“You can’t live on crackers and beer.”
Oh geez. He sounded like my mom. “I also eat ice cream for protein and fat.”
“And candy for carbs. I’ve seen the wrappers.”
“Are you judging me?”
“Just making an observation.”
I rolled my eyes. “I also eat TV dinners. They’re healthy.”
“Full of sodium and preservatives.”
“It isn’t like you’re some paragon of a healthy male specimen,” I said, then immediately shut my mouth. That was a dumb rebuttal because Killian looked so healthy that he practically glowed.
Instead of mocking me for being wrong, he merely nodded. “Exactly. I’m not as healthy as I could be because I didn’t take care of myself. It’s no fun getting wheeled off to a hospital and having a couple bags of IV pumped into your arm.”
I glanced at him. I hadn’t seen anything about that when I looked him up. But then, I’d been too focused on his basic information, his music and the women and everything that I could easily have overlooked other stuff.
“Did you…um…OD?” I asked, keeping my voice low and calm. I didn’t want to give the impression that I was digging for some lurid celebrity gossip. Artistic types often suffered from less-than-stellar mental health—depression, anxiety, insomnia… And lots of them tried to self-medicate.
He made a choking noise. “No, I didn’t OD. Despite the stereotypes out there about rock musicians, I don’t do drugs or indulge in other risky behavior.”
“You have to admit, it’s not just a stereotype, though. Rock music is littered with corpses. Even I know that.”
“Yeah, that’s true. But not me. What would I do if I screwed up my voice?”
That was a good point. And it relieved me that he didn’t indulge in risky behavior. “So…can I ask why you were in the hospital?”
“Just pushed myself too hard. Skipped one too many meals, had one too many shots of espresso to stay awake. My body kept going, then one day, it decided, ‘Fuck it, I’m done,’ and bam, I hit the ground. That was almost two months ago.”
I gaped at him. I would never have known, based on how strong he was now. But I could understand the need to drive oneself hard. I’d done that too when I first started to write, and had to take a couple of weeks off to recover after my body rebelled. “Did anybody catch you?”
“Dev did, which was the only reason I didn’t get a concussion.” We reached Sunny’s Mart, and Killian killed the engine. “Anyway, you should consider taking care of yourself better unless you want to collapse like me. What if you don’t have anyone to catch you?”
He climbed out of the car before I could reply. But he had a point. I was usually alone. I could theoretically crack my head open on the hardwood floor. My skull probably wasn’t harder than the oak.
He came around and opened my door while I was still fumbling with the belt.
“What?” he asked.
“I didn’t know rock stars opened doors.”
“This one does. I was taught to be a gentleman.”
Right. A gentleman surrounded by groupies. I swallowed that thought, though. I was here to pay him back for saving me from the giant snake, not obsess about his sexual history.
We headed into the store, where Killian grabbed a cart. As we walked by the produce section, I snapped up two bulbs of garlic and some parsley and dumped them in the cart, careful not to brush by him.
“Butter? Olive oil?” I asked.
“I have both.”
“Good. We need some good-sized shrimp, too. Ideally fresh.” I didn’t cook scampi with small specimens. What was the point?
“I don’t see any fresh ones,” he said, looking around the seafood section, which was composed of several feet of refrigerated area.
“Okay, then frozen.”