Your Heart Is Mine (Our Hearts Are Lost Book 1)

by Nicole Thorn

  “You can get your head blown off in about two seconds,” Dad told him. “So, fat lotta good that does me.”

  “Dad,” I warned. “Let the man work.”

  While the man smiled almost smugly, my father glared hard. “I want you safe, Lynn. This man needs to be competent.”

  I rolled my eyes. “I think I hear your second phone ringing upstairs. Do you hear that?”

  His eyes widened slightly before he took off down the hall at a near run. He hightailed it up the stairs and the worker exhaled. “Thanks.”

  I shrugged. “I only got you four minutes. Enjoy them.”

  He got right to work, and I went on finishing the cookies. I stuck them in the oven and hopped up onto the counter, playing on my phone until the oven beeped.

  By the time my father got back to the kitchen, the worker had finished with the whole damn system. Shocker that he hurried. I listened to him explain how to use it. “You enter in the number when you walk in, or the cops are informed. They come if you don’t answer the phone and give a password.” Very straight forward.

  Dad followed the man around the house, testing every single one of the doors. My cookie timer beeped, so I had something to distract me. I set them out to cool and stuck the next batch in. Surely I could sound believable if I really did make too many. My parents wouldn’t touch them, and I could only eat like ten on my own.

  I began singing to myself and I didn’t notice until I started dancing around the kitchen. It came with my pleasant mood, a mood that was boosted every time I felt the necklace around my neck. I loved it so much, and I couldn’t believe Isaiah would get something like it for me. He didn’t say what made him buy it, but I didn’t ask. I preferred the answer I made up in my head.

  When I woke up this morning, I found my room empty. I didn’t think he would be, but I had hoped. I thought that maybe I would wake up to him asleep on the couch. Maybe in bed next to me. He’d never lose his composure enough for that kind of thing. Hands off the teenager and all that, though we had been quite snuggly while he taught me to shoot. It had been nice getting that close to him, with his hands on my hips and his chest against my back. Ah, memories.

  Mom came back through the kitchen and set her phone on the counter. She looked at everything I had out and made a face. “What are you doing?”

  “Baking.” I set another few cookies on a plate, taking one to eat.

  “Why?”

  I fought an eye roll. “Because I enjoy doing it. I’m going to a cooking school in the fall, Mom. You should know this by now.”

  She glanced down again, unimpressed. “Sorry if I don’t have time to notice all your hobbies. I have to work and earn the money that you use to buy all the ingredients for your cookies and everything else you make. Be grateful, Rocelyn. I work hard for you.”

  I knew that. She didn’t need to try and make me feel guilty about it. After her speech, she took one last look at me and went off to find my dad. He showed the worker out of the house.

  I had my cookies all packed up and ready to go. I didn’t have a clue what Isaiah planned to do that day, or if he’d even be home. Calling would have been the smart and considerate thing to do. Yet I didn’t go for the phone. If I did, I might get a no, and I really didn’t want a no.

  I only had a crush, but it felt almost obsessive. I liked spending time with him. Innocent enough. Right?

  No. I most likely irritated the hell out of him, and he still chose to watch over me. Maybe he was just a better person than me. He wouldn’t be hung up on someone he hardly knew.

  I took my container of cookies and went to get my shoes on. Since my parents wouldn’t notice anyway, I didn’t tell them I left. Besides, they saw me getting my shoes on.

  When I left the house, I locked the door and headed to my car. I almost got inside when I heard someone yell for me.

  “Miss Blum!” yelled the deputy from her car across the street. She waved at me with a full hand when I looked up. It looked like she held her phone. “How are you doing?”

  Damn, now I have to talk to her.

  I left the cookies in my car and walked over to her. She’d been in front of my house since before I woke up, so I owed her this much. I stopped by her window and greeted her. “You can call me Lynn.”

  “Great.” She smiled. She looked down at her hands and back up before she set her phone down. “Just texting my baby sister, sorry. Are you going out?”

