Chapter 16
RAPHAEL
Three days after going to the doctor, I had learned two things.
First, Belle was a deeply unreliable narrator when it came to her own pain.
Second, physical therapists are terrifyingly cheerful.
We had just finished her first appointment.
She had insisted she did not require assistance walking in, and then accepted my arm without comment when we walked back out. Progress, I suppose.
We’d had a surprisingly good couple of days.
They’d been domestic in a way I had not anticipated.
I found I enjoyed taking care of someone else.
The realization unsettled me at first. I had not needed to take care of anyone in a long time.
I barely took care of myself. Geoffrey managed my calendar, my meals, and the logistics of my existence with ruthless efficiency.
I had grown accustomed to functioning at a distance from my own needs.
Now I was tracking icing intervals and medication timing. I drove her to physical therapy. And I did not resent it. If anything, I felt . . . useful.
Belle did not make it easy. She resisted assistance on principle. She argued about compression schedules. She accused me of hovering. But she allowed me to adjust the brace. She accepted my arm when she needed balance. She followed through on the exercises.
Last night we sat on the couch for hours after dinner. No agenda. No contracts. No negotiations. Just conversation.
She was quick-witted in a way I found irresistible. Her mind moved fast and sideways. She could pivot from sarcasm to sincerity without losing rhythm. I had forgotten that kind of exchange without strategy.
It was easy. I couldn’t remember the last time a connection had felt that effortless.
She laughed when she caught me color-coding her therapy schedule, and she pretended not to enjoy being looked after.
She was beautiful in a way I couldn’t stop looking at.
The way she carried her strength so naturally that it seemed unfair that injury had slowed her.
Yes, she was physically striking. Curvy and powerful in a way that commanded attention without apology. Brick House could have been written about her. But it was not just her body. It was her wit. Her stubbornness.
Now I sat in my car outside Long Creek Memory Care Facility, engine off, watching the automatic doors through the windshield. She had insisted I remain here.
“It’ll confuse him,” she’d said. “Too many changes, and he spirals. Let me handle it.”
But she had been steadier on the crutches today, so I honored her request and stayed in the vehicle.
The building was modest. It had a clean brick exterior with trimmed hedges. A sign attempting warmth through soft lettering and muted colors read memory care. It was a neutral phrase for something profoundly unneutral.
I watched a nurse escort an elderly man toward the front doors. He paused midway, distracted by something only he could see. The nurse waited patiently. Patience, that seemed to be the unspoken currency here.
I checked the time. Thirty-four minutes.
I told myself that was reasonable. I did not like that Belle was inside alone.
I understood her reasoning. I did not contest it.
I did not like it. I imagined her navigating the hallway.
I could hear the change in her voice when she adjusted to whatever version of her father she encountered that day.
I’d heard her practiced gentleness many times.
I did not like that she carried that by herself.
The doors opened again.
And then I saw her.
I was out of the car before I consciously decided to move.
Belle emerged slowly, crutches steady beneath her arms, brace visible beneath the hem of her shorts. She adjusted to the sunlight with a slight squint.
I stepped forward instinctively, but stopped.
A man approached her from the side. He moved with the kind of familiarity that suggested prior contact.
He didn’t look like staff and appeared to be in his mid-thirties, perhaps.
He was well dressed with a crisp button-down shirt and expensive shoes.
There was an arrogant air about him that I did not like.
Something about him tugged at recognition, but I could not immediately place it.
I waited for Belle’s spine to straighten and for her chin to lift. For the sharp, dismissive edge I knew so well to appear.
It did not. She faltered. Her shoulders curved inward. Her posture tightened. Her expression shifted into something I had not seen before.
She cowered.
The reaction was immediate and visceral. I was moving before I consciously decided to. Halfway across the pavement, she looked up and saw me.
Her eyes widened in warning.
She raised one finger, holding me off. Stop. The command was silent. I stopped. Every instinct resisted it, but I stopped.
The man spoke to her briefly, close enough that I could see the tension in her jaw from where I stood. His posture was relaxed and familiar in a way that implied assumption.
Then he turned and walked inside without another glance.
I closed the distance immediately.
“Are you okay?” I asked, positioning myself beside her.
