Free All the Broken Pieces by Cindi Madsen Page B

mad again,” he said.
    “I’m not mad. I just don’t talk to mean, rude people.”
    “Fair enough.” Spencer unlocked his bike from the rack and rolled it up to her. “Were you telling the truth about not knowing how to ride a bike or never going to McDonald’s? Because I was thinking that would be almost impossible. Which made me think you were… I can’t figure out if you were making a joke, or if you thought that I was stupid, or what.”
    “Think whatever you want.” She kept her eyes down, but she could feel him standing there staring at her.
    “I was rude yesterday, and I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for it to come out like that. I just think you’ve got bad taste in friends.”
    “At least I have friends. You hang out with yourself all day.”
    “It’s just better that way. Then I don’t have to deal with people I don’t like.”
    Lifting a hand to shade her eyes, she shifted her gaze to his face. “So, you’re basically saying that you’re the best company you could have?”
    “Not exactly.” He put out the kickstand on his bike, propped it up, then sat next to her.
    With Spencer so close, her heart started doing that fluttering thing again. His hair fell down over one side of his glasses, and she had the urge to reach up and swipe it back.
    He shook it out of his face, saving her the trouble she never would’ve actually gone to. “So where’d you move from?”
    “Rochester, Minnesota.”
    “Was there a lot to do? There had to be more going on there than here.” He looked at her, eyebrows raised, obviously waiting for an answer.
    She shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess there was.”
    “What do you mean, you don’t know? What did you do for fun?”
    “Would you like a report on the city or something? I just don’t know, okay?”
    “You always get so damn defensive.”
    “Only around rude people.” She crossed her arms and twisted toward him. “And hello, I get defensive? Look in the mirror.”
    “ You look in the mirror.”
    “Whatever.” Never before had she felt so angry. He drove her completely crazy. She wanted him to go away and stay at the same time, which made no sense.
    “Come on,” Spencer said. “Let’s see what you got.”
    “You want to fight me now?”
    “I’m talking about the bike. Nobody can’t ride a bike. And if you really can’t, it’s about time you learned.”
    “Why? Why do you want me to get on your bike?”
    “I’m kind of bored. I beat my Mass Effect 3 video game already and I don’t have anything better to do.” Amusement flickered in the eyes that met hers. “You do know what video games are, right?”
    “I know what they are.”
    “You ever play one?”
    “Not that I know of.”
    “You make the most difficult-to-understand comments.”
    “Like you’re any better.” She didn’t want to start talking about everything she didn’t know, so she stood. “Fine, hand over the stupid bike.”
    Spencer stood and rolled the bike to her.
    Mimicking the way she’d seen other people get on, she gripped the handlebars and kicked her leg over. As she straddled the bike, she realized this probably wasn’t the best idea. Yesterday she’d fainted, and her arm still sporadically twitched. No way was she going to admit to Spencer that she was scared, though. Besides, it did have an almost familiar feel to it.
    “Okay, most important thing…” Spencer tapped the metal bars on the handles. “These are the brakes. For now, you should use them both. The left’s the front brake, and if you hit it hard enough, you’ll end up launching yourself over the handlebars.”
    She squeezed the brakes, getting a feel for them. “Got it.”
    Liv looked up to find his eyes on her, and there was a softness she’d never seen in them before. Then his typical serious expression took over, and he stepped off to the side. “Now you just pedal and try to keep your balance.”
    It sounded easy when he put it like that. And it couldn’t be that hard. She’d