Chapter 34
RIGGS
Ifucked up.
Big time.
Sitting there, looking up at her from my goddamned wheelchair, all I could hear was the sound of Colt Montgomery’s boots, echoing in my head.
See the casual lean of his frame against her kitchen sink, drinking coffee and eating a cinnamon roll I wanted him to choke on.
The easy way he took care of her, offering her a ride to work like he had the right.
The way he quietly told her to take it easy on me like I’m some sort of fucking invalid.
Like I was some poor thing that needed to be pitied. Like I needed his intervention.
And she listened.
When she came into the sunroom, it wasn’t with guns blazing. She didn’t storm in to tell me what a prick I was being and to get over myself. She came in with kid gloves. She started stripping my bed like a hotel maid and gave me a little glimpse of the life she’s been living without me.
I couldn’t hear any of it.
Not really.
I tried, but all I could hear was go easy on him and the sound of those goddamned boots.
So, I told her the truth.
I don’t want to be here.
I don’t want to spend one more motherfucking minute in this place because I can’t look at her without wanting her.
I can’t even be in the same room with her without feeling the ache of it in my bones.
It’s an ache I remember. One I’ve felt before.
One I’ve been running from for over a decade.
I ran so far and so long from it that I ended up right back where I started.
It’s been a month.
My mom is gone. She left weeks ago with a promise to be back for my next check-in with my surgical team.
I didn’t tell her that I put myself on the waitlist for the Houston rehab.
I didn’t tell anyone but Gemma. Not even Reese.
She stops by a few times a week, usually on her lunch break, probably so she has an excuse to keep her visits short.
I don’t give her grief about it. It’s hard for her to be here, surrounded by memories. I get it. Believe me, I fucking get it.
Gemma and I have fallen into a semblance of a routine.
She leaves me alone to struggle and do for myself.
She doesn’t help me into bed at night and she doesn’t help me out of it.
I toilet myself and if I end up on the floor, she doesn’t intervene.
She just stands outside the bathroom door and listens while I grunt curse words and muscle myself back into my chair.
She doesn’t say a word. She doesn’t ask if I need help.
I don’t even see her, but I know she’s there, waiting for me to win so she can go back to ignoring me.
At night, she comes in while I’m in the shower and changes my sheets.
Turns down the bed. Fills the water carafe on my nightstand.
Finds the empty urinal I chuck in the corner every morning and stages it, front and center, just in case.
Makes sure the remotes that control the lights and television are within easy reach.
When I open the bathroom door, the sunroom is empty.
The doors are shut again and I’m exactly what and where I told her I wanted to be.
Left alone.
When I wake up in the morning, my bedside urinal is empty and clean. My dirty clothes and damp towels from the night before are cleared out of the bathroom. There’s fresh coffee waiting in the kitchen and clean clothes at the foot of the bed.
She does her job. She takes care of me while I’m not looking—as much as she can—before she disappears again. Gemma’s a ghost. As invisible to me as I am to her.
I hate it.
Even the cat is ignoring me.
All I get is an occasional muffled Riggs… bitch through the closed door.
Every morning, I try to be dressed before I hear the front door open.
Before I hear his fucking boots make their way to the kitchen.
Dumping myself into my chair, I roll across the room and stop in front of the pocket door she now keeps closed, so I can listen to what they say to each other.
It’s fucked-up, eavesdropping on them, but I do it anyway because I want to hear the way they speak to each other when I’m not around.
I want to know if they’re fucking. If my being here has gotten in the way of something going on between them.
I want to hear them argue. Fight. I want to hear him say he doesn’t want me here.
That he doesn’t like it. I want to know I’m as big a thorn in his side as he is in mine.
What I get is quiet conversation. Easy words. Gentle teasing. Genuine laughter. Over the last few weeks, it’s become obvious that Colt cares about her. That he might even love her.
I have PT three hours a day, five days a week.
My therapist, Bruce, a Fort Worth transplant who’s almost every bit as big as I am, with dark brown skin, a nose ring, and bright blue hair that matches his fingernails, told me I need to set a goal.
That I don’t have to tell him what it is, but that I need something set.
Something I need my legs for. Something important to me. Something I want to do.
My goal is to get out of this chair and start walking again so I can kick the ever lovin’ shit out of Colt Montgomery.
