Page 12 of Shy Girls Can’t Date Celebrities (Shy Girls Sweet Romances #6)

Wyatt scrunches his eyes closed, shaking his head. “I what?”

I clasp my hands over my mouth, too terror-stricken to respond.

He opens his eyes, his brow furrowing skeptically. “I can’t have a girlfriend.”

“But, I think...”

He sits back, unconvinced. “Why would I have a girlfriend?”

“Because I’ve seen...”

“No, why would I have a girlfriend and she’s never visited?”

“Oh, umm...” Because Lexy said she’s still in Europe. “She, umm...”

He sits forward. “What are you trying to say?”

“Well, you might not be official, but...”

He points at his chest, dumbfounded. “You think I have a girlfriend?”

I raise my palms as my vision blurs. “I... I...”

He catches my hands, pulling them to center between us. “Joze, you’re st-starting to st-stutter worse than me.”

I blink back my tears, but one sneaks out, leaving a wet trail down my cheek. “I’m sorry,” I whisper hoarsely. “I just... I don’t want to do anything when she might be...”

Wyatt frowns. “Who is she?”

I bite into my lip as my stomach spasms. “Your co-star. And, umm, apparently you were recording a song together.”

He squeezes my hands gently. “Doesn’t mean we were a couple.”

I nod. “It might’ve been fabricated, but I don’t know how real either of your feelings were.”

He tugs me toward him. “The only real feelings are what I feel for you. This person obviously doesn’t care about me. I’ve never heard from whoever she is.”

“But...”

His thumb swipes over my tear-stained cheek, and he shakes his head to halt my sentence.

I frown. “But, what if...”

“What if I never hit my head and we weren’t sitting here together?” Wyatt says softly, cupping the side of my face. “Yeah, it scares the crap out of me that I, I have this whole life th-that is just blank in my mind. But I don’t care about it as much as I care about being with you.”

“But before your accident you didn’t want...”

He cuts me off. “I can’t believe that I didn’t want to be with you. There has to be another ex-ex-explanation for me not keeping in contact.”

I swallow hard over the lump in my throat. “Because of another girl. ”

“No way,” he says firmly. “If I didn’t always want you, I wouldn’t have woken up from a coma thinking about you.”

I clamp down on his hands. “I just want to be with you, Wyatt.”

His grin lights up his face. “Then let’s be together. There’s no one standing in our way.”

“But our lives are so different now.”

“Let’s worry about that later. For now, we’ve got this comfy couch and this wicked view.”

I settle against him, still unnerved by Portia wreaking havoc in my thoughts. His hand runs over my curls and he gently nudges my head to rest against his shoulder.

As he runs a hand over my arm, he smirks at the inside of his bicep. “Did you know I have a tattoo?”

I smile at the Sanskrit inked into his skin. “Yes, I knew.”

He stretches his arm out to view the design. “I don’t even know what it means.”

Giddily, I mumble, “Perception is reality.”

“Huh?”

I lean my head against his shoulder as I run my thumb against the inscription. “It’s what the tattoo means; perception is reality.”

“How do you know that?”

I blush. “It was in an article I read online. It’s written in Sanskrit.”

“Oh, okay.” He flexes his arm again, watching the tattoo. “You must know more about my life than I do.”

“Well, I am a super fan.”

He laughs. “Whatever.”

I giggle. “Hey, I am.”

He lets his arm flop and then reaches across to hold me. “Well, heck, at least I got a tattoo and can’t remember the pain.”

“You wouldn’t have felt the pain. You’re such a tough guy now.”

“I dunno. At the moment, I’m feeling battered and bruised. ”

“But you’re healing.”

He kisses the top of my forehead and settles in beside me. We hold each other in silence, only breaking apart when Nurse Liza returns with Wyatt’s new dose of painkillers.

At the kitchenette, Liza fills a glass with fresh water and presents it to Wyatt with a small plastic container with two pills inside, half blue, half white.

Wyatt breathes out slowly. “Thanks. It’s been agony waiting for these.”

My mouth falls open and I gently whack his arm. “You didn’t tell me you were still in pain. I said, don’t put on a front.”

He flashes a guilty smile. “Maybe agony was too strong a word.”

I eye him. “Or, maybe it was the truth.”

Wyatt avoids my eyes and quickly throws back the pills and chases them with three big gulps of water. He hands the pill container and glass back to Liza. “Thanks.”

“Hiding your pain won’t do you any good,” Liza says, stepping away from the couch. “No matter how pretty the girl by your side is.”

I sink lower on the couch as my blush rises.

