Chapter 22
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO_
HAZARD
Decaf has more trauma than I thought when it comes to losing my dad. In hindsight, anyone who is still hung up on a loss twenty years afterward obviously has issues.
I’m trying not to be offended that dream him chose saving my dad over me, but it makes sense, I guess. I’m a poor substitute for him. Plus, it was his subconscious talking. Not Decaf. Though I can’t say if it were a reality that his choice would be any different.
Maybe I should get out of his life like he’s been asking me to ever since I joined Mike Bravo.
Decaf strips off his T-shirt, and if he hadn’t broken down in my arms just now, I’d make a joke about him stripping for me. Instead, I approach and cautiously lift his cast.
“How long did you need to keep this elevated for again? It’s been over a week.” I don’t know how he’s put up with it for this long.
“Doctor said ten days. Two weeks to be sure. It’s longer than a simple break, but you saw how fucked my wrist was.”
I wince. “Don’t remind me. Pretty sure I threw up because you were waving your hand around like a flag on a pole and not because I had a concussion.” I start wrapping his cast in the cling film.
“How’s your head now?”
“Haven’t had any complaints.” Shit. That joke is a reflex. I didn’t mean to cross that flirty line again. I go to apologize, but I’m cut off by … laughter?
“Seriously, though,” he says.
“I’m fine. Screens are still giving me a headache, but I guess it’s lucky Trav took our phones away and left us with crappy burner flip phones. What is this? The Stone Age when you were born?”
Decaf must be coming around because I get another laugh out of him.
“What happened to hating it when I joke about your age? Or sex? Actually, you don’t like any jokes. You really are rattled.”
His face falls. Oh well. Two out of three isn’t bad.
“You must think I’m the biggest asshole.” He groans. “And don’t make a joke about big assholes.”
I smile because it was exactly the first thing that popped into my head. “You’re not the biggest asshole.” I continue to wrap his hand and arm, even though it has a few layers on now. “I’m sure there are dictators out there worse than you.”
Decaf laughs again but then winces. “Fucking hell.”
“Okay, you’re ready for the garbage bag, and then we can jump in the shower.”
His dark gaze lands on mine. Eyes are supposed to be portals to our souls, but as he stares at me, it’s as if he can see everything inside. My hurt. My abandonment issues. My constant need for attention and praise.
So, instead of letting myself feel intimidated or vulnerable, I deflect.
“Don’t worry, I won’t point out if you have another reaction to your medication.”
“I can shower myself.”
I used to think I was the king of deflection, but I have a lot to learn from Decaf.
He’s an expert. If I stay in his life, that is.
I’m not convinced he won’t disappear on me as soon as we land in Montenegro, and I’m going to have to prepare myself for that.
He wouldn’t be leaving me. He’d be surviving his trauma the only way he knows how.
“You only have the use of one hand, and you’ve barely been getting out of bed to do your daily walks across the room and back again, so you’re going to be weak, and you need the help. So just accept it, okay?”
He sighs. “Okay.”
I get his arm as secure as I possibly can so it doesn’t get wet, and, surprising me, he doesn’t even fight me when I help him to his feet or lead him to the bathroom.
He’s moving a lot quicker than he has been, but he’s still slow, and it’s obvious he’s still in pain, but it’s getting better. In another couple of weeks, we might be able to plan travel.
As I close the door behind us to the bathroom, Decaf turns to me.
“Look,” he starts. “I have no doubt my body is going to respond to yours again, so instead of pretending it’s not happening or making jokes about it, let’s agree to be adults. It doesn’t mean anything.”
If he wants to keep himself in denial like that, I have no choice but to let him. “Got it. No joking around. But if I’m going to act like an adult, you could maybe start treating me like one.”
“Touché.”
He dips his fingers into one side of his sweats, but with his arm wrapped up, he can’t get the other side.
“Let me.” I step forward and help pull them down his legs.
As tempting as it is to sink to the ground along with them, there’s no way I wouldn’t take a peek, and we don’t need me gawking at his cock.
This is already awkward enough as it is.
Not only because he’s made it perfectly clear that he wants nothing to do with me sexually but because tonight has been … weird.
He’s given me more than he’s supposedly given anyone, but there’s still that wall up. He might have held me close, but we might as well have been an arm’s length apart because there will always be three people in the room when I’m with him. Him, me, and my dad.
I step around him and turn the shower on, thankful the bathroom has been renovated to be one of those modern open-plan bathrooms where there’s no shower glass, no shower curtain or bath you have to step into.
The angle of the floor leads toward a drain in the middle, so we have as much room as we need to get him cleaned up and his nightmare forgotten about.
“How hot do you like it?” I ask.
He doesn’t answer me, so I look at him over my shoulder. He’s staring at me. Or, more specifically, near my ass. I’m in boxer briefs, so I know how close the fabric hugs it.
And even though I tell myself not to, I glance down and see him getting hard.
If I hadn’t already promised to keep my mouth shut, he’d be hearing a lot about his meds right now.
