20. Kyle
KYLE
“How’s my favorite patient?” Wanda asked as she breezed into the room.
Kyle grinned, stretching his legs out in front of him. Then, just to be cocky, he set both hands behind his head. The movement almost wasn’t worth it—the pressure in his shoulder was sharp enough to nearly steal his breath.
“Well, that’s something you couldn’t do a few months ago,” Wanda said with a smirk. “Put that arm down before you hurt yourself. I’ve told you a thousand times—this isn’t the time to rush yourself. This is when people like you reinjure themselves.”
“And by people like me, you mean devastatingly charming and fascinating men who make your workday a delight?”
Wanda crossed her arms, her dark eyes sparkling with laughter as she said dryly, “Well, you got the men part right.” She winked, then crossed over to the exam table where he was seated. “Let’s take a look at how that shoulder is looking. TENS unit providing any relief?”
He pulled his T-shirt over his head so she could examine his shoulder, exposing his chest. “I guess. The pulley stretches help. And massages from the world’s greatest physical therapist, of course,” he said with a smile.
He glanced over as she examined the handful of small scars scattered over his left shoulder from the rotator cuff surgery.
A pale, still-pink line along his collarbone from the surgery and a faint, puckered mark along his ribs where the chest tube had been completed the major scars.
Which, all things considered, wasn’t bad.
While Wanda guided his arm through a series of slow movements to test his range of motion, he remained quiet, letting her do her thing without interrupting with jokes.
Kyle remembered nothing of being pulled from the water, but the doctors had told him later how Tomas had basically saved his life. His broken clavicle had punctured his lung, and he’d been knocked unconscious—a dangerous combination in the ocean.
The resulting concussion had been rough. Not nearly as bad as the rotator cuff surgery, though, from the full tear he’d received by dislocating his shoulder.
The accident could have been a lot worse. Or, at least, that was what he told himself and his worried family when they’d come to transport him back home.
“All right. Put your shirt back on,” Wanda said, straightening. “Meet me back out in the gym when you’re dressed, and we’ll get to work, okay? Start with your warm-up—ten minutes on the arm bike, first. I think we can try some new exercises today.”
She left him, closing the door behind her.
Kyle rubbed his eyes and stood, his mood shifting as she left.
Putting on a smile in the exam room was easy enough—almost like performing for a camera, really—but the work with the PT had been grueling and frustrating.
He’d pushed himself as fast and as hard as Wanda would let him, and she’d told him more than once that his recovery was going faster than most. Not only because of his age, but because he’d been in good shape before the accident.
The limitations were killing him, though.
At least he could dress himself easily now. Having to get his mom to put on a button-down shirt those first few weeks had not been his favorite.
Welp. Let’s get this over with.
The truth was, he didn’t mind the time in the gym. As he started working through the exercises, he felt himself testing the limits of his movement and weight-bearing capacity. That process caused discomfort, but rarely real pain anymore. Progress.
What sucked, though?
The aftermath.
So, as he left the PT office an hour and a half later, shoulder cold from the ice pack he’d ended the session with, he gritted his teeth, soreness already starting to radiate down his left arm.
He dug his hands in his pockets for his keys, as the late afternoon sun shone brightly in his eyes. Scanning the parking lot for his truck, he started toward it, then stopped at the sight of someone leaning against the front grille.
His brow furrowed.
A petite woman with long brown hair pulled into a ponytail was facing away from him.
“Excuse me, ma’am—”
She turned, and his heart slammed to a stop.
Sloan.
“Sloan?” he bit out, before another thought could enter his brain.
She didn’t smile, but her face softened with something that looked like relief as she pulled away from his truck and straightened. “Kyle. I—”
“What the hell are you doing here?” Shock threaded his voice, thankfully. He wouldn’t want her to misinterpret that line.
Though maybe he should be angry, after six months of silence, given what he’d been through because of her.
She stepped closer, almost shyly. “I came to see you.”
He turned around and scanned the parking lot, looking back up at the sign for the physical therapist’s office. “Here?”
“Yes—I mean, no. Not here, precisely.” She put a hand to her temple. “Can we talk?”
He crossed his arms. “What the hell do you call what we’re doing? Interpretive dance?”
Her lips pursed. “You know what I mean.”
All those months of wondering what had happened to her and now . . . she was here. Standing in the parking lot of his PT’s office, which made no sense at all.
When he didn’t answer, she gently tried again. “I heard you were in an accident.”
“Oh, did you?” Now he scowled, something about her words igniting an ire he didn’t quite understand. “Well, thanks for coming to check on me, sweetheart. But as you can see, I’m doing just fine.”
He unlocked his door and pulled the latch.
“No—I mean, I just heard you were in an accident.” She stepped off the curb and came closer. “As in, three days ago. I would have gotten here faster, but I was driving from San Francisco.”
Kyle blinked at her. What the hell? She’d driven from San Francisco?
. . . for what?
“Why the fuck would you drive from San Francisco?”
“I—” Sloan retreated a step, the hardness in his tone seeming to do the trick. Her voice went lower. “I-I wanted to see you.”
He laughed once, short. “Wow. I don’t even drive that far for people I like .”
The anger was cresting again. Irrational. Unpredictable.
This time, he stepped toward her, his eyes narrowing.
“You mean to tell me that after all that happened back in January —you know, me coming to your aid, driving you, catering to your every whim, getting arrested for you —you just now remembered I exist and thought you should . . . I don’t know, what?
Come by? Say hello? Do what? Grab coffee and talk?
