Page 30 of You Owe Me (21 Rumors #2)

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Rumor has it, they aren’t on speaking terms.

Maverick

I have surgery in forty-eight hours.

And it feels like I’ve already flatlined.

I’m sitting on the edge of the couch in sweats I didn’t realize I grabbed, staring at a bottle of water like it owes me something. The apartment’s dark except for the dull flicker from the TV—muted, forgotten, playing some nature documentary I never meant to start.

I haven’t eaten. Haven’t moved much since this morning.

I’ve just been waiting.

For her.

The pre-op instructions are burned into my brain like a mantra I can’t escape. No food after midnight on Thursday. Shower with antibacterial soap Friday morning. Arrive at Havemeyer Medical at 6:00 a.m. for a 7:00 a.m. procedure that will either fix the broken rhythm in my chest or kill me trying.

Dr. Patel’s voice echoes: “This isn’t optional anymore, Maverick. Your heart rate variability has reached a point where we’re looking at significant risk if we wait.”

Risk. Like everything in my life isn’t already balanced on the edge of a knife.

I’ve got the hotel booked. Three hours away, anonymous, the kind of place that doesn’t ask questions when you check in looking like hell and check out looking worse.

The cover story is airtight—family weekend with Pops, helping with quarterly reports, the usual bullshit that everyone expects from the responsible grandson.

Everyone except Ainsley.

She’ll believe it because she trusts me. Because she has no reason to think I’d disappear for elective surgery without telling her. Because she still thinks I’m the kind of person who shares the important stuff instead of handling it alone.

The irony tastes like copper in my mouth.

Because while I’ve been planning to vanish for a long weekend of cardiac rehabilitation, she’s been vanishing piece by piece right in front of me.

Her text from this afternoon sits in my phone like evidence of how far we’ve both fallen: “Lab running really late. Don’t wait up. Love you.”

Lab. Right.

I know she’s lying, the same way I know my resting heart rate is sitting at 142 BPM and climbing every time I think about what she’s not telling me.

But I can’t call her on it.

Not when I’m about to disappear for three days with a story that’s 50 percent truth and 100 percent deception.

The door opens slowly. Quietly.

Ainsley steps inside, shoulders tight, sleeves pulled down over her fists. She doesn’t look at me right away. She just stands there like she’s not sure if I’ll still be here.

I should be mad.

I should be asking questions.

But I don’t.

Because the truth is, I’ve been lying, too.

She closes the door behind her gently, like the sound might crack the air between us even further.

I can’t stop looking at her.

Her face is flushed. Lips chewed raw. Her hair is a mess—windblown and falling out of a ponytail that suggests she’s been running her hands through it. And her eyes…

Her eyes are tired.

Like she’s been carrying something heavy and just now realized she can’t put it down.

The same weight I’ve been carrying since Dr. Patel said the word “ablation” and I started calculating how many lies it would take to keep everyone from knowing my heart is trying to quit on me.

“Hey,” I say, because it’s all I can manage.

She nods. Doesn’t speak.

The keys slip from her fingers and hit the counter with a clatter. She flinches at the sound, like it’s gunfire instead of metal on granite.

That’s when I know.

Whatever secret she’s keeping, it’s eating her alive.

Not that I’m any better. I’ve been running favors behind her back, building cover stories for medical procedures, pretending like the kingdom I’ve built isn’t cracking right under my feet while my heart decides to stage a revolt.

Jin’s voice from the other day still echoes: “She cashed in your favor.” No preamble. No explanation. Just those words, blunt and cold, confirming what I already suspected—Ainsley’s been playing in my world without understanding the rules.

Using my name. My reputation. My carefully constructed network of debts and obligations to get something she wanted badly enough to risk everything.

The smart play would be to confront her. Demand answers. Remind her that my system exists for a reason, that you don’t just walk into someone’s operation and start collecting on debts that aren’t yours.

But I can’t.

Because I know why she did it. The same reason I’ve been planning surgical procedures in secret and building elaborate cover stories to keep her from worrying.

She’s protecting me.