Wyatt hugs an arm around my shoulders. “Can you blame me for wanting to soak up all this time with you?”

“Honestly, it’s given me such a head rush. This is a trip, Wyatt. I’ve been dreaming about you for so long. It’s almost like whiplash, actually being with you.”

His lips press into a line and worry flashes in his hazel eyes. “Is this not okay?”

I plant a hand on his chest, keeping our closeness. “No, of course it is. It’s just... For me, it’s been a long time.”

His bottom lip twitches and he nods slowly.

“It’s just hard,” I whisper, “pretending like no time has passed.”

“But... What am I supposed to do?”

I shake my head. “Nothing. It’s not your fault.”

He frowns, rubbing his forehead. “It kinda is.”

I gently caress his jawline. “You can’t help what you don’t remember. I don’t want you to stress about it.”

“But you’re uncomfortable.”

“Not with you,” I rush. “It’s just the situation. This place. What I know about your life now. It’s a lot to balance.”

Wyatt slides back on the couch, his arm pulling away from my shoulders. There’s a tug at my heart and I clasp his wrist as he recoils.

My shoulders hunch forward. “I’m sorry.”

He tilts his head. “You shouldn’t be apologizing.”

“I don’t want you to feel bad about all this. You can’t remember us being apart.”

“But I’m the reason we were. I’m the reason you can’t feel good being so close to me.”

I press a hand over my chest as my chin drops. “I love being close to you.”

“But you’re thinking about all this other stuff. I don’t want a career, or a girl I don’t remember, to wreck what’s happening between us. But it has, and I don’t know what to do about it.”

I exhale shakily. “Should we just take a minute?”

Hurt crosses his expression. “Do you want to leave?”

I frown and it quickly morphs into a pout as the lump pulsates in my throat. “I never want to leave you.”

He squints, circling his thumb between his eyebrows.

I wince in second-hand pain. “Your head’s still hurting?”

“Yeah.” He opens his eyes and points at the kitchenette. “Sometimes they get a washcloth. It helps.”

I dash off the couch and move across to the kitchenette. Near the sink is a neatly stacked pile of stark white washcloths. I run one under cold water, wring it out, and take it back to Wyatt .

“Thanks,” he mumbles, placing it on his forehead.

“Do you need anything else?” I ask, settling back on the couch a space between us. “Should I buzz Liza again?”

“No, I’ll be okay.”

“Are you sure?”

He blows out a shaky breath, eyeing the early evening view ahead of us. “I don’t want to hear about my life. But... Can, can I hear about yours?”

“What do you want to know?”

A small smile tugs at the corners of his mouth. “What you’ve been working on. Would you read to me?”

My heart eases to a slower pace and I reach into the pocket of my dress. “Hmm. I’ll need to find one of the stories I’ve put the most effort into.”

“But I thought everything you wrote had maximum effort.”

“I’ve gotten a lot more serious since you last read something of mine,” I say, scrolling through the Docs app on my phone. “My editing process is a lot more ruthless.”

“But you don’t cut out the heart, right?”

“Never. I’m just more thorough with something before I let it out into the world. Plus, Casey is a really harsh critic.”

“What, isn’t she, like, four?”

I giggle. “The twins are ten-years-old now.”

Wyatt sighs, shaking his head. “Whoa. They wouldn’t even know me anymore.”

“They do think I’m lying about knowing you,” I admit. “Even when I show them old polaroids of us. Casey’s a skeptic, like Dad, and she thinks I’ve doctored the photos.”

Wyatt shakes his head, shifting uncomfortably. “Don’t tell me anything about me not being in your life. It’s fr-freaking me out. Distract me with a story. ”

I nod hurriedly, scrolling through my word docs.

Wyatt sits back, readjusting the washcloth as he stares up at the ceiling. “Which one has been given your tough seal of approval?”

My finger hovers over one. “Well, this one won the Courtney Prize last year.”

Wyatt grins at the ceiling. “An, an award winner. Okay, I, I gotta hear this one.”

I bite into my lip, fingers trembling as I sit back, ready to read to him. “Okay, here goes. It’s called ‘Marked Alone.’”

I read him the story about a man living in an isolated cabin in the woods.

The man has everything he needs for survival, but he yearns for home.

As the story progresses, it becomes clear he can never return home because he’s now in the only place that is safe.

I finish with a cliffhanger ending about how the world changed after chemical warfare.

“Whoa. That was intense,” Wyatt says, pulling the washcloth off his forehead. “So many twists and turns. No wonder it won a prize.”