“Decaf?” I ask.
It snaps him out of whatever he’s thinking about. “Huh?”
“Hot?”
“What?”
“So articulate tonight. What temperature do you like your shower?”
Finally, he gets it. “Scalding.”
“Perfect. It’s ready.”
The room is slowly filling with steam, but it will take a while before it obstructs my view.
And as I watch Decaf stand under the spray with his broken arm out to his side so it doesn’t get wet—covered or not, cling film is not foolproof—I realize there might be a bigger issue than Decaf’s body responding to mine.
I can’t help the way my cock reacts to him.
It’s not like my tight boxer briefs are going to exactly hide it either.
Decaf looks steady on his feet. Really steady. His tree trunk thick and hairy thighs haven’t lost any mass since he’s been bed-bound, but it has been less than two weeks. And that smooth, round ass? His glutes haven’t suffered from lack of movement.
Up until this point, he’s only gotten sponge baths at the hospital and hasn’t bathed at all since we’ve been at the cabin, so while I should stay in here in case he needs help, I don’t know how much longer I can stand it in here.
I’m three seconds away from saying something about fighting the urge to bite his ass.
Literally. I’m already picturing the bite mark on his round cheek.
“Uh, okay, I need you to help,” he says.
It takes a second for me to register the words and drag my gaze away. He must think I’m pausing for another reason, though.
“Please.” The reluctance in his tone is palpable.
“That was really difficult for you to say, huh?” I step toward him, not caring as the offshoots from the spray hit my skin and briefs.
“Yes. We’ve already established I suck at asking for help. Can you just squirt some bodywash on my hand so I can actually clean myself properly?”
“Sure.” I reach for the bottle in his hand. He’s managed to get the lid popped open, but he can’t hold it in his broken hand to pour it into his other.
I pour a generous amount into his palm, but he reflexively goes to transfer it into his dominant hand and swears.
“Here.” I take his injured arm and hold it up. “Think of me as your sling.”
“You do know I hate that thing, don’t you?” He rubs the bodywash over his chest and down his stomach. He has hair around his nipples and down the middle of his torso, but it’s thin and short. It’s possible he manscapes, and this is regrowth from being incapacitated.
Wait, what’s happening? Right. Hate the sling and all that. “Well, it wouldn’t be much different to how you feel about me, then, would it?”
Great job, Haz. Way to really distract from getting too turned on by bringing up stuff I’ve already promised to drop. “Sorry. Force of habit.”
Decaf rinses off his chest but then turns to me. “Do you still really think I hate you?”
My gaze flicks down toward where his cock is fully hard now. “I thought you told me not to read into what your body does around me? It’s the medication.”
“That’s not what I mean. I was willing to sacrifice myself to save you—”
“To relieve some guilt over my dad.”
He steps closer. I’m still holding his arm up by the elbow, so we’re within breathing distance of each other now. If he moves any closer, not only will his large cock be against me, but he’ll be able to feel how hard I am too. Not that it’s not obvious in the way my briefs are tented.
“That might be part of it,” he says in a low voice, “but the need to protect you runs so much deeper than that.”
I scoff. “Is that why you dreamed of choosing my dad over me?”
He pulls back. “What?”
“You said you had to choose between my dad and me, and then you watched me die. Ergo, you chose to save my dad. So while I don’t think you hate me, I do think this whole overprotective act is because of Dad, and it has nothing to do with me.”
“I didn’t choose your dad, though. I chose you, but you died anyway. And then I had to see you …” He sucks in a breath, but it’s like he can’t get enough air.
I know what the beginning of a panic attack looks like—I’m not ashamed to admit I had them not long after my brush with torture—so I turn the water off quickly to stop the steam from rising.
“Breathe,” I tell him. “And okay. It’s okay. I didn’t realize. I made an assumption, and it was wrong.”
He’s still struggling to breathe.
“It’s fine. Everything is fine. I’m here. I’m alive. And it was silly of me to be offended at the thought of you choosing my father over me in a dream because the reality is we’ll never be in a position where you have to make that choice.”
Decaf’s heaves slowly morph into slower, deeper breaths, but his voice is croaky when he says, “I lost him, and as inappropriate as it is to feel the way I do about you, the thought of losing you too …” He doesn’t finish his sentence, and I want to yell, “What? What about the thought of losing me?”
But I don’t. I ask a simple question. “The way you feel about me?”
“I think it’s pretty obvious.” He waves a hand between us, gesturing to where his cock is literally only inches away from my lower abdomen.
I throw him my most smug half smile. “So what you’re saying is … it’s not the medication.”
“It never was, but I can’t … we can’t act on it. Because if I fuck this up … if I let you down after everything we’ve been through—”
“I have a simple solution for that: don’t.”
“I wish it were that fucking easy.”
I take a deep breath to psych up the courage to close the gap between us and press my covered cock against his bare one. Because I’m holding his arm for him, I place that around my neck while I grip his hips. “It could be that easy.”
“How?” he croaks.
“Don’t give up on me again.”