Chapter 22
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
FOREST
As much as I wanted to be at the hospital twenty-four-seven with Nash, I couldn’t.
I didn’t like the smells, and the weight of everything was a lot.
Nash was going to need a few months to recover from the break in his leg and the punctured lung, so I decided to do everything I could to get the house ready for him.
His doctor told him he would be released within the next forty-eight hours, as long as there were no infection complications.
Which meant it was up to me to fix things.
The stress of it all was weighing heavily on me. I could feel a heavy flare coming on, but if I could get everything done before it happened, Nash would be able to come home and rest and not worry about the house.
By the time I was finished scrubbing the kitchen floor, my hands were trembling so hard I couldn’t keep a grip on the sponge. Flopping onto my backside, I pressed my shoulders to the cabinet and closed my eyes.
It was hard to accept that this would never get easier. That even on good days, something as simple as scrubbing the floor could trigger my body to fall apart. My stomach was roiling from the pressure of it all when I heard the doorbell going off.
There wasn’t a chance I would be able to get up, so I said a prayer that the person at the door wasn’t Tameron and shouted, “Come in!”
There was a lengthy pause, then I heard the door open and a familiar, lopsided gait crossing the floor. Creek appeared a moment later, his brow furrowed until he saw me on the floor. His face slipped into a mask of worry as he started rushing forward, but I managed to lift a hand and shake my head.
“Relax. I’m fine.”
“You don’t look fine,” he said, his voice gruff and tight. “You’re on the damn floor, Forest.”
He wasn’t wrong. I was on the floor, and I was probably pale, and my hands were shaking so hard I couldn’t lift all my fingers all the way. But this was my new normal. “I exhausted myself trying to get the floors clean.”
He stormed over, more slowly this time, and knelt beside me. “Why the fuck are you washing them?”
“Because Nash is coming home soon, and I want the place to be clean enough that he won’t stress about it.”
“Jesus Christ,” he muttered. His strong hands slipped under my arms and he hauled me to my feet, taking my weight as we moved from the kitchen to the living room. He sniffed. “Did you fucking dust?”
“Dusting isn’t going to take me out. Can you please relax?” I begged. This was why I hadn’t wanted him to know.
Creek said nothing, but I could feel the tension radiating off him as he got me situated in the corner seat, then took one a space away from me. The moment stretched on like a wire pulled too tight before it snapped. “I’m sorry,” he finally muttered.
Hearing him apologize was…new. And different. And strange.
“It’s fine. I’m doing what I have to do. I don’t want Nash coming in here and hurting himself worse because he feels like he has to take care of everything.”
Creek shook his head. “No, I get that. But I already talked to Heath, and we’re going to pay for a cleaning service until he’s up and about.”
I wanted to tell him no. That, in spite of my body, I could do it. But I thought about how the last time I met with Kent, he reminded me that sometimes I would have to accept my limitations. And that accepting help wasn’t a mark of failure.
“Why suffer,” he’d said, looking me in the eye, “when there’s no need to suffer.”
It was a novel concept, and one that I was probably going to struggle with for the rest of my life. But I was going to try to make that part of my new philosophy.
Taking a breath, I looked at my brother again. We hadn’t talked since the hospital. I’d seen him briefly when I stepped in to see Nash for the first time, but I’d been so busy reeling over the fact that Nash loved me back that I’d forgotten to check in with him.
Which was something I also wanted to change.
I fucked up keeping all this from him. I didn’t want to do it again.
“I’m sorr—”
“I wanted to say I—”
We both went silent, then he snorted and shook his head. “I’m going first because I don’t want to hear your bullshit apology.”
A mixture of shame and anger hit me. “It’s not bullshit, Creek. I am sorry.”
He shook his head again. “No, I said that wrong. The apology isn’t bullshit. It’s just…you don’t need to. What you said was harsh—”
“Creek…”
“Let me finish,” he begged. I nodded for him to go on.
Frankly, I was tired, and speaking was hard when my body was like this.
“It hurt, but I think I needed to hear it. I’ve been a control freak most of my life, and I didn’t realize how many scars that left on you.
The fact that you were afraid to come to me was a bitter damn pill, Forest.”
I swallowed thickly. “It wasn’t that I was afraid…”
“You were. Let’s call it what it is. I never made things easy on you, and that’s on me. But I love you, okay? I know we didn’t say that much growing up, and I regret that too. But I’m happy for you and Nash.”
