Chapter 14
Chapter Fourteen
How could I still be hurting? It had been three days since I was released from the hospital, and I still could hardly bare putting any weight on my foot. I needed to pee and walking was torture. And here I had thought the hated catheter in the hospital was horrible. What was I thinking? That had been a treat!
Fuck!
I needed Michael’s help.
Again.
My eyes began to sting as my full bladder made me squirm.
I knocked my injured ankle with my good foot and muttered, “Fuck.” I felt a tear run down my face. I leaned over and picked up my phone. Yep. It was time for another fucking pain pill which would just make me even more woozy and stupid.
Yay, me .
My head jerked up when Michael knocked on my bedroom door. My mom never knocked, so it had to be Michael.
I grabbed the tissue box beside me and wiped at the tears. Good. Gone.
“Come in.”
He was smiling when he walked into my room. It was the warm, let-me-cheer-you-up smile.
Did he have to be so nice?
“Hey, Sunshine. It’s time for another pill.”
I crossed my arms over my chest. “I don’t want one.”
“Remember what the doctor said, you don’t want to let the pain get ahead of you.”
He had a fresh glass of water and picked up the pill bottle by the side of my bed. Before he could hand me the water, I blurted out, “I need to go to the bathroom.”
He smiled. “Not a problem. Let’s get you over there. Or, do you want to wait and take the pill first so then it doesn’t hurt as much to put weight down on your foot?”
I shook my head. “I was stupid,” I muttered. “Waited too long.”
“You weren’t stupid,” he gently admonished as he pulled off the sheet covering me. I was in my pajama set, shorts and a tank top. I sat up fast and twisted so my legs dropped to the side of the bed. I let out a squeak.
“Fallon! You know better. Go slow.”
“Don’t yell at me,” I yelled at him.
“Sorry, Sunshine. I just hate seeing you in pain.”
“Doesn’t Dad need something?” Great, now I was sneering at the man.
“Your mom is in with him right now. I made them lunch and they’re eating it in the dining room.”
I opened my mouth to ask where my lunch was and then shut my mouth before I sounded like a petulant child. Or worse, my father.
“After the bathroom and the pill, I’ll bring in your lunch. I made Philly cheesesteak sandwiches.”
“With green peppers and onions?” I knew I sounded like a druggie who wanted a fix, but for fuck’s sake, it was cheesesteak. Who wouldn’t drool after that?
Damn, could my emotions be anymore chaotic?
“Of course that’s how I made it. And I’m putting extra provolone on yours.”
“You’re a god, Mr. Rankin.”
“You finally noticed, huh?” His silver eyes twinkled.
He got a pill from the bottle, then handed it to me along with the glass of water. I gratefully swallowed it down. Then he bent down and I put my arm around his shoulders while putting my weight onto my left foot.
“I’m sick of being pathetic. Not only is there pain, but my brain still can’t look at a line of code and make sense of it. Hell, I can’t even win at Sudoku!”
Michael laughed. “Hell, I don’t even bother with Sudoku, Wordle is more my level.”
I laughed. I’d always had to help Michael with his math homework.
We’d finally made it into the bathroom. I gripped the bathroom sink. “You good?” he asked.
“I’ve got it from here.”
“Holler out when you need me to come get you.” He reached up and for a moment his index finger hovered over my nose. I thought he was going to tap it, like he had so many times before. We both froze. Instead, he cupped my cheek and smiled. “Remember, cheesesteak is in your future.”
I nodded. He shut the door behind him and I stood there in front of the mirror looking at myself. I was a mess. Not just because I desperately wanted a shower instead of the sponge baths my mom had been giving me, but because I had fallen back in time to when Michael would always brush his finger across the tip of my nose, then kiss me. It was our thing. Kind of like him calling me Sunshine. I wanted that. What was I even thinking?!
I’d been in so much pain, and so scared when we were driving to the hospital, that it seemed like some kind of frenetic dream. Even though, I really think I’d heard Michael say he loved me.
I’d been holding onto those imagined words for the last six days. All the time I was in the hospital and ever since I’d been home and Michael had been here. What did that make me?
Crazy.
I turned from the mirror and did my business, then called for Michael to help me back to bed.
“This cobbler is wonderful. Did it come from Down Home?” Fallon asked as she took another big bite.
I loved seeing her enjoy her dessert. Today was the first day her appetite seemed to have really returned. Plus, her mood had really evened out and improved since she was able to work.
“Yep, I picked it up from the diner earlier today.” I nodded.
“And you warmed it up and served it with ice cream,” she sighed in approval. “We should be eating this in the living room with Mom and Dad.”
“Fallon, it’s almost midnight,” I chuckled.
“It is?”
She looked over at her phone on the nightstand and saw the time. “How in the hell did that happen?”
“You fell asleep working on your tablet, and I didn’t want to wake you for dinner,” I told her.
She gave me a guilty look. “I feel bad that you’re over here babysitting me. You’re having to take vacation days, aren’t you?”
I nodded.
“I should be good enough to take care of myself tomorrow.”
“Maybe. But your mom can’t take your dad to the doctor’s tomorrow or handle him the next day after his chemo treatment. You’ve seen how weak she is.”
I saw Fallon’s look of frustration and waited it out. Fallon had never been one who liked to rely on others. But it used to be, she didn’t mind relying on me.
“She fakes it when she comes into my room, but I can see how tired she is. Before the snakebite, I’d gotten her an appointment with a new rheumatologist.” This time she reached for her phone but couldn’t quite touch it. I snagged it off the table and handed it to her.
