Page 27 of Ordinary Secrets (Secrets Trilogy #1)

27

TREY

Doctor’s orders. I’m doing everything she told me to. Take her home. Help her relax. Comfort her. Don’t leave her alone unless she asks to be. No problem.

The whole car ride home, I never let go of Arella’s hand once. Not until I parked in my garage and cut the engine.

Now, she’s in my Jacuzzi. I thought a warm bath might help her relax. Sometimes it does the trick for me. I sit on the edge, gently rubbing a bar of soap up and down her back and around her shoulders.

I’m half expecting Arella to jump up and scream at any moment. The doctor said it’s a common side effect of post-traumatic stress. The moment she explained Arella’s shakiness and unresponsiveness with the word trauma , the blood drained from my body.

My chest has been feeling lighter ever since the color has been returning to Arella’s face. Now, I just need to hear that sweet voice of hers tell me she’s okay.

I don’t know if she wants me to kiss her, nor do I ask. I just do it. Not for her. For me. It soothes me to kiss her shoulders, her forehead, and her cheeks. She hasn’t told me not to, so I guess that’s a good sign. I hope it’s as comforting to her as it is to me.

After about twenty minutes, I drain the tub and assist her out of it. Then I dry her off with a towel and dress her in a pair of my boxers and a T-shirt. It takes me a few tries to get all her hair out of the messy ponytail I put it in earlier. Once I do, I kiss her forehead and pull her close.

The feel of her body against mine immediately alleviates the churning in my gut. I’m not sure why I’m the one who needs consolation. It’s her who was attacked by hairy eight-legged monsters.

Where the fuck did they come from? And how were there so many? And so big? I’ll have to do some research later. For now, I just want to focus on making Arella feel safe.

We stand in the middle of my bedroom, holding each other for a while, never saying anything. I don’t know what I could say to make things better. All I know is that after a few minutes, her arms rise to hug me back, and my insides throw a mini party.

“Trey?” She tilts her head back to look at me. The sound of her voice makes me tear up.

“Yeah, baby?”

“Thank you for taking care of me.”

I can’t help myself. I seize her face and glue my mouth to hers. She doesn’t hesitate to kiss me back. For me, it’s more of a need than a want. It’s full of anxiety, and relief, and pain, and desire all at once.

I only let go of her when my stomach rumbles. The whole hospital fiasco took several hours. I haven’t eaten a single thing. Neither has Arella.

With her hand in mine, I lead her to the kitchen. She sits silently at the island while I whip up something for us to eat.

Ten minutes later, I place two plates onto the counter. They’re full of pancakes, bacon, eggs, and some fresh-cut strawberries. I inhale my food like a starving animal.

I’m almost done when Arella speaks again.

“This was the first meal we ever had together. Breakfast. Right here.”

That day feels like forever ago. So much has changed since the moment I met this puzzling brunette on the side of a highway. In only six and a half weeks, I’ve grown to adore this woman. I care more about her than I do my own limbs.

Like an annoying little alarm, my brain chimes in to remind me how ridiculous it is that I feel this way about her. It keeps reminding me that what we have is wrong. My heart though... It tells me that Arella is right. She’s everything I want and need in ways I never imagined could exist. She understands me in ways even Liz doesn’t. She doesn’t make me feel like I have to fake happiness either. With her, I am genuinely happy.

I know this relationship isn’t sustainable, but when it comes down to it, when my mission ends, can I really just walk away?

I already know the answer to that without having to think about it.

It’s hitting me now that I haven’t been actively trying to complete my mission for a while. The more time I spend with Arella, the less I’ve been asking to meet her grandparents. I haven’t been pursuing answers about her parents, her genetics, or anything else either.

Maybe subconsciously, I haven’t wanted my mission to end. This incomplete assignment is the only reason I have to stay with her. Until I find a better one, I’m gonna cling onto that for as long as possible.

During lunch the next day, I tell yet another lie.

“The doctor said you can’t go to work for a week.” Yeah, I’m a piece of shit, but I’m not ready for Arella to leave my side yet. What if something happens? I can’t protect her if I’m not near her.

“I can’t miss work for that long,” she says defiantly.

“Doctor’s orders. You’re in recovery.”

