Chapter 13 Pike
Pike
By the time Dr. Wharton leaves, I’m seeing red. If my crew were here, we’d slash his tires.
“Why are you still seeing this man?” I demand.
Skylar rubs her temples. “I need him for these tests. I need the meds.”
“He’s disgusting.”
“Welcome to being an overweight woman with chronic pain. If you spend more time in the group, you’ll see this is normal.”
I have seen it. That’s why I offered to come with her.
“You should’ve let me defend you. He said he’d staple your mouth shut.”
“I appreciate it, but I have to tread carefully. It’s a lot like an abusive relationship, and I’m trapped. He already put that ‘not compliant’ note in my chart. I think that’s why I can’t get appointments with other neurologists.”
I’m seething again. “They just won’t take you?”
“The better clinics have a vetting process because of long waiting lists. You apply with all your paperwork, recent lumbar punctures, doctors’ notes. If they don’t accept you, you get a letter saying you didn’t meet the requirements or the clinic reached capacity.”
“So you’re stuck with weight loss as the only option?”
“Well, there’s the meds.” She adjusts the cute round glasses she’s wearing today. “When I was first diagnosed, I lost weight, but my IIH actually got worse. I went into remission after I gained ten pounds back.”
A tech comes in with discharge papers and points down a long hallway for checkout. I roll next to Skylar. She’s more down than I’ve ever seen her.
“Want to get a late lunch?” Maybe it’ll take her mind off things.
“I should get home. I have a conference call at four, and I feel crappy.”
Why am I disappointed? I’ve just spent four hours with her. I roll past an open door and pause, a bad idea forming. A reckless one. But I roll backward and enter the room.
Skylar follows me as I lock my wheels and slowly rise to my feet. The accumulated pain from this weekend shoots through my legs, but I limp forward anyway.
“What are you doing?” she hisses. “We can’t be in here.”
It’s a dimly lit supply closet full of promotional gimmicks for Dr. Wharton’s practice. Pens, plastic cups, lanyards, and notepads galore are stacked on filing cabinets. I help myself to a few pens.
“Don’t worry,” I say. “Just setting up a little stand at work. Free advertising, you know? Gotta get the word out about him, and it’ll only take a single Sharpie to write ‘misogynistic dick’ over his branding.”
Skylar tries to hide her smile. “You’ll get caught.”
I shove a plastic-wrapped Post-it cube into my pocket. “People think wheelchair users are angels. You should get out of here, though.”
Skylar reaches into a container. “I think fifteen hundred dollars per eye and verbal abuse warrant a few pens. They’re meant to be given out, right?”
“Three grand a visit?” I hand her a pack of Post-its. “Someone’s getting canceled.”
There it is. Another small smile. Good.
“You’re not really setting up a stand, right?” Skylar catches her lower lip between her teeth. Those supple lips are so inviting I have to force myself to look away, just like I forced myself to look away so many times when we were lying in bed together.
“Nope. Just stealing some shit so fewer people hear about him. It’s keeping me from keying his car.”
She laughs, and it warms my chest. “Thanks, Pike.”
“Go check out. I’ll be there in a sec.”
Skylar heads for the door while I struggle to find space for all the items crammed into my pockets. Sitting on pens isn’t a wise move. There’s that movie where the guy lost a testicle and everything.
My thoughts scatter as Skylar races back to me, causing me to drop half my pens onto my seat cushion.
“Pike, someone’s coming!”
“Damn,” I mutter, scrambling to shove any incriminating evidence into the back pouch of my chair. “Get out of here.”
“It’s too late. A tech is heading down the hallway.”
“They’ll walk by us without noticing. If they do, I’ll handle it.”
“No, I’m not leaving you. Quick,” she says. “Kiss me!”
I drop even more pens. “What?”
“You’ll get caught! We have to pretend!”
“I—uh—” I bend too quickly, straining my back, but Skylar’s request scrambles my brain. She wants to kiss me? I grab the last pen and dare my hand to tremble one more time. “You don’t have to—”
Skylar reaches for my face, pulling me close until her lips hover just an inch from mine. My body perks up and pays attention.
“Please,” she whispers.
I close the space between us with the faintest graze, careful at first, barely more than a question.
But Skylar answers with a slide of her fingers in my hair and a sweep of her tongue into my mouth.
That’s all it takes for the kiss to shift.
Then it’s hotter and hungrier, with no more space left between us.
A soft murmur of approval passes from her lips to mine, and I go all weak and funny in the knees.
Shit. It’s good. Holy shit, it’s good.
