Page 74 of Mr. Hotshot CEO

“It would make everything worse,” she says. “You don’t understand.”

“You’re badly hurt.”

“It’s not what you think.”

To my horror, she gets to her feet. Before I can stop her, she starts walking, and she limps for the first two steps, but that’s all.

“It’s just a scratch,” she tells me.

She walks toward the guest bedroom. I follow. She sits down on the bed and allows me to roll up the bottom of her pants and look at her leg. There’s only a small mark.

It doesn’t explain anything.

“Before you ran downstairs,” I say, “you told me you needed to be alone. What happened? Did I do something wrong?”

“Oh, God.” She splays her hands over her face. “Don’t make everything about you. The world does not revolve aroundyou.”

“I just want to understand.”

“No, you really don’t.”

“Talk to me, sweetheart. Tell me what’s going on.”

“Why are you calling me ‘sweetheart’?”

It just popped out of my mouth, but... “I care about you.”

I do. As I speak the words, I realize I care about her a lot.

“You wouldn’t if you really knew me,” she says.

“Tell me,” I say gently, “so I can decide for myself.”

We look at each other, Courtney sitting on the bed, her face red and blotchy, and me kneeling on the floor beside her.

She starts crying. At first, quiet tears fall down her cheeks, but then she’s bawling, sobbing ugly tears, and all of me aches for her. I want to fix it, but I can’t fix it if I don’t know what’s going on. I climb into bed and wrap my arms around her. She buries her face against me and continues to cry.

After a few minutes, her sobs are less frequent, less desperate.

“It’s okay.” I stroke her back. “You don’t have to talk to me.” I hate saying those words. I want to demand she tell me exactly what’s wrong, but that wouldn’t be the right thing to do. “Do you want to call your sister? Do you want me to drive you to a friend’s house? I don’t think you should be alone now, but you don’t have to be with me.”

“I don’t deserve you,” she murmurs.

I can’t stand those words.

“You’re not thinking clearly,” I say, a bit too irritably.

I ease her down so she’s lying in the enormous guest bed, and I hold her from behind like I did a few nights ago when I woke up to find her missing from my bedroom. I rub circles over her body.

“It’s okay,” I say. “I’m here with you.”

She releases a shuddering breath and snuggles closer to me.

“I have dessert,” I offer. “It’s apple crumble that I’m keeping warm in the oven. There’s vanilla ice cream, too.”

“Maybe later.”

“I could get you a gingerbread latte? Or I can make you a regular latte here. Or tea.”