“I’m fine,” she said automatically, but she accepted my arm without argument this time.
We moved toward the car slowly.
“Who was that?” I asked once she was settled into the passenger seat.
“My boss,” she answered.
The word sat poorly.
“The cleaning company?”
“Yeah.”
I closed her door and walked around to the driver’s side, watching her carefully as I slid behind the wheel.
“He asked how I was able to do the job on crutches,” she continued. “I told him I was managing. But he still might call you.”
“Call me.”
“Yes. To confirm.” She gave a small, tight shrug. “I know lying is bad, but . . . ” Her voice trailed off. She looked down at her hands folded in her lap. The ring caught the light.
“If he calls,” I said evenly, “I’ll inform him that you are performing satisfactorily.”
Her head lifted slightly. “You would?”
“Yes.”
She studied me for a moment, as if trying to figure something out, before turning out the window. Her shoulders were still tense. I didn’t like the way she had folded inward when he approached one bit.
“Belle,” I said carefully, “are you afraid of him?”
Her head snapped up. The fire returned instantly. This version of her I recognized.
“No,” she said sharply. “I’m not scared of him.
” The flare burned bright, but dimmed too soon.
“But I can’t lose my job,” she added more quietly.
She gestured vaguely toward her knee. “I already had to cut my hours at the coffee shop because of this. I can’t lose this one, too.
” Her voice tightened. “I’m almost caught up on the bills here. ”
Here. Long Creek. The word hung between us. A clearer picture assembled with uncomfortable speed. Reduced hours. Injury. Memory care invoices. A boss who questioned her capacity the moment he saw vulnerability instead of offering help. Though it didn’t seem she was much accustomed to help.
She wasn’t afraid of the man. She was afraid of instability. Something in my chest shifted into something sharper than irritation. Protectiveness.
She met my gaze again, chin lifting slightly as if bracing for judgment.
“I’m handling it,” she said.
I believed that she was. I also understood, more clearly than before, that she had been handling far too much alone.
And the knowledge did not sit well with me at all.
Later that night, after we had called in dinner, we sat together on the couch watching TV. I don’t think I had sat on this couch this much, let alone watched any TV, in years.
At some point, Belle had gotten up to go to the bathroom, and when she came back, she had sat close to me.
And that was where I sat now, trying to pay attention to the movie she’d put on, but all too aware of the fact that I could feel the heat radiating from her warm, lush body.
I wasn’t sure how this woman had such a hold on me.
Although as I studied her, the darkness under her eyes was evident.
“You look tired.”
“Rude.”
I cleared my throat. “I meant no offense, just an observation.”
With a heavy sigh, she said, “I’m fine.”
I was beginning to hate those words. They never truly meant she was fine.
“How was your dad today?”
A smile pulled at her face, giving a little life back to her tired eyes. “He was good. He was talking about the time he won a blue ribbon at the country fair for his grill with a built-in hamburger flipper.”
“He sounds like he was quite a character.”
“You have no idea. He was so funny. He was always out in the garage tinkering with something. There was never a dull moment.”
She adjusted on the couch, moving closer to me as she continued, “I spent hours out there with him, handing him the wrong tool and sorting screws. And every night ended with him making up bedtime stories to tell me.”
I cocked my head, inching closer myself. “He made them up?”
“Yeah, he never liked to read out loud. I’ve always kind of suspected there was some undiagnosed dyslexia, but he knew I loved stories and books, so every night he would tuck me in and tell me these elaborate made-up stories.”
“He was a good father.”
“He is a good father,” she corrected. “What about your parents? Are they in Ohio?”
I shifted uncomfortably. I didn’t know how to talk about them without getting into everything. Yet as her thigh lightly touched mine, I found I wanted to connect with her. It wasn’t a feeling I was entirely used to.
I cleared my throat and attempted to share with her what I could. “No. They live in Paris.”
She turned fully to me, her thigh pressing fully against mine now. “Paris?”
“Yes, when I was growing up, we lived in New York City, but when my father retired, they moved back to France. I go and visit them a couple of times a year.”
“I would love to go to Paris someday. It must be so romantic. I’ve never even made it out of Ohio before.”