Chapter 28
28
SUMMER
Sharp pinpricks of pain burst along my shins, and I cried out.
“Summer!” Asher leapt off his bike and rushed over to me. “Are you okay?”
I lay in the dirt, my hip throbbing where I’d landed on it, and groaned. “I think so.”
“Where the hell did that branch come from?” he asked, slipping one of his arms beneath me and helping me into a seated position.
“I don’t know. It might have been there from the beginning, but I didn’t notice because of whatever that noise was.”
“It wasn’t there when we arrived,” he said, his gaze skimming down my shins.“It must have fallen since then.”
I shifted my legs so I could see them better and winced. Several tiny stones were embedded in my skin and a large graze stretched down the center of each one, right along the shin bone. My left knee was bleeding from a small cut, and my other ached from the way I’d landed.
“Can you get up?” Asher asked. “Does anything feel broken?”
I answered his second question first. “I don’t think so. Hold on, let me see.”
He offered me his hand and pulled as I tried to stand, but pain tore through my left ankle and I hissed between gritted teeth.
“That doesn’t sound good.” He dropped to his knees and ran his hands over my ankle. “Let me know when it hurts.” He pressed around my ankle joint and then around the top of the foot.
“You know, I thought the first time you felt me up would be sexier than this,” I said, then grimaced as he touched a tender spot. “There.”
He sat back on his haunches. “I think it’s sprained. We’ll take you home, ice it, and keep it elevated. I’m so sorry, Summer.”
I frowned. “What? Why?”
His lips firmed. “Because I told you that you’d be safe with me, and you got hurt.”
I fought the urge to roll my eyes. “There’s no way you could have known that something would make a sound at just the right time to distract me from a fallen branch.”
“Still, I should have been more careful. Other people would have.” He shuffled around beside me and wrapped his arm under my left armpit. “I’ll help you back to the car. Keep your weight on the other foot. The right ankle is okay, isn’t it?”
“Seems so.”
Using him for support, I straightened, and together, we limped down the trail toward his car. It took far longer to get there than it ought to, but in the meantime, I had plenty of opportunity to appreciate Asher’s strength. I knew he was fit, but he must have been taking half my weight and didn’t show any strain at all.
At his car, he walked me around to the driver’s door so he could unlock it, and then escorted me back around to the passenger side. He opened the door, guided me onto the seat, and shifted it as far back as it would go, then instructed me to put my foot on the dashboard.
“I’ll be back as soon as I can,” he said, his eyes serious. “Shout if you need anything. I mean it.”
“I will,” I promised.
As soon as he was gone, I leaned forward and set to work picking stones out of the scrapes on my shins. Most of them either brushed off or came out without too much fuss, but a couple were embedded more deeply, and I winced as I wriggled them loose.
“What are you doing?”
I squeaked, my hand flying to my chest. Eyes wide, I turned to look out the passenger door. “You scared the shit out of me.”
Asher smirked. “Sorry.
I huffed. “You don’t look it.”
He lowered the bikes—of which he was controlling one with each hand—to the ground. “Maybe because you should have been waiting for me rather than trying to deal with your injuries yourself.”
I rolled my eyes. “All I was doing was getting the stones out.”
“And yet, I’m a paramedic and you’re not. Should have waited for me.” He opened the back door and rifled around, returning a moment later with a first aid kit. “Turn toward me.”
“I’m a vet,” I told him as I pivoted to make it easier for him to see my legs. “I’m perfectly capable of cleaning wounds.”
“Do vets practice on humans?” he asked facetiously.
I eyeballed him and curled my lip.
“Because paramedics do,” he continued, unzipping the first aid kit and withdrawing a handful of antiseptic wipes.
“I can handle the basics,” I said defensively.
To my surprise, he smiled at me. “I know, but you don’t have to when I’m here. Let me help you. After all, I’m the one who got you into this mess.”
His gently spoken words took the wind out of my sails.
I nodded. “Okay, then. Thank you.”
He knelt in front of me, took hold of my uninjured ankle and held it in place as he used an antiseptic wipe to clean the cuts and scrapes on my right leg. I gritted my teeth through the stinging pain and did my best not to let him see how much it hurt. It was ridiculous how painful the smallest abrasions could be. In contrast, the gash on my knee hardly hurt at all.