  I hadn’t planned anything shady, but I lied anyway. No one made the rules clear, so I didn’t know if I could go see Isaiah at his house. “Just shopping a little. Getting a new dress.” I smoothed down the one I already wore.

  “Sounds fun. I’ll be here. Isaiah really needed a break. Poor guy’s been here every day.”

  I nodded. “Yup.” When it got too quiet, I added, “You guys work together a lot?”

  She perked up and twisted her body more to me. “Yeah, we talk all the time. He doesn’t like many people down at the station. I think he talks to me the most. We’re pretty close.”

  Oh, I knew what that meant. I might not have been the smartest person in the world—clearly if I kept on flirting with a deputy—but I understood that people had lives and things going on before I showed up. Maybe I should have noticed before. She was so pretty and older than me, an age where Isaiah would actually see her as an option. She had a face with soft features and her hair shined even in the dull light of morning, and she had curves without the extra weight, unlike me. I knew he didn’t owe it to me, but I wished he told me he had been dating someone.

  “I’m sure you have a lot in common,” I said with defeat.

  “We do,” she agreed. “Such a tough job. We kind of understand each other.”

  Okay, I needed to go off and cry now. “Well, I should head out,” I lied. “I’m meeting my friends.”

  “Have fun,” Barbie said.

  I got into my car with a choice to make. Again, I didn’t plan on going over to screw Isaiah’s brains out. I only wanted a visit. I could still go. Only I would drop off the cookies and leave now. Admittedly, I’d been taking every chance I had to get close to him. I couldn’t do that anymore. Distance would be a good idea.

  I started driving, letting my music distract me from the sad reality that Isaiah and I would never happen. I never thought that we would, but the late night fantasies would need to stop.

  Isaiah lived pretty close to me, so I could lie when I got there, telling him I had stop by on my way to something else. Not too crazy, I think. And he would be too much of a sweetheart to call me out on a lie, even if he caught me. I would be safe from embarrassment, other than what I just experienced with Barbie. Isaiah would show me mercy.

  When I turned the corner before Isaiah’s street, I hit the brakes at the stop sign. I did my five second wait, and then I made a right turn.

  My tire blew out, and I swerved before I lost complete control of the car. It whipped around sharply, and I couldn’t get my hands back on the wheel fast enough. I tried turning, wanting to avoid a flip. I managed that as I smashed right into a tree.

  At the moment of impact, my airbag shot out of the steering wheel. I slammed into it and the thing exploded. The wind got knocked out of me, and I was left to frantically gasp for breaths that didn’t come. I leaned forward as I tried to breathe. My hand went over my stomach, so I felt the wound before I knew I had it. It didn’t hurt, not yet, but I saw so much blood. A slice stretched across the fabric of my blue dress, and the blood had already soaked through it. I couldn’t get a good enough look at it before I started getting light headed.

  Everything around me started to waver out of focus. I couldn’t breathe as my head started to pound and I fumbled for my phone, barely getting it. My fingers hit Isaiah’s name without thinking.

  He answered on the second ring, and he sounded so happy. I didn’t want to ruin it. “Hey, Lynnie. Bored without me already?”

  I smiled through the pain and struggled to speak. “My friend, I’m just
keeping up with our tradition of horrific phone calls.”

  A beat of silence came. “What happened? Are you okay?” He cursed and I heard him moving around, probably getting ready to leave.

  “My tire blew out and I hit a tree. I’m bleeding… but I don’t know how bad it is.” I moved my hand again and looked down. My chest had been coated in blood, and I felt the sticky liquid as it ran down my stomach. “My dress is pretty fucked up. Not gonna lie, I’m kinda upset.”

  He didn’t appreciate my attempt at humor. “Where are you?” After I gave him the cross street, he went on. “Did you call 911?”

  “No.” I shut my car off, slipping the keys in my pocket. Can’t have anyone stealing my totaled darling. “I just called you.”

  “I’ll be there in less than two minutes. Hold on.”

  I waited for him, bleeding all over the place. I managed to get my breathing under control somewhat while I waited. The stinging pain might have had something to do with that, the kind of pain that shouldn’t have hurt as much as it did.