For the next twenty minutes, Arella argues with me about being “fine” and how she “can’t go that long without getting a paycheck.” The more I offer to help her, the more she argues with me. I can’t comprehend it. Jess and just about any other woman I know would love to hear that I’ll pay for anything she wants for the rest of her life. When Arella says something about wanting to be able to buy things without having to ask me, I offer to transfer her ten thousand dollars. She still says no. Seriously?

“You can buy whatever you want, babe. No need to tell me what it’s for, and no need to pay me back. Whenever you run out, just let me know, and I’ll transfer you more.”

She groans, throwing her head back. “You don’t get it.”

I raise my arms up and drop them to my sides. “You’re right. I don’t. It still doesn’t change that the doctor said you can’t go to work for a week.”

Eventually, she stomps away to call her bosses.

When she comes back, I’m in the middle of loading the dishwasher.

“My nanny family is going to get a backup nanny lined up. As for the daycare, my director is not happy. We’re already short-staffed, and she thinks I made up the whole spider thing.”

I shrug as I insert a dirty plate into the dishwasher. “Fuck her.”

Arella glowers at me, crossing her arms over her luscious breasts. She’s braless, and I’ve been staring at her nipples peeking out of my T-shirt all morning.

I feign innocence. “What?”

“Have you ever had a job?”

“I once worked on a cruise ship as a musician.”

She rolls her eyes. “Like a normal job.”

“Um, the guy who owned the music store in my hometown used to pay me under the table to help around. Does that count?”

“No. My director said that I need a doctor’s note if I’ll be out for more than three days in a row. Company policy.”

“No problem. I can write you one.” I stick another plate into the dishwasher.

“No! I need a real doctor’s note. Do you even care that I could lose my job?”

“You won’t get fired, babe.” Even if she did, I’d take care of her. She has nothing to worry about.

While Arella goes off to make a few more calls, I head upstairs to work out. I’m in the middle of my weight-lifting routine when Arella peeks her head through the door. I pause the rap music that’s blasting over my speakers.

“My landlord said she’ll get it taken care of immediately.”

“Perfect.” The weights clank as I set them back onto the rack.

Arella hugs herself, staring at the carpet. “Sooo... where do you think all those spiders came from?”

I did some research last night, while she was asleep. According to the Internet, it was either an infestation through a hole in the wall or a spider egg sac that hatched inside her apartment. What confuses me, though, is the number of spiders. The infestations I saw online were much smaller. More like ten to twenty at most. If a spider egg had hatched inside her place, it would have only been a few hundred little baby spiders. What I saw looked like thousands, and those fuckers weren’t babies.

“Have you ever seen Charlotte’s Web ?” I ask. “There’s a scene in the movie when Charlotte’s egg sac hatches and all her little babies come crawling out.”

“Those things were too big to be babies,” Arella says. “Is it possible that this was Nathan’s way of getting back at me for you beating him up?”

I pause to think about that. Is that hairy-balls-eating douchebag capable of pulling off a spider infestation that big? Maybe, but would he do it knowing I have those reputation-destroying photos of him? Perhaps he thinks we can’t prove he did this. Arella has mentioned that his dad’s got money. For the right price, you can hire someone to do anything.

I make a mental note to look into it later. Maybe I’ll pay Pencil Dick a visit. With my mind power, I can usually tell if people are lying. In the meantime, I’ll keep focusing on taking Arella’s mind off the whole thing. Last night, she woke up from a nightmare about being attacked by furry arachnids the size of her face. It broke my heart to see her cry like that.

After I finish my workout, I rummage through my drawers to find the clothes Arella left here that night we threw flour on each other—the night we had our first kiss. I still think about that heated moment whenever I have a date with my right hand.

Once Arella’s dressed, we climb into the car to go run some errands.

As I back out of my garage, Arella asks, “Do you think there’s a chance all the spiders have left?”

“I think there’s a higher chance that by tonight, you’ll be shooting webs out of your wrists.”

She chuckles, shaking her head at me. “If I were to have superpowers, Spidey webs would not be my first choice. Now where are we going?”

“Target.”

“What for?”

I press a button to shut my garage as we pull out onto the street. “To get some things you said you need—clothes, shampoo, makeup... a flamethrower.”

Her mouth pops open with a gasp. “Flamethrower? We’re not setting my apartment on fire!”

With a wink, I say, “At least you wouldn’t have to pay rent anymore.”