From what, I don’t know. But the desperation in her movements, the way she’s been avoiding eye contact for days, the careful distance she’s been maintaining—it all points to someone trying to handle a threat she thinks I can’t survive knowing about.

The irony would be funny if it weren’t so fucking tragic.

Both of us lying. Both of us convinced we’re protecting the other. Both of us drowning in secrets that started as love and twisted into something else entirely.

I should say something.

Tell her she doesn’t have to carry it alone. Tell her I already know something’s off and I’m not mad. I’m just tired.

Tell her that in twenty-four hours, I’ll be under anesthesia while strangers burn away the part of my heart that’s been trying to kill me, and if something goes wrong, she’ll spend the rest of her life thinking I died angry at her for whatever she’s been hiding.

But she crosses the room before I get the words out.

Drops her bag.

Drops the act.

And sits down next to me.

Not close enough. Not yet. But it’s something.

We sit in silence. Not angry. Not fine. Just… suspended between the truths we’re not telling and the lies we can’t maintain much longer.

My watch buzzes. 145 BPM. Still climbing.

If everything goes according to plan, this number won’t matter anymore after my surgery. The chaos in my chest will be controlled, managed, reduced to something that doesn’t threaten to explode every time I feel something too intensely.

But right now, sitting next to the girl who owns me completely while she carries secrets that are destroying her, it feels like my heart might give out before I ever make it to that operating table.

I turn my head, ready to speak.

But she gets there first.

“Not tonight,” she whispers.

Her voice is soft. Cracked. Final.

I blink. “Ainsley…”

She leans in and presses her lips to my cheek, and I can feel her trembling.

“Please. Just let me touch you.”

The words hit like a confession. Like surrender. Like someone who knows she’s about to lose everything and wants one more moment before it all falls apart.

And before I can answer, before I can tell her that I understand, that I’m scared, too, that we’re both drowning in the same ocean of well-intentioned deception?—

She’s sliding to her knees.

She kneels between my legs like she’s been here before. Like she belongs there. Like this is the one place where neither of us has to lie.

My chest rises slowly. Controlled. Because if I breathe too fast, I might say something stupid—like don’t, or I love you, or please, just talk to me.

And she’s already given me her boundary: Not tonight.

Her fingers hook into the waistband of my sweats, her gaze flicking up just long enough to ask permission without saying a word. There’s something desperate in her eyes—not just desire, but need. Like she’s drowning, and this is the only thing that feels real anymore.

I know the feeling.

I nod once. Barely.

The fabric slides down, and her hands are warm against my skin.

Warmer than they should be, like she’s been running or nervous or both.

Her touch is gentle but certain, like this is a language she knows fluently, and she’s choosing to speak it instead of the one where we talk ourselves in circles and leave each other bleeding.

She doesn’t rush.

Not tonight.

Her mouth is soft and sure when it closes around me, like maybe this is her prayer—her way of asking for forgiveness without saying she’s sorry.

For whatever she’s been hiding. For whatever Carter Mills has twisted her into.

For the way she’s been slipping away from me, piece by piece, while I’ve been planning to disappear entirely.

I lean my head back against the couch, eyes slipping shut, breath catching on the first slide of her lips. The fabric is cool against my neck, a sharp contrast to the heat building everywhere else.

Dammit, I should stop her. I should say something.

But my words are locked behind the sensation of her tongue, the way she traces every inch of me like she’s trying to memorize it. Like she needs to know this is real, even if everything else between us isn’t.

My hands find her hair—soft, still smelling like that vanilla shampoo. I don’t guide. I don’t force. I just hold.

Because right now, I need something to hold on to.

The tension in my body unspools slowly, coil by coil, as she takes me deeper. Her rhythm is unhurried, deliberate. Every motion feels like an apology she’s too afraid to say out loud, and I take it. I take all of it.

Her other hand presses gently against my thigh for balance, and I can feel her own breathing faltering—like she’s unraveling right alongside me. Her pulse is fast where her wrist rests against my leg, and I wonder if it’s racing for the same reasons mine is.

Not just arousal. Fear. Guilt. The weight of secrets that are getting heavier every day.

It’s not just physical.

It never is with her.

