Text (Take It Off #4)(28)
Author: Cambria Hebert

“Apple,” Honor answered.

I grinned wider.

Her mother looked between me and her daughter. Then she hugged me. It caught me off guard, and I looked over her head at Honor, who seemed to be just as shocked as I was.

I wasn’t sure what to do so I patted her back awkwardly. She pulled away and looked up. “Call me Mom. Welcome to the family.”

Honor made a strangled sound in the back of her throat. I didn’t say anything at all. I was too busy feeling like all the wind was knocked out of me.

“Mom” acted like she hadn’t just shocked everyone in the room silent and grabbed the bag she put on the bed. “I stopped by your house and got you some clothes and some shampoo.” She gave Honor a long look and then said, “I should have brought conditioner.”

Honor laughed. “What will the nurses say?” She gasped and put her hand to her mouth.

To my surprise, her mother’s eyes filled with tears, and then she hugged Honor. I knew the power that her slight arms were capable of, and I winced thinking of Honor’s ribs. Over her mother’s shoulder, I saw the look of pain register, but she didn’t say a word.

“I’m just going to go unpack what you need in the bathroom,” Mom said, taking the bag and disappearing in the adjoining bathroom.

She shut the door behind her.

Honor and I looked at each other. “Her name is Mona.”

“She told me to call her Mom.” I smirked.

“She must like you.”

“How about you?” I said, sitting down on the edge of the bed before I could stop myself. “Do you like me?”

She shrugged. “You’re okay.”

“Just okay, huh?”

She wrinkled her nose. “Eh,” she said.

If her ribs weren’t broken, I would’ve tickled her until she changed her answer. I settled for just looking at her, taking in her rough appearance. Even still, she was beautiful. I couldn’t imagine how much more so she would be when all the leaves were out of her hair and her eye was no longer swollen shut.

The atmosphere around us changed, becoming charged, more electric. The pull I felt to her was undeniable, kind of like I was an alcoholic and she was my favorite drink. Except alcohol wasn’t a very good habit…

I had a feeling Honor would be very, very good.

The sound of something being dropped echoed through the wall by the bathroom. Without taking my eyes off Honor, I said, “I should probably go.”

Tension crept into her features, tightening her lips and creating a barely there wrinkle between her eyes. “I’m sure you want to shower.”

“Showering is overrated.”

She smiled.

Her smile did things to me… made me feel lighter somehow. Like all the sticky cobwebs of the past were being swept away. “I’m not leaving here without your number.”

I wasn’t sure, but it seemed some of the tension in her face eased.

“You got something to write on?”

I glanced around the room. There wasn’t even a pen in sight. “I’ll get something from the nurse.”

Her mother was coming out of the bathroom when I left the room, going in search of a pen. I didn’t really want to leave, but it seemed like I shouldn’t stay either. Technically, I wasn’t anyone to Honor. The only reason the nurses let me in the room at all to begin with was because I was the one who brought her in… and because I can be damn intimidating when I want to be and no one dared tell me to leave.

But now her mother was here. She was being discharged and would likely go and stay with her family where she would be cared for and safe. There was nothing left for me to do… but go home.

To an empty house.

The thought twisted my stomach, but I told myself to man up. At least she was giving me her number. I would call her. I would ask her out.

Honor didn’t know it yet, but she was about to become a fixture in my life.

21

Honor

“Is he leaving?” Mom asked, watching as Nathan pulled the door around behind him.

My stomach was all kinds of discombobulated. That man had an effect on me like no other. I felt breathless every time he got close, and it wasn’t because my ribs were broken.

“He’s coming back,” I said, “which is a shock after the way you just acted.”

“Posh.” She scoffed (in the language of my mother, that meant she thought I was being silly). “That man is so taken with you he probably didn’t even notice I was talking.”

“Mom,” I groaned. “This isn’t some matchmaking opportunity.” My mother had a very bad habit of trying to fix me up with every single eligible bachelor she met. It didn’t matter if she knew him or not. One time she tried to set me up with our waiter when we went out to dinner.

She was positively relentless. But I loved her anyway.

“I don’t have to play matchmaker,” Mom said, sitting down in the chair Nathan just abandoned. He made the chair look small, but with her sitting there, it looked a lot larger. “The vibes between you two were rippling through this room the minute I walked in.”

“The vibes?” I said, thinking her colorful vocabulary was likely the reason I became a writer.

“You know,” she said, wagging her eyebrows. “The mojo.”

I burst out laughing. It hurt and I collapsed against the pillow.

Mom started fluttering around, trying to adjust my pillow. When the pillow didn’t fluff up to her liking, she frowned. “Go get cleaned up so we can go. The pillows at home are much more comfortable.”

She didn’t mean my house. My home. “Mom,” I said gently. “You know I’m going to my house, right?”

She looked at me like I had three heads. I admit, my eye was swollen enough that I probably looked like I had two. “You are not going home alone, young lady,” she said in a stern, no-nonsense voice.

“Yes, I am.”

“Shall I call your father?”

“I’m not twelve. That threat doesn’t work on me anymore.”

“Posh,” she said again and dug around in her too-large bag and pulled out a cell phone. “I’m calling him,” she said, giving me one last chance to change my mind.

Nathan walked in the room, carrying a pen and a small piece of white paper.

“Go ahead,” I told her.

She pressed a few buttons and then paced over to the window. A few seconds later, my father must have answered because she said, “Eric, you need to give this girl a talking to!”