Page 74 of Lies and Lullabies
“Mama bought it yesterday!” Vivi piped up.
At that, Jonas lifted his head. “Reeeeeeally?”
“I hate you all,” Kira mumbled, heading out of the room. “Except Vivi.”
With Kira gone, that left me next to Vivi. “This bed is big,” she said in her muppet voice. My niece crawled over to me and flopped her head onto my chest. “Which bed did you sleep in, Uncle Adam?”
“Uh,” I stalled, trying to think through my headache. This was one of those moments when the truth was not a good option. “Hey, Vivi? Do you want to watch TV in your room?”
“Yeah!”
“I bet you can’t turn it on by yourself!”
“Can too!” Vivi scrambled off the end of the bed and was out of the room in a nanosecond. A minute later I heard the television power up in the other bedroom.
“Nice save.” Jonas chuckled from his side of the bed.
“Yeah. Kira won’t like it.”
“It’s better than the alternative.” Jonas dropped his voice to a whisper. “‘Vivi, can you saywalk of shame?’”
My face got hot. Vivi’s departure had left me alone in bed with Jonas. I checked the other man’s expression, and to my relief, his eyes were twinkling. “Your day is going downhill already,” I muttered. “Now it’s just you in bed with some strange guy.”
“Oh, well…” the rock star yawned, stretching his arms overhead. “I’ve seen worse. Let’s find you that Advil.”
He reallywasgorgeous, all lean muscle and golden hair. No wonder my sister couldn’t turn Jonas down. You’d have to be legally blind, and probably deaf as well. Seriously, though. The dude had better have a heart made of twenty-four karat gold if he planned to stick around Vivi and Kira. I’d be watching.
Jonas grabbed his phone off the bedside table and wandered into the bathroom, returning a minute later with a pill bottle. “Heads up.” He tossed it onto the bed.
“Thanks, man.”
“De nada. Hey—is Ethan awake yet? He gets pissy when I wake him up with business.”
I couldn’t quite meet his eyes when I answered the question. “Uh, yup.”
“Awesome.” Jonas hit a button on his phone, and turned back into the bathroom. “Morning, Ethan,” I heard him say before the door closed. “Party time is over. There’s a couple of things I need before we leave…”
The bathroom door clicked shut, and I was alone. I lay there a moment, gathering my thoughts. More had happened to Kira, Vivi, and me in the last ten days then I could even process. And last night I’d broken my own dry spell in a big way, with enough alcohol and sex to make up for months of lost time.
However.
Reality was about to sink its ugly teeth into my (pleasantly sore) ass. In the next week, my surgery would be scheduled and then performed. As if that wasn’t miserable enough, I’d begin the process of adjusting to life as a one-nut wonder.
With another groan, I rolled off the bed and went into the other bedroom. I sat on the bed next to Vivi, turned the TV down to a reasonable volume, and prayed for the pain reliever to kick in soon.
* * *
A little while later, the bathroom door opened. Kira had showered and changed, and was drying her hair. When the hair dryer stopped, I pulled my hungover self off the bed and went to stand in the doorway.
Kira leaned toward the mirror, applying lip gloss with a tiny brush.
“You never wear makeup,” I said automatically.
She gave me a withering look in the mirror. “You never get wasted and stay out all night. But I wasn’t going to point that out.”
Well, ouch. “I’m sorry. Can we have a truce?”
Kira didn’t answer, either because she was upset, or because she didn’t want to ruin her top lip.
