Chapter 5
FIVE
LEO
Easton offers me a beer, but I shake my head, stirring my fork around the bowl of chicken and dumplings. It’s not as good as it usually is, but Easton said that the guy who cooks the food was interrupted by all their calls last night, so I’m not going to complain.
Not to mention, it’s a pile of free food and probably my favorite dish of all time. I’m starting to feel spoiled, but I’m also feeling guilty because I know not all of this was for me.
Easton had handed over the stack of containers and said, “Here. North’s chicken and dumplings.”
It probably isn’t fair that Easton swiped food from his best friend, but he’s likely trying to make up for North yelling at me after I ate that fucking spaghetti.
Or carbonara—as he’d shouted at me. Like it fucking matters. It’s pasta. And clearly, he’s still pissed about it with the way he’d gone off this morning when I saw him standing in his front yard.
I’d been on my morning walk and hadn’t expected to see him out.
I assumed, just like my brother, North went fully unconscious for almost an entire day to sleep off a chaotic shift.
But there he was, standing in all his half-clothed glory with his messy, dark hair and tattoos scattered across his arm and chest, looking hotter than I ever want to admit.
It didn’t help my mood that he was in the street fighting with who I had to assume was his girlfriend, and that obviously put him in a pissy mood. And granted, it’s been a while since I’ve been with someone, but I recall with a little too much clarity how fighting with Liam always made me feel.
So when he snapped at me, I didn’t engage. I turned and finished my walk around the other side of the neighborhood and felt better for it.
Though I am still irritated about the whole thing because how the fuck was I supposed to know the food belonged to someone else. Easton heated it up and shoved it into my hands. It’s not like I rummaged through their fridge and stole someone’s lunch.
“Are you going to be in a mood all evening?” Easton asks.
I glance up at him, and instead of answering, I say, “I didn’t know North had a girlfriend.”
His brows lift, and he chokes on his swallow of beer. “Uh. He doesn’t. He’s not a relationship kind of guy.”
I didn’t get a good look at the woman who was storming off in her car, but from the way she’d peeled out, it was obvious she was furious at him.
I wonder if maybe that’s why she left so angry.
Maybe she told him how she felt, and he dismissed her.
That seems like a very North thing to do to someone.
“Is that why you’re in a mood? Because of North?”
I stiffen, then set my bowl on the little table between us. “I don’t want you to bring me his food anymore. It’s obvious he hates it, and I’m done getting yelled at.”
Easton sighs. “He doesn’t hate it. Trust me. He’s the one who m—”
“Don’t defend him,” I snap, cutting him off. “You’ve seen the way he gets with me,” I insist. “Besides, I don’t need his leftovers, okay? I can take care of myself.”
Easton rolls his eyes, takes a long swig of his beer, then reaches over and snags the bowl from the table to finish off what I’m not going to eat. I don’t really mind. I’m not that hungry, and Teddy helped me stock my kitchen with stuff that shouldn’t expire so quickly.
“Did you get any work on your book done this week?” he asks, his cheeks bulging with his bite.
I know he’s not asking to be cruel. He knows the struggle I have with making even a handful of sentences. I used to be able to write tens of thousands of words a week if I was really on a roll.
Now, I’m lucky to get five hundred.
“I did a little. I’m not sure there’s a point anymore, you know? I’m thinking about giving up.”
“Leo—”
“I’m not being self-deprecating. It’s harder now.
And I don’t just mean the writing parts.
I remember what it was like to be in love, but my scrambled brain makes it really hard to tap into those feelings.
Everything I write comes across…” I search for the word, but I can’t find it.
It’s not fake, but it also doesn’t seem very realistic.
“Anyway, I just don’t know that I’m capable anymore.
I might have been an okay writer before, but now I think I might suck. ”
So what’s the point?
He glances away. “I wish you wouldn’t get down on yourself like that.”
I know my injury and recovery were hard for him.
Hell, the EMTs who rescued me off that mountain are the sole reason he went into the field.
He wanted to live the same life as the people who had saved me, and I also know he thought that maybe if he tried hard enough, he could save someone else from my fate.
He hadn’t liked Liam very much. Not by the end of our marriage, which—if it was a good day—I was willing to admit it had been strained. But I would be a fool not to recognize that the whole thing had traumatized him in a different but no less horrific way.
