminder to my heart that I’d never wake up next to that. I wasn’t sure I could handle the thought of her and Beau together, and I wondered if this would be the thing that broke the three of us apart for good.
I lifted her in my arms, tucked her against my chest, and took a deep breath, hoping for a whiff of the shop there, but all I caught was the scent of her shampoo. If Beau felt the same way about Masyn, and the two ended up together, I wouldn’t stand in their way, but I wouldn’t be able to watch it happen. And if he didn’t, I’d want to kill him for breaking her heart. Either way, none of this could end well—and it would all happen without either of my best friends there to comfort me.
Her bed was unmade, and I laid her down and then pulled the blankets over her. Her eyes parted, and she looked at me the way I’d looked at her a thousand times—as though there were nothing else in the world more important—and I wondered if her eyes held that much emotion when they met mine, just how glorious and stunning they must be when Beau saw them.
She grabbed my wrist and held on. “Please don’t go.” It was nothing more than a whisper in the dark, but it was as if she were asking me to stay—not just tonight, but forever. Like she’d heard my thoughts and realized I’d have to leave.
But even knowing how painful it would be to let her go, I was a glutton for punishment and selfish as hell. I’d take one more night if that’s all I could have. “I’ll be on the couch.”
Her hair cascaded over the pillow, and the uneasy grin that lifted her mouth tore at my heart. “Will you stay—”
“I told you I would.” Maybe I should be concerned about alcohol poisoning if she couldn’t remember the sentence I’d just said.
“With me. In here.”
I couldn’t tell her no. My heart refused to resist her. The two of us had never slept in the same bed, and I sure as hell never imagined the first time we did being like this, but if she wanted me, I wouldn’t leave. “Scoot over.”
She slid aside to make room, and I climbed in next to her. As soon as my head hit the pillow, I was engulfed in everything Masyn. She lifted my arm and tucked her body close to my side. I wanted to relish the feel of her arm on my chest and her head on my shoulder, yet in the end, allowing myself to make this into something it would never be would only crush me down the road. So I wrapped my arm around her waist and let my hand settle on her hip. Her breathing evened out, and I lay there, wide awake until the sun came up.
Masyn slept like the dead through the night, and when her alarm went off, she jumped at the obnoxious noise. We both had to be at work in an hour, and I still had to go home to change. She bolted upright, twisted over me, and slapped the snooze button on the nightstand, and the realization hit her that she’d spent the night with me in her bed.
“Oh, God. Lee…what did I do?” Her hands went to her head where her fingers massaged her temples. There was no doubt she’d have one hell of a hangover to contend with today. “Did we…?” She looked down at my swim trunks and then back at my face. “You know?”
“No.” I’d never take advantage of any woman who was drunk. “After your confession, you threw up, and I brought you in here. You asked me to stay, but we didn’t do anything.” I hated being the one to remind her of all she’d admitted last night, knowing how much would change between us.
“My…confession?” she repeated, unsure she’d heard me correctly.
With pursed lips, I nodded. “Yeah. You kind of laid it all out there.” I wasn’t able to hide my disappointment.
Her cheeks flushed with embarrassment. “Oh God, I never intended to tell you. Lee, I’m so sorry.”
Somehow, that didn’t make me feel any better. It just confirmed my thoughts about last night, of how significantly her feelings had changed things. I shrugged with feigned indifference. “It’s better that I know.”
“Can we forget it ever happened? Please? I don’t want that to change anything between us. You and Beau mean the world to me; I couldn’t stand the thought of losing either one of you.”
“So, you don’t plan to tell him?” He was single; she was single. There was no reason for her not to admit her interest—not to mention, she said she told him last night, anyhow. But if she didn’t remember that, I wasn’t going to be the one to break it to her.
“God, no. I mean I think he has an idea. I’ve kind of eluded to it for years, but I don’t want to rub it in his face. Things have been so weird.”
“And you want to forget last night ever happened?” My chest constricted painfully, and I wondered about what I was about to say, but in the end, her happiness was important. “I really think you should tell him…when you’re in the right frame of mind.” There was no point in all of us being miserable.
She hopped up and straightened her clothes. “Promise me you won’t. It’s too embarrassing.”
“What’s embarrassing about loving your best friend?”
Her eyes filled with sadness, and she cast her gaze to the floor. “Not having them return your feelings.”
I didn’t know what to say. I had no idea how Beau felt about Masyn, and I didn’t want to encourage her the way Beau and Peyton had urged me, only for Masyn to be let down. I sat up and put my feet on the floor. She was within arm’s reach, so I took her hand and pulled her onto my knee. I wrapped my arms around her center and hugged her tightly. “Your secret’s safe with me.”