“Thanks,” she mumbled. She started scrolling through her calendar. “Mom’s appointment is on Tuesday the fifth. Shit, that’s three days from now.” She jerked up her chin and looked up at me with wide hazel eyes.
I gently took the phone out of her hands.
“I’ve got it covered,” I assured her.
“Michael, you’re not a member of this family.”
“What if I tell you I want to be?”
She squeezed her eyes tight, then opened them again. She didn’t say anything for a moment, then I saw a mask fall across her face, and she gave me a fake smile. One she probably learned at her mother’s knee. “So, you’re trying to tell me you like chaos?”
“Sunshine, I thrive on your kind of chaos.”
“But—”
“Seriously, Fallon. Don’t worry about this. I was a Ranger, and I work as a firefighter. Dealing with your cranky dad, a beautiful-cranky you, and your passive-aggressive mother is a walk in the park.”
She snorted. “Passive-aggressive about sums it up,” she said with a giggle, as she picked up her dessert. “But I wouldn’t just call Dad and me just cranky. I think there are more colorful words to describe both him and me.”
I smirked. “Maybe. But at least with you, I get to see all these cute pajama sets.”
“And Dad?”
I rolled my eyes. “His ratty pajama pants don’t do anything for me, but I hate to see him so sick.”
“Sit up here beside me,” she whispered as she patted the side of the bed.
“I don’t think there’s room.” She gave a guilty look at the other side of her bed. “Tell me, did your office look like this?” I wanted to know.
“Worse,” she admitted.
“How in the hell did you find anything?” I asked as I started scooping up all of the printouts, books, brochures, notebooks, sticky notes, tablet and a laptop and putting them on her childhood desk.
“I could find anything I needed,” she defended herself.
“Yeah, but how long did it take you?” I teased. I picked up my dish of cobbler off her dresser and then settled onto the bed, both of our heads resting against the headboard.
“Fine, I admit it. It was Dexter who kept everything straight. It’s tough without him. He was my executive assistant. He kept me sane and organized.”
“You had a male secretary?”
“Executive assistant. And before you start getting any kind of stereotypes in your head, he played college ball as an offensive lineman while studying project management. He started out with me as an intern five years ago. He was my right hand. People have been trying to poach him for the last couple of years. I paid him as much as I paid my Project Managers, and he earned every dollar. When I closed shop, a friend of mine hired him as his Chief Operating Officer at his start-up. Dexter was thrilled, and so was my friend.”
I could hear the pride in Fallon’s voice. “So, you like mentoring?”
“Yeah. I really do. It was the part of the job that was most rewarding.”
I shifted so I was facing her. “You’re going to make a fantastic mother.”
Pink suffused her face. “Maybe.”
“I’m serious.”
She looked down at her bowl. “I’m all done.”
I took the dish out of her hands and placed it on the nightstand on my side of the bed, along with my own. When I turned back, I found her staring at me. The air got thick as we assessed one another.
“What?” I asked.
“Can you be honest with me?” she whispered.
My gut clenched. Here we go . I wasn’t ready, but I so wanted to do this.
“Absolutely I’ll be honest with you.”
Her hazel eyes shone with grief. “What happened between you and Lindsay that night?” She whispered the question.
I grabbed her hands and pulled them into mine. They were ice cold, and I knew it wasn’t because she had been holding a bowl with melted ice cream. I looked down and brushed my thumb over her knuckles.
I looked back up and swallowed. “After you saw me close the door behind us, Lindsay bitched me out to high heaven. Told me I was the lowest piece of scum on Earth for having pulled such a stunt.”
She flinched, then waited, forcing me to continue.
“You know Lindsay, she’d always been a straight shooter. She knew exactly what I’d done and why I’d done it. She didn’t actually call me scum, Fallon. She actually told me I was a douchebag for setting her up to be the bad guy, and not having the fucking balls to break up with you like a man.”
Fallon jerked her hands out of mine.
“Oh.” It came out on a puff of air.
“She was right,” I admitted softly.
Fallon’s gaze shifted until she was looking a thousand miles away over my shoulder.
“I’m so sorry, Fallon. If I could go back in time, I would.”
Her eyes flew back to pierce mine. “Would you? Would you really? Because if you feel like that, why didn’t you call me after I left?”
I raised my hands, palms up. “Please?” I beseeched. I wasn’t sure if she would, but when she did place her fingers on top of mine, I felt like I had just won an Olympic medal.
“I don’t know why I didn’t call you,” I whispered my truth.
Fallon nodded, as if she expected that answer. “Do you now?”
I wanted to say yes. I knew she needed me to say yes. My fingers tightened around hers, willing her to stay with me, even with what I was about to say.
“I’m still not sure what made me do it,” I said at last. “All I knew at the time, is it seemed like the most important thing in the world to save you from me. To get you as far away from me as possible.”
“Do you still feel like that?”
“No!” The word burst out of me. “This time I can tell you straight that I know I want us to be together, that I want us to last forever. I love you so much, I ache.”
Fallon rubbed her thumb over the back of my hand. “But you still don’t know why you thought I was better off without you before?”
I shook my head, scared shitless because I knew what she was going to say next.
“If you didn’t know why you threw me away last time, what’s to stop you from doing it again, Michael?”
I untangled our fingers and lifted my hand to cup her cheek. “Because I’ve lived nine years without you, and every single day was hell. I can’t stand the idea of ever being without you again.”