Page 44 of Carry On (Love Doesn’t Cure All #4)
NASH
Soft rug.
Four walls.
Two windows.
Gunfire.
Screaming.
“No, no, no,” I muttered, pushing the heels of my palms harder into my temples.
Not gunfire.
No screaming.
Soft rug.
Four walls.
Two windows.
Plants.
Lots of fucking plants.
Gunfire.
Screaming.
Explosions.
Screaming.
So much screaming.
My breath came faster and ragged as I paced my room. Back and forth.
Back and forth.
Over and over.
Back and forth.
The walls vibrated with the screaming.
So much screaming.
I couldn’t get it to stop. No matter how hard I tried. Sleep was pointless. It escaped me. Taunted me. Reprieve was right there—dangling right out of my reach.
Soft rug.
Four walls.
Two windows.
Gunfire.
Screaming.
“Fuck,” I moaned. My knees buckled, giving out. I crawled to the bed until I managed to lean against it for support. I buried my face in the blankets, desperate to make it all end.
Soft blankets.
Soft rug.
Four walls.
Two windows.
Screaming.
My breath caught in my throat.
Screaming.
So. Much. Fucking. Screaming.
The throbbing in my skull was ever-present as I managed to drag myself up off the floor.
I ran my hands through my hair and grabbed a sweatshirt for comfort.
Hopefully, I looked human enough not to set off any part of Lincoln’s immaculately tuned internal warning system.
He always had this way of knowing when something was wrong.
He doesn’t care, the voice reassured me.
He was already up and busy cleaning up after breakfast, dressed for work in another one of those perfectly tailored suits of his.
The smell of coffee hung heavy in the air, making my stomach roll.
The rush of water, the music he had playing, the clacking of dishes.
All of it pounded painfully against my skull, but I pushed back the pain and did my best to hide it.
“Morning,” I greeted as if I hadn’t spent all night in and out of it, as if I hadn’t spent the night on the floor in the middle of a debilitating episode while he slept peacefully in the next room. A part of me actually hated how simplistic his life was.
“Good morning,” he greeted a little too cheerfully. “Hungry?”
“No,” I replied. I sat at the table, feeling every bit of movement down to my core. Lincoln was frustratingly quiet as he watched me, just staring in that way that told me he was analyzing me. Studying me. I hated it and shifted uncomfortably in my chair.
Saying nothing, he opened a cabinet by the sink, rummaging around until he found something, and walked over to drop a bottle of ibuprofen on the table for me. Damn man. I didn’t like how perceptive he was. I didn’t like how he saw me.
You’re only fooling yourself, the voice said. He doesn’t see you. Not how you want him to.
I frowned. I didn’t want him to see me.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“Nothing,” I snapped and snatched up the bottle. I dropped two pills in my hand and then added two more for good measure. Couldn’t hurt. Not really. Whatever to take the fucking pain away, right?
It won’t help, the voice said.
Yeah, I knew that was probably true too.
“All right, so,” Lincoln began with a sigh. He stopped what he was doing to face me as he shoved his hands in his pockets. “I need to broach a topic that I’ve been dreading to bring up because I have something I want to give you.”
“Whatever it is, it’s safe to assume the answer is no,” I grumped. Just his demeanor pissed me off, poking at my already irritable temper.
“That’s what I was afraid of,” he muttered. “Look, you can’t avoid it.”
“No.” I didn’t even know what it was, but I didn’t want it.
“Everyone has one,” he continued over me. My eyes narrowed. I knew exactly where this was going because we’d had this conversation.
“No fucking way,” I snapped. “I—”
“Nash—”
“Fuck off, Lincoln—”
“You need—”
“I don’t—”
“Rule number seven!” Lincoln exclaimed loudly. The three words shut me up.
Rule number seven: use emotional maturity to communicate. No fucking fighting. No using him as a punching bag.
But fighting is the only thing you’re good at, the voice commented, beating against the already throbbing pain in my skull.
I bit my tongue—bit back saying something stupid. Fuck, I wanted to fight him.
“Now that I have your attention,” he said softly. “I know you hate the idea of me giving you a phone, but it’s a necessity.”
“I’ve lived years without a goddamn phone,” I replied, doing my best not to chew his head off. “A phone’s expensive.”
“Society runs on technology.”
“I refuse to be shackled by the expectations of people who don’t matter.” I had enough going on in my head. I didn’t need the added pressure that came from the nonsense of strangers.
“While I understand that, the world runs on communications,” he told me. “I need both my personal and my work phone while I’m gone during the day. I’d like to know that I can get in touch with you if I need to.”
Why the fuck would he need to get in touch with me?
He wouldn’t, the voice said.
“You don’t need to,” I insisted.
“I know,” Lincoln replied. “But I want to. And how do you expect to talk to doctors if you don’t have a phone?”
His brow arched as if daring me to challenge his line of thinking. I just glared back at him. Lincoln fucking Cassidy: the man with a cocky attitude problem. He had me there, and I knew it.
“I don’t fucking like it.”
“Of course you don’t, but I did get you the most basic phone on the planet. They tried hard to upsell me on something nicer.”
“You already bought it?” I asked.
“I did.” He nodded slowly. As he spoke, he opened a drawer, pulling out a phone and all its accessories. “I have to go back to work. I have your paperwork to start the process of adding you to my insurance. If I need anything else from you, I can call you.”
The grin he gave me was ridiculously sarcastic and all too attractive.
“You’re a smartass, you know that?” I muttered.
“It’s one of my better qualities,” he assured me. “Your job is to set up your phone today. The guy at the store wrote your number on the box. I added my work phone, my personal phone, and my office.”
“That’s fucking overkill, don’t you think?” I retorted.
“That’s called being thorough.”
Of course it was.