She hugged me back and squirmed out of my grasp. There was no reason for her to be uneasy, although clearly, she was.
“Thank you. I just want to forget about last night and every stupid thing I said. Please don’t hold it against me.”
“Okay.” I stood and made my way to the laundry room with her hot on my heels. I didn’t turn around since I could hear her close behind me. “So, we’re good?”
She veered off to the kitchen to grab coffee. “As long as you don’t think I’m a moron. Yeah, we’re good.”
If only she knew.
“Not a chance,” I called out over my shoulder, trying to keep things light. I closed the laundry room door behind me, grabbed my clothes, and quickly changed. When I emerged, she was standing on the other side with a fresh
cup of coffee in a to-go mug for me. “Sorry I don’t have time to make you omelets before work.”
“There’s always the weekend, right?” Her hopeful tone didn’t match her longing expression.
I kissed her on top of the head, took the cup of coffee, and agreed, “Name the day.”
She escorted me to the door and opened it for me to step through. “Hey, Lee?”
“Yeah.” I turned as I opened the truck.
“Thank you for not making me feel stupid last night…or this morning. I’m sorry I dumped all that on you. It wasn’t fair to put our friendship on the line like that.”
“That’s what friends are for, right?” I smiled even though my heart shriveled inside my chest.
Her face dropped. “Friends.” She nodded. “Right.”
Chapter Twelve
I managed to clock in before the buzzer rang, signaling the start of the shift. I hadn’t had time to look for Masyn. My head was far too fucked up to try to interact with her, anyhow. She may want to forget everything that happened last night, but I’d done nothing other than agonize over every word she’d said, trying to make sense of it. None of it aligned with what Beau told me at the diner, and I had a hard time believing Masyn would twist things around to create reasons to talk to him when he was at school. That was the kind of shit every other girl in town would do, not Masyn Porter.
I had to remind myself over and over, I specifically asked if she was talking about Beau, and even through her rambling, she’d answered yes without hesitation. As much as my mind wanted to convince my heart that I’d misunderstood, there was no misconstruing her message—not even as tired as I’d been. My head pounded from all the noise in the shop, coupled with a lack of sleep, making it harder to work through everything blazing through my mind at the speed of light.
Twice I’d dropped parts, and when Farley called my name, I turned quickly. Not paying attention, or sleep deprived, or just in a shit mood, I nearly cut off my thumb to answer him.
“Fuck, Carter. Do you have any idea how many hours we had that were injury free?” Farley dropped his clipboard and came to my machine when the blood pooled in my hand.
Today was not the day to lash out at me. “Maybe if you weren’t screaming at people from across the shop, they wouldn’t fear for their life and respond in an unsafe manner.” Like I gave a shit for his safety record right now.
“There’s blood everywhere. Is your thumb even still attached to your hand?” His sympathetic irritation did nothing to calm me down.
“I’m fairly certain it’s not lying on the cement covered in blood, asshat.” Calling my boss names probably wasn’t the best idea.
He turned off the machine and picked up the metal that had nearly severed a digit from my body, and then he motioned toward the office. “Come on. Let’s go see how bad it is.”
I didn’t believe cleaning a wound in filth was the best idea Farley had ever had, but far be it from me to object. The office had a sink, yes, yet there were greasy handprints everywhere and crap thrown all over the place. It was less than sterile. “If I get gangrene, I’m suing your ass, Farley.”
“Just don’t touch anything.” He got the insinuation without me saying the place was a fucking pigsty. “The water out of the pipes is clean.”
Right, and they were probably made of lead as old as this place was. My hand throbbed with a pulse I could feel in my head—or maybe it was the throb of my headache in my hand. I didn’t know, and I didn’t care. It hurt like a son of a bitch and only added to my already piss-poor mood.
“What’s up your ass today, Carter?” He turned the water on and held my hand under it.
My sharp intake of air whistled between my teeth. “You mean besides becoming a cripple on the job?” I stared at the red flowing down the drain and wondered how my broken heart could pump that much blood in its current condition.
“Yeah, besides that. You and Masyn break up?” He chuckled like something was funny.
If it hadn’t been my right hand under the faucet, I would have decked the smug grin off his chubby face. I groaned when he moved my fingers, yet somehow, he mistook it as a response to his question about Masyn.
“Seriously, didn’t mean anything by that. I’ve just watched you two dance around each other for years and wonder if you’re ever going to stop fucking around and tell the girl.”
Farley and I weren’t close. We went to school together. We’d known each other all our lives, but we never shared secrets. Bonfires, field parties, and cutting class at the lake didn’t make a friendship—it just made him another guy I’d known for decades and happened to work for.
“It’s not like that.”