Easton’s face had been the first thing I was able to recognize when I came out of the coma. Easton’s voice was the one I remembered hearing when I was still in it.
I try not to constantly remind him that things for me are always going to be different now because I know it upsets him, but I also don’t want to shy away from it.
Some of the injuries I have are permanent, and no amount of talk therapy, physical therapy, or occupational therapy is going to fix that.
I just want him to accept that pieces of me won’t ever be the same as the Leo he helped raise.
“Look,” I tell him after a long, tense pause, “I’m not trying to be down on myself. I’m just starting to wonder if maybe there’s something else out there for me. It’s not like I need to work.”
He scoffs, but he knows it’s true. I got a settlement from the tour guide agency after the accident was ruled neglect, and Liam had life insurance, which took care of everything that needed taking care of.
It left me enough to buy this house, pay off lingering medical bills, help me with the therapy I will always need, and make sure I never need to work if I don’t want to.
And that would be a godsend if I liked staying idle, but doing nothing makes me feel like I’m actually losing my mind.
“What are you saying?” he asks quietly.
I shrug. “I don’t know. Every now and again, I think about selling this house and starting over somewhere new.
I don’t hate it here, but there’s not a lot for me.
You have the station and your friends there.
You built a whole life here while I was on the other side of the country doing fuck-all and trying to make Liam happy.
Maybe there’s something else out there that’ll make me feel more like… ”
Like me. But I don’t say that aloud.
Easton swallows heavily, looking slightly panicked. “What would you do? I mean, where would you go? I couldn’t just pack up and leave, Leo.” He sounds frustrated now. “I can’t uproot my life because you get a wild hair, and—”
“I’m not asking you to. I wouldn’t. If I leave, you don’t have to come with me.” He scoffs, and it hurts my feelings because normally, he hides the fact that he doesn’t think I can survive on my own. “I don’t actually need your help anymore.”
“And if you have some grand mal seizure and bash your head on the side of the bathtub?” he demands.
I give him a steady look. “The same damn thing if I have a seizure here. You can’t be with me twenty-four seven. That could happen when you’re on a long shift and don’t get a chance to check in for half a day.”
He pales. “I don’t want to think about that.”
Unable to help it, I burst into laughter. “Neither do I, East. Fuck’s sake, I’m not out here hoping that my brain will go haywire and a fall will kill me. I take my meds, I use my cane when I go on walks—”
He gives me a look.
“Fine. Most of the time, I use my cane on walks. If I feel a seizure coming on, I lay down on the floor and wait it out. There’s not much more I can do.”
“A service dog. A seizure alert dog,” he says pointedly.
“I don’t want the responsibility of a dog. I can barely remember to feed and walk myself.”
“Well, I don’t want a fucking dead brother,” he snaps, his voice shaking. Swallowing again, he meets my gaze for a second, and then it drops to his lap. “I know I’m being unreasonable. I know it’s been a long time since the accident.”
It has been, but I’m starting to see his point.
“But I’m not going to stop being afraid that something else will happen, and I don’t want to be a thousand miles away if it does.”
I don’t bother telling him right now that I feel the same way about him. That I get terrified every time he goes to a dangerous call where guns are involved because he could be the next victim who doesn’t walk away from the scene.
Or what if a fire is sneaky, hiding behind a closed door, and engulfs him in flames the moment he opens a door? Or there could be some reckless driver who doesn’t hear the sirens over their music and blasts through an intersection, tipping the truck, rolling them all, and killing him.
It’s fair to say I’ve given this too much thought during quiet nights when I hear sirens off in the distance.
“Anything can happen to any of us,” I say instead. “But I didn’t say I wanted to move out of the country. I don’t even think I want to leave the state. I just…I don’t know. I need something different.”
“You could always try dating—”
“Don’t.”
“Fine. You could try getting laid,” he says, and my face heats a little because before Liam died, we’d been on a dry spell for almost a year and a half.
And up until recently, I couldn’t even jerk off without thinking about him.
But lately, my fantasies have shifted. I’ve watched porn and been able to rub one out to other people. And sometimes when I dream, my anonymous partner has dark hair, and a backward baseball cap, and familiar tattoos that peek out of his T-shirt, and…
No.
Fuck.
I am not going there right now.
“I don’t want to talk about this with you.”