Chapter 8
CHAPTER EIGHT
FOREST
“Wanna do me a favor while you’re out?”
The fact that Nash was asking me that showed he was at least attempting to be normal after dropping the marriage bomb on me.
I was more than aware he was going out of his way to seem normal, especially considering he would have never asked me to run an errand like that before all this, but I appreciated it.
I also appreciated that he wasn’t hovering or trying to follow me. He understood I needed space to process everything that had fallen on my shoulders. The weight of it was so heavy that I could barely get out of bed that morning, but I knew I needed to get out of the house.
Instead of setting up my new office, or working on lesson plans, or browsing the library catalog to see what books I could assign that wouldn’t cost my students half their financial aid that semester, I was lying in bed, rotting.
I’d counted all the grooves in the ceiling by the end of the first night.
By the second, I’d rolled onto my stomach and counted all the wood grains in the floorboards.
By the third, I’d mentally redecorated the room.
Or decorated, I should say. I’d moved my stuff in, but I hadn’t done anything to make the space mine.
Nash had told me to go nuts, so I’d hung up a couple of the childhood photos of me, my mom, and my siblings that didn’t trigger terrible memories, but that was it.
By day five of doing little more than eating, sleeping, and passing Nash in the hallway as I moved from the bedroom to the bathroom, I decided maybe I should go out and buy a potted plant. It was such a small task, but it felt almost like climbing a mountain.
My body was reacting poorly to the stress, so my hands were stiff and my glutes felt like they couldn’t decide if they wanted to spasm so stiffly I couldn’t take two steps or give out completely.
I also hadn’t eaten anything more complex than the chicken soup Nash made, or the number six, pho hai san, from Pho77 Nash had introduced me to.
But I was getting a little tired of broth and bedrest, like I was some kind of Victorian romance novel duchess who’d spent ten minutes out in the rain and was now bedridden with a fever.
I could hear Nash milling around, so I took the chance to jump in the shower while I decided whether I wanted to humble myself and ask him for a ride or attempt to manage this myself.
This morning didn’t seem so bad. I didn’t feel a seizure coming on, and now that I knew the early warning signs, I felt good about being able to at least find a soft place to land before one happened.
But the fear of going unconscious in public was overwhelming.
If I seized or fainted and someone called an ambulance, I would be saddled with another massive pile of hospital bills I couldn’t afford.
As it was, I wasn’t sure my last visit to the neurologist and the tests would be covered.
I was waiting to hear back from HR about my official end-of-employment date since I’d finished summer session A.
It was all very complicated, and even the hot shower and scrubbing all the dried sweat smell off my body didn’t bring me much comfort.
Though putting on fresh clothes did feel amazing.
I took my time with my hair, making sure it was all in place and slapping a little product in it to make it stay that way.
I felt human, which was better than the bed goblin I’d been for the last few days.
In the mirror, I looked like myself. Like Forest. Nothing about my face had changed since learning about my disorder.
It was a little wild that I could navigate the world, almost like my illness was in stealth mode.
If it wasn’t for the cane—the cane I was still a little afraid to take with me everywhere—there was no indication I was anything other than a healthy man on his way to his mid-thirties.
I wasn’t sure if that was better or worse.
I found Nash in the kitchen a few minutes later, barefoot, in basketball shorts and a fire station T-shirt he probably got from Dayton.
He looked…it was probably wrong to say delicious, but then he reached up and stretched his arms, showing off a strip of skin along his lower abs, and my mouth went dry.
My dick didn’t react to much these days, but I felt it begin to stir.
I whipped my head to the side until I could see him in my periphery, and eventually, he rolled his shoulders back and pulled his shirt down.
“Morning, sunshine.”
I grimaced. “I deserve that.”
He shuffled over and hooked a knuckle under my chin, drawing my gaze to his. “You deserve to have a good day. And you look like you have…plans?” He gave me a slow up-and-down.
I took a breath, prepared for a fight. “I think I’m gonna take the bus and go to the plant nursery over on Milland. You know it?”
He grimaced. “I’m a lot of things, but a plant guy isn’t one of them.” He stuck up his thumb. “Necrotic black. I’ve killed succulents.”