  Isaiah’s car turned the corner. He parked, threw his door open, and ran over to me. When he opened up my door, I smiled. “What’s a nice boy like you doing at a tree like this?”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN:

  Easy

  Isaiah

  I got her into my house as quickly as I could. Blue saw the blood as I laid her down on the couch. The puppy looked at me like I could give him answers. Sadly for him, I all my focus went to trying to keep it together.

  I tried getting a look at Lynnie’s wound, but I couldn’t see anything through the blood. I had to clean her off, and that meant getting a little personal.

  “Um,” I started. “I need a better look.”

  She stared at me and, with a flourish of her fingers, she gestured to the cut. “Have at me.”

  “There’s an issue.”

  “Being?”

  I exhaled. “Your dress. I can pull it up or pull it down, but either way…”

  She sighed, “Just take it off. I don’t care if you see my underwear. I’d rather not bleed all over your couch.”

  Yeah, getting her mostly naked on my couch is a great idea… But I didn’t have time to argue with myself. I needed to just be decent for a little while.

  Lynnie moved up with a wince so that I could unzip her dress. She kicked her shoes off while I did it, and I would have laughed under better circumstances. I carefully pulled the dress off her and dropped it beside Blue. He sniffed it and didn’t like what he smelled.

  Lynnie laid in front of me in nothing but her bra and underwear. The shades of light grey matched each other. While the panties looked plain, the bra was delicate and lacey. She wore the locket I gave her. The pendant rested at the start of her cleavage, like it had been shaped for her body. Every curve looked soft and perfect. I wanted to reach into my own head and purge every part of me that could even think that.

  Lynnie made a pained sound, bringing me back down. I took the blanket I normally draped over the back of my couch and covered her lower half with it. It stopped at her belly button, so that she could feel like she had some modesty.

  I put my hands near the wound, getting a better look at it. She had been slashed diagonally from under her bra to a few inches above her belly button. “This isn’t as bad as it looks,” I told her. “You’re just bleeding a lot. And you’re very sticky.”

  I left her to get the first aid kit and something to clean her with. I returned with a damp rag and a bowl of water. I nearly let her do it, but I decided not to give her the option. I dipped the rag again before I pressed it to her skin. The bleeding had stopped by the time I had started cleaning her off. Lynnie watched me while I did it, but not like she needed to keep an eye on me. It seemed softer than that.

  I put the rag in the bowl again, ringing it out before I went back to getting the rest of the blood.

  Lynnie tried to fill the silence. “Is this part of the job description? You nurse me back to health while I’m half naked?” She tried to keep it light. For her or for me, I didn’t know.

  I shook my head, dragging the rag across her. “No, this I do for free.”

  A smile spread slowly across her pink lips and her tone was far too specific. “You like playing doctor, Isaiah?”

  My hand froze and the words played in my head on repeat. My brain added to the memory, making her voice a little sultrier and her eyes more intent, like she actually knew what she did to me.

  I couldn’t answer her question and it made her self-conscious all of a sudden. As if she had tried something and she thought she failed. She wouldn’t have been so self-conscious if she could feel the front of my pants.

  I started bandaging her up, sanitizing the wound and covering it. Blue hopped up, putting his paws on the couch.

  “Hi, baby,” Lynnie said to him. “Lynnie hurt herself today.”

  Putting it mildly. “Your tire just blew out?”

  She shrugged. “I must have run over a nail.”

  “What were you doing so close by?”

  Her cheeks turned pink. “Um, well… I was coming to see you actually. I made too many cookies and I thought you’d like them. I almost made it.”

  She wanted to see me. To spend time in my company. Of her own accord. And for no other reason than to feed me. She’d made a habit of trying to take care of me. I wished I knew why.

  After I put everything away, I went back to the couch. Poor Lynnie had to stay half-naked because her dress had been destroyed. She looked at herself and noticed.

  “Well, the walk home is gonna be fun.”

