Page 36 of Little Sunshine

Nothing there, either.

Maybe that means she wasn’t the one driving while fucked up, and she’s trying to protect a friend.

Or boyfriend.

If that was the case, that hypothetical motherfucker better hope he was already dead in a ditch somewhere. Because if he’d taken a stupid as fuck risk with her in the car…

Dead in a ditch would be heaven compared to what I would do to him.

Knowing I’d let her sleep too long, I softly murmured, “Hey, let’s get you cleaned up a little.”

“I’m fine.”

“And you’ll be better once we get those scrapes clean.”

Without opening her eyes, she held out her hand. When I didn’t give her anything, she wiggled her fingers. “I can do it myself.”

“Not saying you can’t.”

When I didn’t relent, she slowly lifted her head and cracked her lids to watch me warily as I wiped her face. It had to sting like hell, but she stayed stoic.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, her blank expression unchanged as I worked. “I shouldn’t have come here.”

“You sure as fuck should’ve.”

“I just didn’t know where else to go.”

If she wasn’t two seconds away from passing back out, I’d have allowed myself to like that. Like that she’d come to me. Asked for me.

But right then, my focus was on making sure she was taken care of.

“Always to me,” I said before I could stop myself—adding being a creepy fuck to being a sick fuck.

It didn’t matter anyway. She didn’t seem to hear me as she stared ahead.

I reached out to tilt her head to the other side, but as soon as my fingers came in contact with her chin, she flinched away.

And not from the pain since I’d barely grazed her.

“Sorry, just tender,” she muttered.

Lied.

What the fuck?

Ignoring the questions I had no right to ask—and had no chance in hell of getting answers to—I focused on the basics. “Tell me your name.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“It does.”

She didn’t give me the chance to clean her other cheek before she lowered it back to her knees. Her lids drifted closed. “I just needed someplace to rest. I’ll leave in a minute.”

The fuck you will.

I didn’t say that to her. “If you’re going soon, no reason not to tell me your name first.”

“No reason to do it, either.”

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