It’s an offering. A surrender. A way of saying all the things we can’t figure out how to voice—like I’m sorry and I love you and I’m terrified and please don’t leave me and I don’t know how to fix this.

And if I could speak, I’d tell her I see it. I’d tell her I feel it in every fucking cell of my body. I’d tell her that I don’t care why, I just need to know what she’s protecting me from.

I’d tell her that I have surgery on Friday and I’m scared as hell, and I’ve been lying to her about it because I thought it would be easier than watching her worry.

I’d tell her we’re both drowning and maybe we should stop pretending we know how to swim.

Instead, I let my head fall forward and whisper her name into the dark.

“Ainsley…”

She hums around me, and the vibration shoots straight through my nervous system like electricity. And I swear, that hum breaks me more than any confession ever could.

Because it sounds like goodbye.

I come undone in her mouth with a shudder that starts in my chest and radiates outward like aftershocks.

Quietly.

Because this isn’t the kind of moment you ruin with noise.

The taste of copper floods my mouth—I’ve been biting my tongue to keep from saying her name too loud, from begging her to stop, from begging her to never stop. My whole body feels like it’s been rewired, every nerve ending singing with the kind of release that’s equal parts physical and emotional.

She swallows, and the sight of it—intimate, deliberate—sends another wave through me. Then she rests her forehead against my thigh, her breath coming in short puffs against my skin. The warmth of it makes me shiver despite the heat still coursing through my veins.

She breathes like she just survived something.

I think we both did.

My fingers slide out of her hair—silk between my fingertips, still slightly damp with sweat—and down to her jaw. Her skin is flushed, warm to the touch, and when I lift her face gently, I can see everything she’s been trying to hide.

Her lips are swollen and dark, eyes glassy with unshed tears, mascara smudged like war paint under her lower lashes. There’s a vulnerability in her expression that makes my chest tight—not the heart condition kind of tight, but something deeper. More dangerous.

She looks heartbreakingly beautiful.

Like a girl with too many secrets and nowhere safe to keep them.

I open my mouth to speak, but she just shakes her head, and the movement sends a strand of hair across her cheek.

She crawls up onto the couch beside me, and her body is warm where it presses against mine.

Her movements are careful, deliberate, like she’s afraid I might disappear if she’s not gentle enough.

She curls into my side like she’s folding in on herself—small, exhausted, and trembling under the weight of things she won’t say.

I can feel her pulse against my ribs where she’s pressed close. It’s still fast, erratic, matching the rhythm of my own heartbeat that’s finally starting to settle back into something resembling normal.

I wrap my arms around her anyway.

Pull her into my chest and hold her like it’s the only truth we have left.

Her cheek rests over my heart, right where the fresh tattoo is still tender under my shirt. Her hair tickles my collarbone, and I can feel the slight dampness where tears have escaped despite her best efforts to hold them back.

My watch sits silent against my wrist. No buzzing, no warnings. For the first time in days, my heart rate is exactly where it should be.

We’re quiet again. But this silence is different. Not sharp. Not loaded with all the things we’re not saying. Just… temporary. A truce wrapped in warm skin and shared breath and the kind of exhaustion that comes from fighting wars no one else can see.

The apartment settles around us—the soft hum of the refrigerator, the distant sound of traffic, the barely audible tick of the clock on the wall, marking time we don’t have.

“I don’t want to lie to you,” I say eventually, my voice low and rough. The words scrape against my throat like sandpaper. “I just don’t know how to tell you everything yet.”

She doesn’t respond at first, but I feel her breathing change against my chest. Deeper. More controlled. Like she’s trying to hold herself together.

Then, softly—so softly it almost breaks me…

“I know.”

Two words that carry the weight of everything we’re not saying. I know you’re lying. I know you’re protecting me. I know we’re both drowning in secrets that started as love and turned into something else entirely.

I know, and I’m doing it, too.

And I do the one thing I haven’t let myself do in days.

I press a kiss to her temple, taste the salt of tears she won’t let fall, breathe in the vanilla and desperation that clings to her skin, and let myself pretend—for one long, perfect second—that everything’s going to be okay.

Even if it’s not.