  “There’s no chance that you’re walking home and you know it.”

  She smirked. “Well, I didn’t want to assume. Still, all my naughty bits are on display.” She stopped to pet the dog. “I don’t know what to do about that.”

  “I have an option for you but I don’t know how you’ll feel about it.”

  “Shoot.”

  I left her for my bedroom. It took only a minute for me to grab a sweater and a pair of boxers. I didn’t think anything else in my closet had a prayer of fitting her. Never had I wished I’d kept my old clothes from when I had been a kid, but they would have been useful in this moment.

  When I handed them to her, she smiled and looked them over. “Your girlfriend wouldn’t approve of this, I’m sure.”

  My forehead wrinkled. “What?”

  Lynnie wouldn’t look up at me. “Barbie. That other deputy. She’s at my house today. She said you were pretty close. I read between the lines… Gotta say, I’m a little sad you didn’t tell me about it. I was hoping you saw me as a friend. I’m not mad or anything.”

  I snorted. “Barbie is not now nor has she ever been my girlfriend. I don’t think anyone would be able to stand more than a couple days of being around me, let alone the time it would take to actually develop a relationship. Barbie and I aren’t even really friends. She insists on speaking with me and she keeps trying to get me to eat with her for some reason. I don’t know why.”

  Relief flashed across Lynn’s face and then amusement in the green depths of her eyes. She giggled. “You’re adorable.”

  “What?”

  Her lips pressed together for half a second. “Hon,” she said like she spoke to a child. “She’s asking you out. She’s into you.”

  “No, she’s not.”

  Lynnie nodded slowly. “Yes, she is. She wants to eat with you. That’s code for a date. What the hell do you do when you like a girl if you don’t ask her to eat?”

  My mind went blank because I didn’t have an answer. I’d never been on a date. I’d never had feelings for someone before. Come to think of it, I didn’t think I’d ever been attracted to anyone before Lynnie. When I looked at people, they didn’t feel like people. They didn’t matter until I needed one.

  I shrugged off the question.

  Lynnie eyed me from her spot on the couch; her orange curls sprawled around her shoulders. The stark contrast of colors from her pa
le skin to the orange hair looked stunning. It made her skin all the more flawless, and it brought out the light freckles.

  She made a face when she sat up to pull the sweater over her head. Then she moved the blanket off her, revealing her bare legs. When she stood, the sweater cascaded down her body. She swam in it; her hands held upward, she marveled at just how much sleeve covered her fingertips. When she got over it, she pulled my boxers on. They only barely showed under the sweater.

  It did something bittersweet to me, seeing her like that. Her hair frizzed out in a mess and she wore nothing but my clothes. It made me think about a life where we could be something else. Lynnie looks just like this after she wakes up with me. I’m about to go make her breakfast while she gets ready for the day. She loves to cook, but I like cooking for her, to try to show how grateful I am to her for showing me that there is another way. I can feel something other than all this emptiness.

  But that world couldn’t be real. She sat on my couch because she got hurt and she only knew me this well because I had been sloppy. I taunted a murderer, and he had his sights set on her. He wanted to hurt me and he found my heart, because God knew, it didn’t exist in my chest.

  Lynnie sauntered over to me, tugging on my shirt. It got my attention. She held it while her little hands rested on my chest and stood on tiptoe to get closer to me. “Thank you for helping me.”

  “Always.”

  She did what she always did; only this time, slower. More calculated. One of her hands moved up my chest, my neck, up to my cheek and to the back of my head. She pulled me down, pressing her lips to the corner of my mouth. Her lips barely touched mine, so slight that it almost didn’t feel real. She probably didn’t even notice it. But I did.

  She hadn’t been hurt too badly, but I still insisted on her sitting down. She made the call to have her car towed and pouted about the cookies. Feeling whipped like a little bitch, I ran out to go and get them before the truck driver got there. She didn’t ask me to, but she looked so happy when I offered. The cookies remained locked up tight in the container. Lynnie had been thrown around like a crash dummy, but the cookies hadn’t been harmed.