Page 77 of The Bronze Garza

I fetch a bottled water from the fridge, along with one of the three containers of fruit salad Lexi brought me earlier today. Then head dejectedly upstairs, have a nice hot shower, change into my nightdress, and climb into bed with my fruit salad.

I’m feeding myself with one hand while browsing through Disney Plus with the other, when a quiet knock sounds outside my door.

Hitting mute on the remote, I wait, listening. Tillie’s room is right across the hall from mine, so it could be hers and not mine. Though who would even be knocking? Monica?

After a handful of seconds, the knock sounds again, low and hesitant. My door. It has to be an inebriated Tillie. She probably just got home.

I set the container onto the nightstand, swing out of bed, and pad to the door.

The last person I expected to find on the other side is Torin Garza. Shoulder leaned against the doorjamb as if he’s using it for support.

He looks as though he doesn’t know where he is or how he got here.

“Yes?” I prompt when he just stares at me like he’s waiting formeto explain his presence.

Stretching his other arm across the doorframe, he glares down at the floor for several beats. Then, with a miserable noise in his throat, he lifts his eyes to mine again. “You didn’t ask me.”

Huh?“I didn’t ask you what?”

“To watch Hannah Montana with you.”

A grin wrestles forward. I try to fight it but it wins out. “You want to watchHannah Montanawith me?”

He frowns deeply, then gives a one-shoulder shrug. “I think so.”

“I don’t speak dub-con, Mr. Garza,” I say. “You either want to or you don’t.”

He straightens from the doorjamb. “Invite me in.”

I step aside and wave him in.

Eyes never leaving mine, he enters.

“Did you leave?” I ask as I close the door and pad back to the bed. “Or were you here all this time?”

“Didn’t leave,” he answers, drifting to the other side of the bed. Then mutters so quietly under his breath I almost didn’t hear him, “Couldn’t leave.”

As he works off his boots, I pick up my fruit cocktail and the remote and settle back into bed, scrolling through for Hannah Montana. It’s not what I’d intended to watch tonight, but hey, this ought to be interesting.

Boots off, he settles back against the headboard, feet crossed at the ankles.

After hitting play, I hold the container out to him. “Fruit salad?”

He looks at it then shakes his head. “Won’t all that sugar keep you up?”

“Nope.” I pop a piece of kiwi into my mouth. “The wires in my body are so jacked up now that nothing really functions as it should. I could drink three shots of espresso right now and go straight to sleep.”

“Have you tried getting professional help?”

“The best of the best. For months. Nothing worked,” I tell him. “My digestive system is broken. It’s just a permanent change that I’ve had to learn to live with.” A limp shrug. “I don’t stress too much about it.”

With a single nod, he shifts his attention to the TV.

We watch the first episode in silence. But I’msoacutely aware of him next to me. His presence just isn’t one that can be tuned out or left in the periphery. He’s a vibrating, magnetic force that can be felt down to my bones.

When the fruit’s all gone, I set the empty container on the nightstand. I squirt some hand-sanitizer into my palm and am cleaning away the stickiness left from the fruit off my skin, when he says my name.

“Lyra.”