Why Lie? (Love Riddles #2) by Carey Heywood Page A

introduced him to one of my doctors as “my young man,” which is old people lingo for my boyfriend.
    Helping to save my life and visiting me daily since is not a get out of jail free card. Nothing has changed other than him now being a constant presence in my business. The only reason that is even happening is because I physically can’t get away. I still don’t get it, though, why he’s making the drive every day.
    It’s not like other people haven’t visited me. Still, it’s a haul. Despite the distance Memorial is from Ferncliff, I’ve had a ton of visitors.
    It seems like everyone has come to see me, everyone except my two supposed best friends. They kept minimal contact, but apparently Memorial is just too far away for either of them to bother coming to see me.
    If so many other people that I wasn’t tight with hadn’t of come, maybe their absences wouldn’t be so glaring. Hell, even Cecil drove down from San Fran.
    His visit was a life send though. With my doctor’s permission, he bleached my hair back to blonde because even with my face and body all jacked, I could not handle blonde roots with black hair.
    He figured blonde made the most sense since it was my natural color and would take the least amount of maintenance while I recovered. I loved him for it. By the time he got to the hospital, I had already been overwhelmed by a week of shit I could not handle.
    Nightmares of mud filling my room as I lie trapped in this bed, tops of the list of things I cannot handle. Another four-to-six weeks for my leg and ankle to heal enough for me to walk, with a freaking walker is a close second. My mouth being wired shut for a month or possibly longer, coming in third. Being able to pretend that none of that was going on while Cecil played with my hair was probably the highlight of my hospital stay.
    Not that I’m technically still in the hospital. Memorial has a rehab center that I was moved to one week after the mudslide. It all feels the same. Only perk over here is I haven’t had to share a room like I did in the main hospital.
    Because of that, my visitors have had plenty of room to hang out. Gigi has also made herself and her blenders at home here. She even makes smoothies for a couple of her favorite nurses. I’m certain they’ll be bummed to see her go once I’m discharged.
    She turns her head to look at the door before looking back at me. “Why haven’t you forgiven Heathcliff yet?”
    This is not the first time she’s asked this question since my brush with death. In fact, she made it clear that in her opinion, the fact that I nearly died made it even more of a huge deal that I hadn’t forgiven him.
    In my defense, he hasn’t, not once, asked for my forgiveness in the two weeks since the mudslide. Well, there’s a chance he did early on, but I was pretty drugged so I was out of it if he did. While I’m mostly over what he did, the sting of it still lingers.
    For the sake of being a good person, if he asked, I would most likely say the words.
    What I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to do is forget how his actions made me feel. Forgiving him and forgetting are two vastly different things.
    He made me feel like something was wrong with me, that I was somehow hard to love. Love is a stretch considering our short time together but still, it was a gut punch. It took time for me, including that week up in San Fran to rewire that negative vortex that was tripping in my brain.
    When I fall in love, it will be with a man who builds me up, not one who tears me apart. When Gigi asks if I’m going to forgive him, what she’s really asking is will I give him a second chance.
    Today, no matter how hard he tries, the answer is no. He helped save my life and he cares enough about my recovery to drive this far to see me every day. That’s nice of him to do. I no longer want to inflict bodily harm on him when I see him.
    My anger has taken a hike and been replaced by annoyance. The root of that annoyance is