I grin, taking his washcloth back to the sink. “Thanks, Wyatt.”

“It was so sad how he reminisced about his home,” Wyatt says, leaning his chin on his hands as he watches me over the back of the couch. “I wonder what’ll happen when I go home.”

“You’ll be safe at home.”

“I don’t think I live with my parents,” he mutters.

“You don’t?”

“Someone told me that. Erin?”

I shake my head, walking back to the couch. “I don’t know an Erin.”

He sits back as I return to the couch. “Who called you?”

“Erika.”

His jaw rocks, and he mutters, “Must’ve been her.”

I bat a hand. “Erin, Erika, same difference.”

“Hmm. ”

“You misplaced a name. No big deal.”

He frowns, eyes drooping as he nods.

“I thought you didn’t want to talk about your life.”

He sighs. “I don’t.”

“Why don’t we do something else to distract us?” I gesture at the table near his bed. “What about solitaire?”

“No, I don’t wanna do that.”

“There has to be something we can do.”

“I kinda wish I could play my guitar,” he says wistfully at the view. “That always pulled me out of my thoughts.”

The idea of hearing him play sends a thrill through my veins. Eagerly, my eyes dart around the room. “Well, why don’t you? Surely they’ve brought your guitar here.”

Wyatt folds his arms across his middle, shaking his head. “I can’t play it. My fingers aren’t working very well.”

“Oh, right.” Duh, Josie. The playing cards.

He untucks his right hand from his side, opening and closing it. “My phys-physical therapist has me doing, erhm, hand exercises. They’re supposed to help me g-get ready to play the guitar.”

“What are they?”

“I have a band that goes around my fingers and I have to ster-st-stretch out the digits as far as I can.” He looks over at his bed. “I th-think it’s over there.”

I get up and move over to the bed. “What am I looking for?”

“It’s an elastic band. I don’t know where I, I left it. It’s not by the bed somewhere?”

I crane my neck, searching the area. “Umm, I don’t see anything.”

Wyatt huffs, and I turn around, seeing him flop back against the couch.

I edge toward him, clutching my elbows. “You look so tired. Maybe you should go back to bed? ”

“I don’t want to sleep,” he mutters.

“Aren’t you wiped?”

He pulls himself up to sit. “I don’t want to waste any time while you’re here.”

I giggle, fidgeting in my stance. “But acting like a zombie because you need sleep won’t be an effective way to spend our time. Besides, I don’t mind if you sleep.”

“I don’t want to wake up and find out you’re gone.” He gulps. “Or worse, that you were never here and it was all just a dream.”

I move over to the couch and kneel on the floor in front of him.

I slide my hands against the sides of his face and smile.

“I’m not going anywhere. But I’m not letting you derail your recovery.

” I stand on my knees, and let out a soft chuckle.

“Plus, I don’t want to be around grumpy Wyatt.

And I know he’ll be gone as soon as he naps. ”

Wyatt lets out a quiet laugh. “I love having you here. You know me.”

My hands rest behind his ears. “I’ll never stop caring about you, Wyatt. You don’t have to worry about me leaving you.”

He bites into his lip, almost looking queasy.

My hands slightly lift off him. “Are you okay?”

“You’re worried about me leaving you,” he whispers. “That I’ll forget you.”

“You woke up remembering me,” I whisper. “That’s all I need to know.”

“But you...”

“I’m sorry I let my insecurities out,” I cut in. “You said there was no other girl in your thoughts, and I believe you.”

“I don’t want you to apologize for telling me your feelings.”

I nod, sliding my hands down to his shoulders. “Okay, thank you. Now, will you go back to bed?”

He nods. “I know my physical therapist will hate that I’ve been sitting here with terrible posture.”

“Does your back hurt?” I ask, helping him stand.

“Yeah, but it’s nothing new.” He smirks. “This didn’t help, but I’d have a dull ache either way.”

“So, I have to play posture police with you now?” I half-joke.

Wyatt grasps my hand as he gingerly walks back to his bed. “Oh boy. I didn’t realize how tired I was.”

I stand by his side as he carefully pulls himself onto the mattress. “You should get some shut-eye.” Unintentionally, I yawn. “Oh geez, think the flight is catching up with me.”

“Are you going back to your hotel?” he frets.

I throw a thumb at the couch. “That seems like a good place to nap.”

He grins. “Okay, good.”

“Sleep well, Wyatt.”

“Thanks,” he says, eyes dazzling with bliss as he grins.

I stand upright, woozy from the pounding of my heart. Okay, now I really need to lie down.