He discarded the wipe and cleaned my other leg, then ran a wipe over both and dabbed at my knee. The wound there had stopped leaking blood and was beginning to crust. He carefully removed debris, one hand cupped around my calf to hold it in place.
That done, he dug a Band Aid out of the first aid kit and used it to cover the gash, then scanned the other cuts and scrapes up my shins.
“I don’t think there’s any point in covering them,” he said. “Unless you want me to, so we can ensure they’re kept clean.”
I shook my head. “No, I’ll just be careful.”
“Okay.” He lifted my lower leg to examine the ankle. “I have a compression sock we can put over this for the time being, but we need to ice it as soon as we can. Are you sore anywhere else?”
“My hip.”
He set my leg down and searched the first aid kit, presumably for the compression sock. “Is the skin broken?”
“I don’t think so. Just bruised.” To make sure, I pulled at the waistband of my shorts and looked beneath them. “Nothing is bleeding.”
“Good.” He withdrew the compression sock. “Would you rather put this on yourself?”
I tried to bend forward, but my hip throbbed. “Can you do it please?”
His expression softened. “Of course.”
With brisk, efficient movements, he removed my shoe, peeled off my wet sock, dried my foot with an unused sweat towel, and pulled the compression sock over my toes and around my heel. It came up to mid-calf, and I couldn’t help wincing. The pressure wasn’t particularly comfortable.
“Too much?” he asked.
“It doesn’t hurt. It’s just a strange feeling.”
“I know. You wouldn’t believe how many times I’ve had to use these things.”
I chuckled. “Do you make a habit of injuring yourself?”
“It goes with the sport.” His face darkened. “I am really sorry about this. You told me you were rusty, and I promised we’d be fine, and here you are. Hurt.”
“Don’t blame yourself.” I swung around, returning my legs inside the vehicle. “It was an accident. No one could have known it would happen. Like you said, that branch wasn’t there earlier, and we were going slow. It was just unlucky timing.”
“If we’d been going more slowly, I might have noticed it.” He looked frustrated, and even though I didn’t blame him at all, I understood why. It was easy to carry guilt, and based on how reluctant he’d been to pursue anything with me, I suspected that guilt weighed more heavily on him than others.
I forced a smile. “Take me home and coddle me and I’ll be fine.”
He gave a strained smile back. “Sure.”
He packed away the first aid kit, loaded the cycles back onto the rack, and got in the driver’s side. He started the engine and drove us back along the narrow road we’d taken earlier.
While we were driving, he didn’t speak much. He seemed to be brooding. It worried me a little, but his mood eased the further we got from Castle Hill. By the time we reached my place, the strain lines around his mouth had disappeared, even if he still seemed a little off balance.
“Wait here,” he instructed, and I watched, mildly amused, as he unloaded my bike and wheeled it to the porch. He opened the vehicle’s rear door and slung my bag over his shoulder. Finally, he opened the passenger side door and helped me out.
We hobbled up the path to the front door. I told Asher where to find the key in my bag, and after a brief search, he pulled it out with an exclamation of victory and slotted it into the lock.Once inside, he guided me to the sofa in the living room.
“Sit here,” he said, maneuvering me onto the end cushion.
My lips twitched at his bossiness. “Sir, yes, sir.”
He ignored me and reached around to pull the lever that raised the leg rest. “I’ll be back in a moment.”
He hurried into the kitchen and returned less than a minute later with two ice packs and a bag of frozen peas. He positioned one ice pack and the peas around my ankle and passed me the other ice pack, which had been wrapped in a tea towel.
“For your hip,” he said.
“Thanks.” I pressed it against my side and leaned back on the sofa, closing my eyes. “I have to say, this isn’t how I imagined today going.”
He snorted. “Me neither.”
I bit my lip, unsure whether he intended to stay. If I wanted clarification about what exactly this was, then now was the time to do it.
“Asher,” I said slowly, “is this a date?”
Before he could answer, there was a knock at the front door.
He jumped up. “I’ll get it.”
He strode out, and I heard voices as he opened the door, then footsteps down the hallway.
“Summer!” Kennedy exclaimed, rushing into the room with Liam behind her. “Asher said you fell off your bike. You’re so lucky he saw it happen so he could make sure it was nothing serious. How are you doing?”
I smiled at her weakly. Right, so that’s how we were selling the fact he was at my house.
Looked like it would be an afternoon of lies…and not getting answers. Asher would never risk talking to me privately while Liam was here.