The panic that the guy I was hiding from had found me made me sit up on a gasp. What made me go back down again, holding my face in one hand and almost breaking my nose with whatever was covering the other hand, was when I hit something hard with my forehead.
“Christ,” a familiar voice groaned, and I moved the soft hand to focus on him, seeing Garrett holding his head in both hands. “What the hell, Zuri?”
Lifting the heavy hand away from my throbbing face, I winced when it scratched the skin on my cheek and then saw the red cast on it.
My first question was: They did these in red? I don’t think I’d ever seen a red cast before.
The second question was: Why is my hand in a cast?
That one quickly moved on to: Where am I? when I noticed the sheets that definitely didn’t belong to me and were wrapped around me like a fajita.
“Did you…” I mumbled, still trying to let all of it sink in. “Did you swaddle me?” And then I saw the wall in front of me and felt one behind me as I tried to roll onto my back. “And put pillows around me like a baby on a bed?”
“You kept rolling around, so I had to do something to stop you hurting yourself and rolling off the bed,” he replied, pointing above my head.
Following his finger, I looked above me to see the corner of the sheet that was wrapped around me, tied in a knot to the headboard, anchoring me in place.
“Turns out your arms are like Houdini. I ended up watching a video on YouTube of how to swaddle a baby, thinking it would keep them in place, but obviously, you got free.”
I wasn’t sure what to think of that information. As far as I was aware, I slept in one position every night. Sure, I’d wake up in a slightly different place on the bed, but everyone did that, right?
Not sure what to say, I went with the next question. “Why am I here?”
Wincing when he pushed his hair off his forehead and accidentally skimmed his hand across the spot where our heads had connected, Garrett moved so that he was lying on his side beside me.
I’m not at all ashamed to admit that seeing him without his shirt on, his lower half covered by a blanket, stole my attention. Well, from what I could see of him with the pillows between us.
An issue that he fortunately rectified for me when he grabbed them both and threw them behind him onto the floor. Then I was immensely grateful for everything he did because I could see his chest, stomach, and the fact that the sheet was loosely draped over his crotch. That’s when I decided that Garrett was a genius!
Well, that was until he started speaking.
“How much do you remember about yesterday?”
Frowning, I tried to think back. “I did some unpacking. That must be why my back feels like it does. Every time I move, I swear the muscles feel like someone’s cutting them open.”
The cringe from him made my eyes narrow.
“Okay, I’ll just give you a quick rundown, then I’ll answer questions. Ready?”
By the end of it, I was torn between living in my burrito nest for the rest of my life and smothering myself with the pillow my head was on. Judging by the way he was acting, I hadn’t let my problem slip, though, so at least there was that, I guess.
Deciding the pillow was the only option, I tried to reach for it with my good hand and then stopped when it pulled painfully on the wounds on my back. Left with no other option, I dropped the arm over my face instead.
“My life is the worst.”
His chuckle didn’t make me feel better.
“No, it’s not. You were on strong painkillers, so you didn’t have any control over what you were doing.”
Raising my arm slightly so that I could glare at him with one eye, I growled, “Like that makes it better?”
“It was only Rose and me, and we won’t tell anyone,” he lied, looking above my head at whatever was behind me. “No one else noticed or heard you.”
“She’ll totally tell Raul.”
Meeting my eyes for a brief moment, he bit his lower lip while he considered it. “Yeah, she might have. But he won’t tell anyone.”
Hoping he was right, I closed my eyes again, trying to figure out how I was going to get what I needed to do done with one hand and a million holes in my back.
Almost like he was a mind reader—which, given where my thoughts kept going when I saw his bare chest, I really hope he wasn’t—Garrett patted my thigh, almost hitting the other one given how tightly wrapped up I was.