“Well, you can’t be perfect at everything, can you?”
He laughed and shrugged, then grazed a touch down my arm as he dropped his hand. And then came the question of the morning. “Wanna do me a favor while you’re out? Tameron needs this stack of paperwork from the VA that he left here. If the garage is on the way, can you drop it off for him?”
I had no idea if the garage was on the way, but having another task was amazing.
And Nash giving it to me made me feel good.
Like he wasn’t going to treat me like I was made of glass, the way Creek would have done.
Like maybe I wasn’t quite whole again, but I was strong enough to do things that made me feel normal.
Even if I couldn’t have my car.
Or a job, apparently.
Or anything remotely close to a functional relationship. Though with Nash’s offer of marriage still hanging over my head, maybe that one was a good thing. I doubt some guy I met off Grindr was going to leap at the chance to marry me just to share his benefits.
“Forest?”
I blinked up at him.
“You good?”
I took a breath and nodded. “Planning my route.” I was a lying liar who lied, but I didn’t want him to know just how seriously I was considering his offer. Not yet. Not until I was sure it was my last hope because the concept was technically fraud.
And while I didn’t feel particularly sad about fucking over the government or the bullshit state of insurance and healthcare in this country, I would never forgive myself if Nash got caught and lost what he currently had.
He touched my jaw. He’d been freer with physical affection since we’d started sharing this secret.
I didn’t mind it either. I didn’t mind feeling his warm skin against mine. And when I leaned into it, he smiled and let his graze linger.
“I’m glad to see you up.”
“Don’t let it fool you. I’m still freaking out,” I admitted. “But I realized I can’t sit and rot forever.”
“So you’re starting a garden?”
I laughed and shook my head, moving to the counter to flick the kettle on. “I think I’m going to start with a potted plant before going too wild. I figure if I can keep, like…I don’t know, a fern alive, then I can work on myself.”
“You don’t give yourself enough credit,” he said.
He flipped open the lid to the bread box and pulled out a plastic bag full of what looked like homemade muffins.
“Here. From Bean. Something about Greek yogurt and protein. I quit listening after he said the words chia seeds and carob chips, but they taste amazing.”
He slid one toward me, and I hesitated because solid foods and my stomach were not getting along. But I probably did need the fiber and protein.
“So,” Nash said as he watched me take a small bite. Okay, it was amazing, and I took a bigger one after I swallowed. “Do I need to apologize?”
I started choking and quickly coughed up a carob chip that had gone down the wrong pipe. “A-apologize?” I managed. “For what?”
Nash shoved one hand into his pocket and rocked back and forth from the balls of his feet to his heels like he was nervous.
“I know I kind of…just threw a lot of marriage shit at you while you were dealing with the whole losing your job situation. I, ah—” He rubbed the back of his neck.
“I’m a fixer, you know? Someone comes to me with a problem, and I fix it. Hence the job.”
I couldn’t hide a smile. That was boiling him down to one thing, but it was a very apropos thing. He wasn’t as bad as Creek, but he had done nothing but try to fix things for me since I got here. And in the months I had been around, I’d seen him do the same with the other guys.
Hell, when they’d all started moving on to new paths, he’d started to look a little…lost.
Fuck, was I just a project to him?
There was a sudden lump in my throat, and I turned away, fiddling with the canister of tea bags while I composed myself. I didn’t need to think that way. Maybe I had things that needed help or needed fixing, but I believed Nash liked me for who I was.
I wasn’t just some replacement for what he was losing.
Was I?
“I know damn well I could have started that conversation a little better than I did. You were processing so much and—”
“It’s fine.”
“Forest,” he said, his voice a low rumble. His fingers grazed the space right above my left hip. “It’s not fine. Can you look at me?”
I dropped the tea bag into the cup, then turned my head. “It is fine.”
He sighed and didn’t move his hand away.
“It’s okay to tell me when I’ve fucked it all up.
I should have given you space to process what you were dealing with, and then brought up, you know”—the tips of his ears went pink, and yeah, okay, maybe the marriage offer was heavy for both of us—“marriage as one of the solutions.”