Chapter 6
“Fair to middlin’,” Jerry said. “Not that it matters, because I ain’t about to go sticking needles in your boyfriend. You do it.”
“You do it. I’ll buy you two quad bikes.”
Jerry gave me a disapproving look. “You’re a fisherman, Joe. It’s no different from unhooking a fish. Get on with it.”
“We both know that I was a mediocre fisherman on my very best day, and I haven’t done it properly for years. You’d do a much better job.”
“I don’t like needles.”
“But…it’s no different from unhooking a fish. You just said.”
“I was being supportive.”
“Be supportive and stitch him up!”
Jerry shuddered. “No.”
I stared at him. “You’re squeamish.”
“When it comes to needles and people? Yes.”
I’d seen the man do terrible things to fish, and whistle cheerfully while doing it.
“I’ve got Steri-Strips and a roll of Elastoplast in my first-aid kit. Probably better to try that.” I looked down at the horrifying black, purple, and blue bruising over Dave’s torso and arms. “Maybe we should start with some ice.”
“Good idea,” Jerry said.
“I wish we could get a doctor to come and have a look at him. I know we can’t, but…” I trailed off and scrubbed my face tiredly. “I hate being so helpless.”
Jerry reached out and squeezed my shoulder in reassurance, then said, “Ow,” when Dave set a big hand in the centre of his chest and pushed him over.
Dave’s eyes were still closed but he was frowning.
Jerry pushed back up to sit on the floor beside me. “He’s feeling better already,” he said dryly.
God, I hoped so. “Right. Um. I want to get him comfortable first, and then do something about his wounds.” I looked around. Comfortable. How to get the giant merman comfortable in my little cottage.
Usually, it wasn’t a challenge.
Usually, he didn’t have a massive tail.
“Maybe…? Okay. We’re going to need to keep him damp. D’you think?”
“Yep. Can’t hurt, anyway, can it? Lotta heat coming off him. Or is that normal?” He cocked a brow.
I flattened my palm over Dave’s tail, and sucked in a sharp breath. “No. No, he’s never this hot. He wasn’t like this down on the beach.”
Dave’s eyes opened to little slits and he stared up at the ceiling before his gaze tracked down to my face. He looked at me. He looked at Jerry. He looked at me again.
He shifted.
“Dave!” Jerry and I both yelled.
He lay there panting, neck arched and body tense, his eyes on mine. He pushed up to his elbows and drew his long, long legs in, and then with a shuddering groan, he pushed up to his feet.
We scrambled up after him, and Dave slung an arm around each of our shoulders. He grunted and turned to the stairs.
“Okay,” I said. “Okay. We’re on the move.” We shuffled awkwardly across the room to the stairs, and then even more awkwardly began to go up them.
We made it up two steps before we got wedged. They weren’t wide enough for the three of us.
Especially when one of us was Dave.
“Ack,” Jerry said, and flailed. “This ain’t working.”
Dave swayed, blinking rapidly.
“Get behind him and push,” I said to Jerry.
He squirmed out from between Dave and the wall. “Shouldn’t you be the one behind him? How’s he gonna…? Like? What am I pushing here, Joe, because…?” He trailed off and cleared his throat.
I looked back to see Jerry’s eyes locked on Dave’s round, bare arse.
“Oh my god,” I said. “Just push!”
Jerry swallowed and raised his hands. He cupped them but didn’t make contact.
“Are you being homophobic right now, Jerry?” I demanded.
“What? No!”
“Then push.”
“Fine, but if he kicks me down the stairs for grabbing his arse, I’m taking you up on those quad bikes. One for me and one for Marcy.”
I heard the smack of hands landing on flesh, and immediately shouted, “Don’t spank him!”
“I’m not spanking him, I—oh, there he goes.”
Dave lurched away from Jerry’s overenthusiastic shove.
“Keep pushing,” I said.
“No problem.”
Another quick glance behind me showed Jerry’s face red and his quivering arms at full extension as he held Dave’s naked arse and shoved with everything he had.
“If either of you would like to help out, be nice,” he grunted.
“Let’s go, Dave,” I said, and coaxed him up the next step. “That’s great, Jerry. Keep going. It’s helping.”
“Cool.” He made an aarrrrgh noise and his boots skidded.
I did not miss the gleam of amusement in Dave’s face.
“Are you messing with him?” I hissed.
Dave’s face was still tight with pain, but yeah. He was messing with Jerry.
I resettled my arm around his waist, doing my best to avoid the wounds, and coaxed him up another step.
His amusement was over; his expression set in fierce concentration and we made our way up the stairs.
By the time we reached the top, Dave was sweating and making a constant, faint groaning sound. It was hard to hear over Jerry’s equally constant and significantly less faint complaints, but I heard it.
