Chapter 39
GEMMA
Now
When I make my way down the front stairs an hour later, as promised, I’m as nervous as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs because Riggs is standing by the front door, waiting for me, showered, in a pair of dark wash jeans and a clean T-shirt.
I know from Bruce’s detailed, weekly progress reports that Riggs has graduated to using a walker to get around and that he only uses his wheelchair after his PT sessions to give his legs a much needed break.
Even though I know this, the sight of him standing there clutches at the back of my throat and stalls my feet on the stairs.
“Change your mind about letting me third-wheel on your date?” he asks, looking up at with one of his unreadable expressions.
“No.” The single word scrapes against my throat on its way out.
Giving him a head shake while I take the remaining stairs, I land in the foyer, a few feet away from him.
“I just… haven’t seen you standing… on your feet.
” I know I shouldn’t, but I feel like I did when I was younger.
Left out. Left behind by this man and it’s suddenly in front of me.
Whether he gets his bed in the Houston rehab or not, it doesn’t matter.
Either way, Riggs is going to leave me behind again. As soon as his legs will let him.
“Should I try walking on my hands,” he asks, the question tilting up the corner of his mouth—a reminder of my sixteenth birthday. The day I bit him for trying to stop me from jumping out of a moving truck. The day he kissed me by the river and turned my whole world upside down.
“I’m sure you could.” Pushing thoughts of him leaving away, I move closer on a laugh.
Reaching for the hand I bit when we were younger, I lift it up for inspection.
“It should be fully—” Turning his hand over in mine, I look down to find a faint, slightly rounded row of small scars on the back of it.
Turning it over, palm side up, I find the same thing.
Scars. Left by me. Looking up at him, I shake my head.
“I didn’t realize—” Ashamed, I feel my cheeks flush with embarrassment. “I didn’t mean to?—”
“Scar me for life.” Closing his hand around mine, Riggs gives me another smirk. “Well, you did.”
“I’m sorry.” The words come tumbling out, the sound of them raising his eyebrows.
“Excuse me?” That smirk of his stretches into a full-blown grin. “Did you—Gemma Rae Pierce—just apologize to me, Rigley Adam Wheeler?”
“I say I’m sorry when I’m actually sorry,” I remind him, my heart stalling in my chest when he sweeps his callused thumb across the back of my hand. “And I am sorry.”
“Don’t be.” Looking down at me, Riggs’s expression settles into something quieter. Something that dries my throat and loosens the hinge on my knees. “I’m not.”
“You’re not sorry I lost my temper and scarred you for life?” I ask, my head starting to spin from whatever sorcery Riggs’s thumb is working on the back of my hand because I don’t just feel his touch there. I feel it everywhere.
“Nope.” Still looking at me, Riggs shakes his head. “We both know I deserved it.” He gives my knuckles a final sweep before he lets go of my hand. “It looks like rain—we should get going if we want to beat it to wherever we’re going.”
“Right.” Dizzy, I give him a loose head bob. “Just let me grab?—”
“Cake’s right there,” Riggs informs me, bobbing his head toward the entryway table. Sure enough, my glazed pound cake is on the foyer table, waiting for me.
“Oh,” nodding again, I start to move for the kitchen anyway. “Well, I still need to?—”
“Janet is fed and pacified with another Churu,” he assures me while pulling me back. “And I closed the dog door.” He gives me that damnable smirk again. “Did I miss something?”
“No.” Since the rest of my mental checklist involves taking quiet care of him, I shake my head.
“Are we honeymooning again, Riggs?” I ask because I have to.
I have to know what’s prompted his sudden change in mood so I can gauge how long I have until another one of his sudden shifts knocks me off my feet.
For a second, he doesn’t answer. Just stares down at me like I’m a puzzle he’s been trying to solve his whole life. “I don’t know,” he answers me honestly. “I hope not.”
It doesn’t take Riggs long to figure out where we’re going. Confused when I led him to the driveway, where my car is parked, he’s even more confused when I set the cake on his lap so I can fold up his walker and throw it in the trunk.
As soon as I pilot us out of the neighborhood and take a left onto the highway, driving us away from town, his jaw tightens but he doesn’t say anything. Not until I pull into the gravel lot in front of the Mill and kill the engine.
“This is it?” he asks, staring at the big, red brick building in front of us.
River’s jeep is parked next to Sloane’s shiny red Bronco, Cade’s Challenger on the other side.
On the other side of that is Colt’s personal truck—a Silverado he bought not long after he came home from college.
I know Riggs recognizes it as the truck that sits in Colt’s driveway because his face tightens when he sees it.
“This is where you disappear to, every Monday night?”
“This is it,” I confirm while pulling my keys out of the ignition.
“This is where I disappear to every Monday night.” When he doesn’t answer me or do anything other than stare out the windshield, I start to regret bringing him.
Not because I don’t want him here. Because Riggs was being decent.
He was showing signs of life and dragging him into the belly of the beast probably isn’t the smartest thing I’ve ever done.
“I can take you home,” I offer quietly. “If you’d rather?—”
“No.” He finally turns to look at me. I don’t see anger. I see determination. “We’re already here,” he tells me while begrudgingly unbuckling his seatbelt. “And I could really use a beer.”