“Would you be saying that if the relationship wasn’t real?” I couldn’t help the question. I wanted to know how safe I would’ve been if the whole thing really had been just a matter of convenience.
He bowed his head. “I don’t know. I want to say I’d understand, but you know me.”
I couldn’t help a small laugh. “Yeah, I do.”
He glanced over at me, a smile playing at his lips. “You really do love him, though, right?”
“Yeah. It was…” I stopped. I wanted to say unexpected, but that wasn’t true. Something about Nash had stayed with me from the first time I saw him on a FaceTime when Creek was deployed. It was a two-second hello in passing, but his face had been burned into my brain.
And then I got to know him, and it became so much worse.
And now, it was so much better.
“I’m still hurt I wasn’t at your wedding.”
Bowing my head, I took a deep breath. “It wasn’t a real wedding. I didn’t know how he felt at the time, and I was too afraid to be honest about how I did. I think once he’s better, maybe we can do something real.”
“Renew the vows?”
It seemed a bit soon for that, but I also knew Nash and I needed a redo. Maybe in a year, when we were sure this wasn’t going to fall apart. We’d skipped all the usual parts of dating, and moving in together, and…I don’t know, adopting a pet.
But I had never felt like I was built for anything usual, and I didn’t think Nash was either.
“For what it’s worth,” Creek said softly, reaching for my hand. My fingers were starting to calm, but they still shook a bit against his palm. “I think you two are going to make it.”
I squeezed him back as best as I could, which wasn’t impressive, but I was learning not to care. It was my best, and that would have to be enough. “That’s worth everything.”
He smiled at me this time, a real, honest smile. It was soothing in ways I hadn’t realized I needed. It was a reminder that although my life had fallen into pieces I didn’t recognize, and I made some mistakes, I hadn’t lost one of the most important people to me.
“Alright, now, let me pick up where you left off.” He slapped his hands on his thighs and stood.
“You don’t need to—”
“I know,” he said, looking me in the eye. “But right now, I can, and you can’t. So let me help.”
Maybe this was a genuine offer. Maybe it was a test to see how far I was willing to compromise. Maybe it was both. Or neither. What mattered was that I was willing to accept my current limits and not hate myself for them.
“I want to move Nash’s stuff down to my room.”
He eyed me. “To switch rooms?”
I took a breath, then shook my head. “To be together. Like we should have been this whole time.”
Creek nodded, then suddenly pulled his phone out of his pocket and smiled. “We can have that done in an hour.”
“We?” I pressed.
He laughed. “If you thought I was going to be here alone, you have a lot to learn about us.”
I flopped back on the couch with a groan, but in reality, I loved it. I loved this. It was the family Creek and I had always dreamed about growing up. The family I thought we’d never have. And it was a gift I would do my absolute fucking best to never, ever, ever take for granted.
I didn’t know what I thought would happen after Nash got home, but avoiding the conversation about how we were married and in love and had skipped a bunch of steps wasn’t supposed to be part of it.
I wasn’t going to push him to talk about it right away though. He looked relieved when Tameron walked him into the downstairs bedroom and he saw that his bed was back down there, and that all of our things had been carefully combined.
He was still loopy on pain meds, but when I tried to sneak off and let him rest, he clung to me, keeping me trapped against his chest as he dozed off. It was not the worst place to be.
But the pattern continued over the next couple of weeks.
We didn’t really talk. We kissed, we cuddled, he held me like he was afraid I’d turn into mist and float away if he let go.
He followed me from room to room like an imprinted duckling and fussed when the stress of the events took such a large toll on my body that I lost my ability to speak and had six seizures in the span of twenty-four hours.
Then two more weeks passed, and I felt better, and so did he.
He was on crutches with a leg brace to keep him mobile without putting too much pressure on his injured and healing bones. There was always someone at the house, though, cooking and tidying, and making sure we had what we needed.
For a while, I thought we would never get any real peace, but four weeks into Nash’s recovery, I noticed that the house was silent as I went into the kitchen to make tea. Like, properly silent.
I was feeling good, Nash had been off the bulk of his pain meds for the last few days, and things felt…
Nice.
Something close to normal.
“Forest?”
“Getting tea,” I called.