“Yeah, you’ve been saying that for years. I just—”
“I appreciate your concern about my love life, but I have bigger issues to deal with right now.”
He stared at me like I was about to share the secrets of life with him. I raised my brow and tilted my head in the direction of my still gushing thumb. I hadn’t reached the point that I was light-headed, but if the blood didn’t stop exiting my body faster than my heart could pump it, he wouldn’t just have a mess on his hands, he’d have me on his floor. I seriously doubted that even Farley—who was a stout dude—could deadlift two hundred pounds of my weight.
“Shit.” The bone was clear as day with the water washing through the wound. “That’s going to need stitches.”
“You don’t think butterfly tape will get it?”
He grimaced before realizing I was being a smart-ass.
“Do you want me to drive, or do you want someone to take me?”
He raked his hand through what was left of his hair—a buzz cut didn’t leave much to mess with. “Let me go pull Masyn. She knows all your personal shit and can take care of the paperwork while the doctor deals with...this.”
I didn’t need Masyn pawing over me and making a big deal out of a cut. I wanted to be left alone. “I can drive myself.”
“Like hell. Something happens, I not only have workers’ comp to deal with, then I have an accident, too. No thanks.” He pulled a roll of sterile gauze from a pack in the first aid kit and began to wrap it around my thumb and hand. The blood came through almost as quickly as he could add layers. “Hold it above your heart to keep that shit from pumping out. I’ll go get Porter.”
There was no use in arguing. Farley would do whatever the hell he wanted to because his pop owned the place. And I’d do what he told me to because his pop owned the shop, and I needed the job.
He returned with Masyn a few minutes later, and the second she saw the blood, her hand flew to her mouth and her eyes went wide. “Oh my God, Lee. Are you okay?”
“I’m bleeding like a stuck hog, but I’m still breathing, if that’s what you mean.”
Farley didn’t let us linger and chitchat. “Take him down to North Hills Clinic. We have an account there. Make sure you tell them it happened at work so they send the bills to our insurance company.”
“Yeah, sure.”
Masyn still stood there like a deer in the headlights, staring at my hand. I waved it to get her attention. “You ready?”
“What?” Her warm-brown eyes lifted. “Oh, yeah. I need to grab my keys.”
“Don’t bother. Get mine. We can take the truck.”
She drove the damn thing all the time, anyhow. I wasn’t interested in getting stuck on the side of the road in her piece of shit that needed more work than it was worth. Jesus, I was in a foul mood.
She scurried off to the lockers, and I met her at the exit to the parking lot. My thumb hurt like a son of a bitch, and my head wasn’t far behind it. Without any sleep to speak of, I was a bear. And even though I knew it, if Masyn insisted on talking, I wasn’t going to be able to control barking at her.
We hadn’t been in the truck two minutes before she started in on her girly shit. It was the one time I wished she’d just change the damn radio station and turn it up loud enough to drown out my thoughts and pain.
“Lee, I’m really sorry about last night.”
Inhaling deeply, I counted to ten and then exhaled before speaking. “It’s not a big deal, Masyn. You cleared the air. I know where we stand. It’s all good.” I ground my teeth, trying to soften my tone.
“It seems like a big deal. You’re obviously upset. I just want to talk about it.”
“For God’s sake, Masyn, I nearly cut off my fucking thumb. It isn’t about you being in love with your best friend.” And not me.
I stared out the window waiting for her to come back at me, yell, tell me what an ass I was, yet it didn’t come. The minutes ticked by with not even a peep from the driver’s side of the vehicle. When I turned, a scowl lining my brow, Masyn stared out the windshield. Tears streamed down her cheeks and cut through the dust that lined them.
“Fuck. Don’t cry, sweetheart. I didn’t mean to lash out at you.”
She sucked her lips between her teeth and nodded. Even when I grabbed her right hand with my left, she didn’t utter another word. Not even to chew me out for calling her a term of endearment she hated.
“Masyn…” I didn’t know what to say to soothe her without further damaging myself. “Please don’t be mad.”
I let her hand go when she pulled away to wipe her face. “I knew I shouldn’t have told you, but I didn’t think it would make you act like this toward me. I thought things might be awkward…I just…I’m sorry, Lee.” She pulled into the parking lot of the medical center and sat with the trucking idling.
“Are you coming in?”
“I wasn’t sure you’d want me to. I don’t mind waiting out here.”
“Sweetheart, I have no idea what’s going on inside that pretty little head of yours, but right now, I’m too tired and in too much pain to put a lot of thought into it. Regardless of what was said last night, you’re still my best friend”—until you’re sleeping with my other best friend—“and I want you with me.”
Label Me Proud Page 15