Unconditional by Cherie M. Hudson Page B

when he caught up with me. “Hold on there, Plenty, Ohio,” he said, catching my arm with a firm grip.
    Grinding my teeth and balling my fists, I turned back. “What? We’re finished, aren’t we?”
    He studied me. I could make out in my peripheral vision the other gym attendees doing the same thing. “I stuffed up, didn’t I?”
    I shook my head. “I’m fine. Just want to go have a shower.”
    “Ahh, the dreaded word fine .” He let out a slow sigh. “The bane of every guy’s existence when uttered by a woman. The word that really means I want to break you in half and stuff your stupid face with your stupid words.”
    I didn’t laugh. Instead, I shucked my arm from his grip and gave him a tight-lipped smile. “What do I owe you for today?”
    He didn’t answer and I could tell he was trying to decide how to proceed.
    Here’s the thing with Parkinson’s disease. It’s not just all shakes and trembles and falling down. It is a brain problem, after all. It can, at times, make you very surly. I watched Dad tiptoe around Mom often, especially in the last few years before he was killed. I don’t know if my surliness at that moment was because of the fucked-up state my brain was in, jet lag, sleep-deprivation, my goddamn pain-in-the-ass PD or because Brendon Osmond had made me feel the very way I hated feeling—vulnerable and weak. Either way, I was happy to entrench myself in it.
    “That much, huh?” I sneered.
    With an ambiguous nod, he held up his hands, palms out. “On the house today.”
    For a second, a wave of guilty regret washed over me. He’d been so nice, he was so nice, and he’d only been concerned. And then I caught a glimpse of the curious onlookers watching our interaction, thought of the way they’d all seen Brendon behaving like I was an invalid, and guilty regret was strangled by annoyance and embarrassment again.
    See what I mean? Surliness.
    With my own ambiguous nod, I walked through the door. “Thanks.”
    I wasn’t three steps away when I heard the door open behind me. My heart thumped faster, and given I’d just finished a massive workout, it was already freaking fast. I didn’t want him coming after me. I wanted to soak in my ire.
    “Same time tomorrow, Plenty, Ohio,” he called at my back.
    It wasn’t a question. Nor could I detect any anger or disappointment in his voice. Damn, this guy was unflappable in his good mood.
    I made it back to Mackellar House without stumbling or lurching once. No one looked at me like I was a debilitated freak. No one made sympathy noises or pulled pitying faces.
    Why would they? No one knew much about me. Those who were at the underwear party last night knew me as the new American student here on a ten-week scholarship to study koalas and global warming. Those who weren’t there most likely didn’t give a rat’s ass who I was. Just another student trudging through the university grounds dressed in gym gear and looking drained.
    And still, the image of the other gym-goers peering at me on the floor wouldn’t leave my head. Wondering what was wrong with me, why Brendon was so alarmed…
    The concern in the gym manager’s eyes still mocked me.
    I ground my teeth, balled my trembling hands and trudged faster up the stairs to my room. I needed a shower, food and my meds.
    My fucking meds. Damn, I hated that I needed them.
    Hated it with a passion.
    There was no one in the communal bathroom when I got there. I thanked God for that. While I was in the shower, I heard people come and go, mostly other girls brushing their teeth by the sound of it. At the sound of Macca’s deep rumbling voice—you all remember the guy three doors down from me, right? Raph’s friend?—I almost forgot to breathe. Was Raph with him?
    When silence fell over the bathroom once again without a sound of Raph himself, I let out a ragged sigh, rinsed my hair of its conditioner and killed the water.
    Five minutes later, dry and dressed, I opened the shower cubicle door