“He weighs a fucking ton,” Jerry said, coming into view and joining us on the landing, slotting himself under Dave’s lifted and waiting arm. “I can only imagine you’re on top when the pair of you go at it, because otherwise he’d flatten you.”
“Don’t imagine it at all,” I told him primly.
I preferred to be on the bottom and I happened to adore his gargantuan weight on me.
“Right, what d’you reckon? Are we going to put him in the bathroom, or the bed?”
I hadn’t thought that far. “Uh. Bathroom?” I heaved Dave up on my side. He was sagging and getting heavier. “Yes. Bathroom makes sense. I’ve got to clean him and—”
“Never mind,” Jerry said. “He’s off again.”
We hustled to keep up—and to keep him up—as Dave turned towards the bedroom and grimly forged on, groaning louder.
“There, there,” Jerry murmured absently as we all staggered along the landing. “We’ll get you settled any minute now. There, there.” He couldn’t help himself. He was like one of those cats or capybaras who would mother absolutely anything.
We lurched through the doorway and Dave grunted as soon as his gaze locked on the bed. He sped up, we all but ran across the room, and he fell onto it face-first.
Since his arms were still around us, and our arms were still around him, all of us fell onto it face-first.
I extracted myself and hauled Jerry out from under Dave.
“We did it!” Jerry said. “Uh-oh. Now what’s he doing?”
Dave was moving feebly over the mattress, inch-worming his way up to the pillows, grabbing fistfuls of the bedding as he went and taking it with him. He turned onto his back.
“Oh. Don’t worry about that. He’s nesting.”
Jerry looked at me. “He what?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “He does it a lot. Drags it all into the middle. Likes it when I get in there with him.”
As we watched, Dave’s eyes rolled back in his head and his big body went completely lax. I moved up to the top of the bed, reached down and put my fingers to his neck. His pulse hammered against my fingertips, still at that frightening speed. “Oh, Dave,” I said, and cupped his cheek.
I was hit with a sudden wave of utter exhaustion. I wanted nothing more than to climb onto the bed with him and hold him.
Unfortunately I had plenty of other things to deal with first.
I pulled away, paused to make sure he was still unconscious, and shooed Jerry out of the room ahead of me. We went downstairs as quietly as we could, which wasn’t very quietly as my stairs were uncarpeted and we were both wearing boots. I didn’t think anything could wake Dave at this point.
“Not quite the reunion you were hoping for, hey?” Jerry said sympathetically.
“No. I don’t care. I’m just…I’m just glad he’s here.”
“Bet he is, too.”
“Yeah.” I made an effort to pull myself together. “Okay. You probably need to get the quad bike back over to Johnson’s?”
“No hurry. As long as I get it back today, we’re fine.”
“Sorry to ask, but can you do it? I would, except—”
“Don’t be daft. God knows what Dave would do if he woke up and couldn’t find you. Besides, I’ve got to pick up my car, remember? It’s at the farm.”
“Of course, yes. Um. All right. So. Thank you again for…for everything. I couldn’t have managed this alone, and…thank you.”
“Aw. Joe. Are you gonna cry?”
I sniffed sharply. “I am not, no.”
“Because you look like maybe you might need a hug.”
“Nope. I don’t.”
“You sure?” He grinned. “I don’t mind. I’ll hug you. Say the word.”
“Ugh. Go and get your car.” I nudged him towards the door.
“Will do. Back in an hour, hour and a half.”
“I’ve taken up enough of your day as it is, Jerry. You don’t have to come back. We’ll be fine.”
He tilted his head. “Are you sure? I’m not exactly in a hurry to go and listen to Vinny bitching at me for running out on him and Patrick earlier.”
I winced. “Make sure you tell him it was my fault.”
Jerry made a rude noise. “Always complaining about something, he is, and ninety-nine percent of the time, he don’t have no reason to be. He can get over it. Now listen, are you going to be able to handle cleaning and patching Dave up on your own?”
“Yes.”
Jerry gave me a look.
“Yes,” I said more firmly.
“Because you’re squeamish.”
“Are you offering to sew him up now?”
“Yes, okay, better run.” He was holding his phone and he lifted it between us and pointed at it theatrically. “Text me later to let me know how things are going.”
“I will.”
“I mean it. If you forget again, I’m coming over.”
“I will!”
I watched him hop on the quad bike, start it up and make some big arm-waving gestures and thumbs-ups at me that I interpreted to mean he really liked it. He buzzed off up the track and across the field, quickly dropping out of sight.
Right. Now that he was safe, it was time to tend to my beloved.
I polished off the rest of the Hobnobs, ran around gathering supplies, and carted the lot upstairs and into my room.
Dave was awake, his dark eyes fixed on the door.