And I’m getting closer every day.
“One more,” I say, my mouth pulled in a flat, straight line across my face. “I got one more in me.”
I’m on the treadmill, the speed set at a pathetic 1.
5 miles an hour. Incline at zero. I graduated from the handrails a few days ago.
The fact that this time last year, I was running an eight minute mile, uphill, with a fifty pound ruck on my back makes looking at the treadmill display hard to stomach, but I do it anyway.
I’ve walked a mile and a half, hands clutched around the safety railing like I’m climbing Everest, the emergency stop key, clipped to the front of my sweat-soaked shirt, and a wide, sturdy bench straddling the machine, meant to catch me if my legs give out.
Bruce studies my legs, looking for signs of fatigue. I’m sure he sees them. They feel like jelly right now. Skeptical, he looks up at me. “Let’s split the difference and go for the half,” he negotiates. “Call it an even two. We can go for three tomorrow.”
“Come on, man,” I gripe at him, feeling like a dog kept on too short a leash. “Don’t be a pussy. I can do it. Just let me?—”
“I never understood that expression,” a male voice cuts in from the doorway behind me.
Not Colt. He hasn’t acknowledged my existence since that first morning.
He comes in while Gemma’s puttering around in the kitchen, drinks his coffee and eats whatever pastry she sees fit to bake for him the night before while I murder him in my brain, in a hundred different ways, from behind my closed door.
Afterward, he asks her if she needs anything and she declines before he leaves with a promise to check on her after his shift at the station.
This morning I distinctly heard him say are you coming tonight? And her answer was yes.
I don’t know where she goes every Monday night but it involves dessert and it involves him. I imagine her crossing the street with one of her lemon meringue pies and walking into Colt’s house without knocking. Enjoying a glass of wine while he cooks her dinner. All the things that come after…
He left a few hours ago, so no.
Not Colt.
But close.
“The fuck you doing here?” I practically snarl at him, my tone lifting Bruce’s blue eyebrows.
“Pussies are tough—they can take a helluva beating…” Ignoring my question, he moves closer. “At least the ones I’ve encountered can.”
“That’s what I heard.” Looking straight ahead, I catch his reflection. It’s blurry. Faint, like a smug ghost, staring right at me. I stare back. “Tire iron, wasn’t it?”
I have the satisfaction of watching his blurry face go still.
His jaw clench so tight I can hear his teeth snap together and grind for just a moment before he pushes an affable grin onto his face that makes him look like his brother.
“Everyone thinks it was a tire iron… I have serious concerns about the state of investigative journalism in this country.” He shakes his head in what looks like disappointment.
“It was a baseball bat.” Looking at Bruce, he keeps grinning.
“Cade.” Lifting his tattooed hand, he offers it to my therapist in a nice to meet you handshake. “Montgomery.”
“Yeah…” Eyeing the offered hand for a moment, Bruce lifts his gaze, giving its owner some serious side-eye without reaching for it. “I know who you are.”
Of course he does.
Transplant or not, everyone in Barrett knows who Cade Montgomery is. Before he was their resident wife murderer, he was their resident golden boy.
“Right…” Grin dimming slightly, Cade give Bruce a faint head bob before retracting his hand.
Stuffing both of them into the front pockets of his worn jeans, he wanders away, out of sight, but not gone.
A few seconds later, I hear the faint whir of a hydraulic motor and the massive, multi paned glass doors in front me begin to lift.
“What the fuck do you want, asshole?” I practically snarl at him, earning myself another one of Bruce’s blue eyebrow lifts.
Cade wanders back into my field of vision. Strolling across the deck, he sits in one of the low slung Adirondack chairs that face the river, letting me know he’s not leaving any time soon. “You to finish torturing yourself. We need to talk.”
Fuck.
Slapping the stop button, I let myself collapse onto the bench behind me. My legs immediately begin to shake, muscles spasming while they fight to catch up to my brain. Grimacing I drop a hand onto my thigh and start to knead, coaxing them into compliance while glaring at the back of Cade’s head.
“Want me to get rid of him?” Bruce asks quietly while he tosses me a towel. The day we met, he walked in and dropped his bag on the foot of my bed and said don’t let the eyebrows and manicure fool you—I’m a Devil Dog, same as you, and I will put my boot in your fucking ass if you test me, got it?