I mean, he’d obviously hit the nail on the head here, but he didn’t have any way of knowing that. And what was between us in the beginning was definitely more concrete now.
“Did you know that she sat by my hospital bed for weeks while I was in a coma?” I crossed my arms, ignoring the burn from the ball I’d taken to the arm in the last inning.
“Yes.”
“Did you know that she nursed me back to health?” I pushed.
His eyes narrowed. “She told me that she was employed by you in a text message…not that she was sleeping with you and going to marry you. I just think it’s all kind of sudden. And my mother and sisters are naïve when it comes to the love department.”
It was sudden, yes.
“It wasn’t,” I lied. “I married her because I wanted her. I love her. That’s all you need to know.”
Tyler growled. “I got a call.”
My brows rose. “And what did this call say?”
“That you were in between a rock and a hard place, and you used my sister as a means to an end,” Tyler said. “I don’t want my sister hurt.”
I didn’t want her hurt, either.
“Come home with me,” I said. “You can see for yourself that she’s fine.”
We arrived at my house less than twenty minutes later, and I waited just long enough to make sure that he knew to come in before I disappeared inside.
“Henley?” I called out.
Nobody answered.
I felt a coil of unease filter through my belly, and I walked through the lit-like-a-Christmas-tree house until I found her curled up on my side of the bed in our bedroom.
She was watching a movie on the television with subtitles on.
I frowned and moved around the bed, carefully touching her toes to get her attention.
She blinked, moved her eyes over to me, and smiled weakly.
“Are you okay?” I asked, making sure to speak slowly.
She nodded her head. “Fine.”
“Do you have enough energy to get up and talk to your brother?” I asked.
She rolled over onto her other side slowly, then looked up to see her brother filling the doorway.
Henley’s face was sweet when she smiled at him and waved.
“Is she sick?” he asked.
“Yes,” I answered. “Strep throat, bronchitis, pneumonia and what remains of the flu.”
“Shit,” Tyler said as he made his way into the room. “Always the sick kid in our family.”
Henley made an agreeing noise in the back of her throat but didn’t say much else.
She was barely moving, and I could tell that she was much sicker than she was letting on.
She didn’t want me to know that she felt like shit.
But, she could pretend all she wanted. I knew better than most.
Over the last couple of months, I’d gotten to know Henley on a level I’d never known anybody—not even my sister.
She was my best friend and confidant, and she was seriously the only thing keeping me sane in a world that was attempting to crush me.
I never saw her with a bad look on her face.
She took everything life had to give her and didn’t complain one bit.
God, I loved her.
I touched her foot. “When was the last time you took some medicine?”
She shrugged, meaning it’d been a long while, more than likely.
“I’ll be back,” I said to Tyler. “I gotta go get her some meds. She’s feeling like shit and is trying to hide it.”
***
Henley
“What are you doing here?” I asked him, furrowing my brow in confusion.
Tyler sat on the edge of my bed, lifting one knee up and allowing one foot to stay firmly planted on the floor as he leaned back against the headboard. The move put his hips, and his gun, directly next to my face.
I pushed him over a bit and then scooted and twisted until I was on the opposite end of the bed as him. The new position made it to where I could see his face when he spoke.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t get here for your wedding,” he said, looking contrite.
I smiled, my eyes growing heavy. I’d taken some Benadryl about an hour ago, and it was about the time that they should start kicking in.
“It was kind of last minute,” I excused him. “I thought that you were at work today?”
He smiled. “I was…but I got a call from Rome who said he saw you at the emergency room, and I thought that maybe I ought to come up here and check on you. Make sure you were all right.”
“You got a call from Rome?” I asked in surprise.
Rome was a football player for the Longview Liners. Rome used to be his best friend until they’d fought over a woman—Tara, Tyler’s ex—and Rome had won.
Since that had happened, Tyler hadn’t been back—not that I blamed him.
I wouldn’t have been back, either. Especially since Tara and Rome were one of Longview’s ‘It’ couples.