A part of my brain registers that the kiss should feel forced, but it doesn’t. It’s incredible. Intimate. There’s an emotional tug connecting us, one I’ve rarely felt with anyone else. Skylar and I are launching off the peak of a jump, a blend of tension and release.
It must be the adrenaline. The way this is taking me by surprise. Still, my hands find her soft waist. I tug her closer, and a small gasp escapes her mouth. It’s an addicting sound, a drug I didn’t know I craved.
All the blood rushes away from my brain. Until another sensation hits.
Pain. Legs.
I sit down on my wheelchair and pull Skylar onto my lap, then twist her sideways so her legs dangle over my right wheel, putting her face level with mine. Better.
“Oh,” she breathes, then fuses us together once more. She tastes sweet, with a hint of salted caramel and chocolate coating her lips.
A low rumble vibrates from my chest. I wrap an arm around her waist to hold her to me and slow us down, spurred on by the pleasurable hum in her throat and the clench of her thighs on top of me. Kissing Skylar feels like a privilege. It needs to be savored.
I slide my other hand around the thin material of her tunic. I want to drag my mouth over every inch of exposed skin. Make her forget her shitty doctor until there’s nothing left on her mind but me.
Her nails scrape lightly down my neck, and I’m not sure which of us groans.
A high-pitched shriek scares the shit out of me. The lights flick on. “You can’t be in here!”
“You were amazing,” Skylar whispers, then climbs off me.
No, wait, what? What the fuck was that, and why was it so good?
I run my tongue along my bottom lip, and the caramel-chocolate flavor remains. Skylar remains. It’s that ChapStick she’s always applying. I want more of it. More of her. So much I have to discreetly adjust myself.
“Pike!” Skylar pushes her glasses back up her perfectly blushed cheeks. Be charming, she mouths.
It’s the bucket of cold water I need.
“Sorry about that.” I roll toward the tech, a middle-aged woman with suspicious blue eyes. “We got bad news at the appointment and got caught up comforting each other.” I wink, which I’ve been told is one of my best weapons.
“You can’t do that here,” she says, though the scowl on her face softens.
“Absolutely. I understand.”
She grabs my wheelchair handles, a gesture that always feels like a violation, but I let her do it to keep her agreeable. She pushes me to checkout, then squeezes my shoulder. “You keep your head up, okay? You can get through this. Stay positive, honey.”
Whenever I use my wheelchair, complete strangers think it’s appropriate to call me dear, honey, or sweetie, even when they aren’t touching my chair or otherwise crossing boundaries. I keep smiling, though. Anything to make sure Skylar doesn’t get in trouble.
When our ride comes, I stretch out my legs in the back. “We should talk about that kiss.”
Skylar wrings her hands, confirming my suspicion. I made her uncomfortable.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I shouldn’t have gone in the supply room. It put you in a compromising position.”
“Oh…it’s okay.” She won’t meet my eye. “I hope the kiss wasn’t too bad for you.”
I blink. “Bad?”
“I was nervous. I’m not usually so boring.”
Boring? Of all things, Skylar’s worried I was bored?
“No.” I need to choose my words carefully. I don’t want to make things weird. Even now, I wouldn’t mind scooting closer to see if she’d like to give it a second shot without interruptions. “‘Boring’ is the last adjective I’d use.”
She breathes out a sigh of relief. “Great. Because I know I said I was a fantastic kisser, and I’m usually more confident, but I have a headache, and everything happened so fast, and, well, you’re Brandon Pike.”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“Come on.” She laughs sardonically. “Mr. ‘Twenty Hottest Tricks to Warm Up Your Man’?”
My stomach sours at the reminder of my Cosmo cover. I hated doing those publicity stunts, but my sponsors liked it. That edition was filled with the top Winter Olympics medalists, and readers chose me as the “Hottest Winter Athlete Under Thirty.”
So Skylar did google me. She read that issue. The sex tips they told me to offer. I sounded like such a jackass in that article.
“It’s not like that.” Now I’m the one unable to look at her. “When I’m with a woman, I mean. I’m not thinking about that stuff. It was just a stupid interview.” I catch myself. “Sorry, not stupid. It was…”
“Intimidating?”
“It was a good kiss, Skylar,” I say, frustrated. “I can’t do half the shit I mentioned in there anymore, simply because of disability, but that doesn’t mean I can’t still make it good.”
“I can imagine,” she says, her eyes dipping back to my mouth, and my brain immediately shuts down for maintenance. Has she…imagined?
“Just…forget about the article.”
I look out the window. All this faking is messing with my mind. I see why Skylar wanted PDA rules in the first place.