I bit my lip and couldn’t help the snarky-ass comment that snuck out of my mouth. “Looked like you were passed out to me.”
That got me a shot of those purple eyes. I even got a slight lift of his eyebrow.
I was pretty sure my kidney actually hurt though. “I have friends,” I told him, keeping my voice low and steady even though I felt anything but.
His “Hm” dripped with sarcasm.
I tipped my chin up. This man had saved the world. He might be a grumpy, bossy shit, but he had done things for civilization that were… well, he’d never be paid back for it. It wasn’t a surprise he wasn’t some polite, courteous person. At this point, I was 99.9 percent certain he was missing those genes in his DNA.
But his comment really did hurt. Not just my kidney either, but my heart as well. Of all the things I’d ever been sensitive over, “friends” were at the top of the damn list.
“I do have friends,” I whispered, my eyes suddenly stinging a little.
More than a little.
He made another one of those dismissive, rude sounds in his throat.
Why was he coming at me like this? Did I take a shit in his Lucky Charms? Had I stabbed him in another lifetime?
Couldn’t he at least try and make decent conversation with me instead of this shit? Was that asking too much? If this was what having friends was like, I hadn’t missed out on shit.
I was trying to be nice here. I’d been trying to be nice to him. It hadn’t exactly been easy either, but I’d tried.
And sure, nice people probably didn’t have to tell themselves to be nice, but too fucking bad.
I gritted my teeth. “It’s true. What am I supposed to do? Invite people over when you’re here?” Resentment stirred inside me. It wasn’t exactly easy to make friends when I had so many things hanging over my head. So many lies I had to keep track of that I could forget what they were supposed to be.
Mostly though, even though I had too much experience with it, I hated lying. It had a spiderweb effect that leeched to everything, and eventually there was no freeing yourself from every fine string that clung to you. Once you started, there was no stopping, no telling what kind of design you’d end up covering yourself with.
So why would I want to waste someone else’s time on lies? That wasn’t fair. I didn’t want to do it, I never had, but I didn’t have a fucking choice. So, I opted for putting myself into the least amount of positions possible where I needed to. That was how I’d been raised. It was the best for everyone.
But it wasn’t like I could explain that to him.
For once, it was my turn to grunt.
Plus, who the hell did he think he was judging me for not having friends? I didn’t see anybody hanging up missing or wanted posters for him. I was just smart enough not to bring that shit up.
Fucking rude.
I shook my head. For the sake of both of us, and mostly out of respect, I forced myself to get up even though I really just wanted to flip him off instead. “On that note, I’ve got a few lessons scheduled. I’ll come and check on you later,” I managed to ground out.
Not that I was pissed at him or anything.
Unfortunately, I kept on thinking about his dumb insinuation as I worked.
He didn’t know me. Didn’t know my life. He didn’t understand shit.
But his comments still made me pretty damn miserable anyway. I’d gone past being angry to just being hurt. I couldn’t remember the last time anything had done that. It was one of the few benefits of not interacting with people. With not having friends or relationships, you didn’t have people who could let you down.
He didn’t know anything.
And that was why I found myself sulking in the shower later that evening, after I’d finished another two lessons and ignored Super Crabby, who also pretended not to see me when I walked by my room while he watched something.
When I heard, “Are you almost done?” I started to hold up my middle finger before remembering he might have X-ray vision and could see me—could he see me naked?—and grudgingly turned toward the shower curtain and tugged it back just enough to peek my head through so I could holler back.
But I didn’t do anything more than squeak.
Leaning against the doorway, looking pale while holding my cell phone—the same cell phone I clearly remembered leaving plugged in to charge in my office—was my houseguest.
Who was currently pecking away at the screen.
He knew my password, which was something. But mostly, it was the fact he was fucking standing up that alarmed me. The urge to ask him if it was a smart idea for him to be up was right on the tip of my tongue.
But who the hell was I to say shit? I wasn’t his babysitter. I was the lonely idiot who was taking care of him.
The man standing there in gray sweatpants and a white T-shirt looked a lot more awake than he had a few hours ago. Now that he was standing, his hair seemed longer than I’d thought. It was shorter than mine but not by more than a few inches.
And he was rude. He was so damn rude no matter how handsome he might be as he typed away on my phone’s screen.
Would poison give him the shits? I wondered for a second.
I tugged the shower curtain closer to my neck, even though he wasn’t even looking at me. “Dinner will be ready in about half an hour,” I grumbled, figuring that’s what he was bothering me over.
That got him to finally glance up from my phone, a slight wrinkle appearing between his dark eyebrows. “Where are we?”
Now he was wondering? “What town?” I asked him slowly, narrowing my eyes.
“No, what country,” he shot back.
I swear my chin was this close to hitting the side of the bathtub. There was only enough room for one sarcastic person in this household, and that was me. But when I tried to move my mouth, when I tried to tell him that the last thing I needed was to take care of a man who didn’t know my name, hadn’t even asked for it, I just… choked on every word that flipped through my head.
Rude mother…
He was in pain. He was weak. Something was wrong with him.
All of which were totally foreign to him.
I had promised myself I was going to help him get better. He deserved it.
But oh my god, it was hard. So much harder than I ever could have expected.
Holding my breath, I tugged the curtain back into place, shoving my head under the shower spray as I pictured myself flipping that perfect fucking face off. “We’re in Chama, New Mexico.”
The Defender responded with his unique brand of silence, and I imagined another middle finger aimed right at him. I finished rinsing off, listening intently for him the whole time. Pulling the towel from where I had it over the curtain rod, I dried off and wrapped it around me under my armpits. Moving the curtain aside, I found him standing in the exact same place in the doorway, looking a little pale.
“Do you need something else?” I asked, my voice fucking flat.
Those purple eyes flicked up from my phone again.
All righty then.
Stepping out of the tub, I pretended like him standing there while I was naked except for a towel was no big deal. Like I’d done it before. He’d probably seen thousands of naked bodies. Women more than likely threw themselves at him regularly.
The poor, innocent fools didn’t know any better.