” His anger was laced with bewilderment.
“How the hell did you even find me here?”
She blanched, putting her hands up as though to hold him back. “This was clearly a bad idea.” She turned away, her pace quick as she started back down the sidewalk.
He clenched his jaw, the fleeting temptation to just let her go pulsing through his body. Every time Sloan came into his life, all she did was cause chaos and leave him in shambles. Learn your damn lesson, Kyle.
But call it morbid curiosity. Or maybe even ridiculous hope. He couldn’t stop himself as he started after her. “Hold on—”
She whirled on her heels, her face red now as she strode back toward him. “You know, you didn’t make it easy to find you, Kyle! I heard nothing from you when you got out of jail. You didn’t call me once.”
Kyle’s brows lifted, keenly aware of the gaze of a woman nearby, walking to her car. The woman ducked her head down as he caught her eye, pretending she wasn’t listening. Great. Another stranger who now thinks I’m a criminal.
He exhaled slowly and gazed at Sloan. “You mean when you had no phone? Or when I was unconscious? Or—with what? The phone number I had stored at the phone at the bottom of the ocean?”
“I texted you my number,” she said, crossing her arms. “You ignored it.”
He shook his head. “Or didn’t see it.” He took one step closer.
“Sweetheart, I had a lot of shit to deal with after what I went through with you. Between being unconscious, stitched together, and learning how to breathe without my lungs collapsing, I wasn’t prioritizing my social calendar.
Not to mention, a whole long-ass hospital stay where I didn’t even have a phone.
So, forgive me if your very best efforts to get in touch with me fell a little too far beneath my notice. ”
Still, something about her words was . . . strangely comforting.
Was she just as hurt by the months of silence as he was?
Or is that wishful thinking? Because it had hurt him.
He’d been arrested and put in jail because of this woman, and her radio silence had stung, especially in the long months during surgery and treatment.
It was as if he’d briefly found some light in his life, and then it was just .
. . gone. And now she was here, but why?
“Why the hell are you here?” he repeated, his voice softer now.
Sloan’s throat bobbed, and her eyes shone. She made a vague gesture with her hands, shrugging her shoulders.
He raised his brows and stepped closer. “That’s not an answer, and you know it.”
She lifted her chin. “I just bought a house here.”
The fuck?
“In Nashville?”
She nodded. “And”—she drew a shaky breath—“the reason I drove is because I was in the process of moving here. With Sadie and Charlie.”
He blinked for a long moment. Sadie and . . . “Charlie, the dog?”
Another nod.
Kyle rubbed the scruff of his chin. “But . . . why Nashville?”
Her eyes narrowed, and she set her weight back on one heel. “Why do you think? It’s home. I needed to come home. To come back to the one place in my life where things made sense.”
“So, you bought a house and moved across the country.” He nodded slowly. “Must be nice.”
She flinched. “You know, I don’t remember you being this mean.”
“Well, the last time you saw me, I still had a job, my dignity, and my life hadn’t been stomped all over by a woman who saw me as nothing more than her cab driver out of a mess.”
“My God, is this really what we’re going to do?” Sloan’s hands fisted, and she closed her eyes, as though trying to choose her words carefully. “Argue about which one of us hurt the other worse?”
He didn’t answer. Couldn’t decide what to say, really. A part of him was too focused on the fact that she was here and only a few feet from him. Warm. Real. Alive and beautiful.
She stepped closer still, then her voice went low and rough, and she touched his cheek. “Isn’t the point that if we’re both so capable of getting hurt by each other, it might mean something? ”
Fuck.
With the way she was staring at him and the heat of her body, so close to his, her touch sending sparks through him . . . he could almost kiss her.
Almost.
But it was Sloan.
Whom he’d loved and lost. Who’d turned her back on him. Maybe even more than once.
He released a slow exhale, then pulled her as close as his warning bells would allow—into his arms for an embrace. Not the kiss that he knew he’d only regret. But her body curved against his, his hands landing against the small of her back and the gentle slope between her shoulder blades.
“It means ,” he said gruffly, “that we both messed up. Apparently.” And then, because he couldn’t help but try to lighten the situation, he added, “So, I’m sorry I was in the hospital and unable to call you.”
She sniffled, shaking her head as she stepped back with a tearful smile. “But you’re okay, right? When I heard, I thought—”
“What? That you’d find me in a wheelchair or something?” He winked. “Nope, just more bionic than I used to be. Torn rotator cuff and a punctured lung. Punctured—unfortunately—by my own collarbone. Which is as painful as it sounds.”
She winced, squeezing his arm. “You scared the shit out of me. What the hell were you doing?”
“Jet Ski. I . . .” Was reckless. “. . . hit some wake a little harder than I should have.” Then he changed the subject abruptly, before she could continue that line of questioning. “You really brought the dog? How is he?”
“Charlie?” Her face lit up. “Yes, I adopted him. And she is great. Had eight puppies right after we rescued her. I wanted to keep all of them, but sanity won out in the end.”
He peered at her. “That’s debatable.”
“You want to see her?”
“Charlie?”
She nodded. “My house isn’t far. About twenty minutes from here.”
“You can always tell the people who have been living out on the West Coast by the way they measure what far is.” He glanced back at his truck. “But sure . . . I’ll come see Charlie.”
“Okay, good. Because I have something else that I really need to give you. Which is part of the reason I wanted to talk to you.”
“Yeah?” He smirked. “What’s that?”
“Um . . .” Sloan slouched back just a little. “Your grandmother.”