Chapter Ten
KINGSTON
We found a unique sort of rhythm. Everything required extra steps, more consideration. And as the days stretched into weeks, Savea was getting less and less tolerant of her own limitations.
Padfoot came home which helped her dipping mood, gave her something else but her cumbersome cast to think about.
Within two days, she managed a feat with him I hadn't been able to since I got him.
She got him to chase a ball... and bring it back.
Maybe it happened because there was some necessity in it, seeing as she couldn't get up to get the ball to toss it again.
Nixon had wheeled one of the office chairs in for her which I usually found her rolling around the house in, putting laundry away, cleaning, cooking.
Maybe it was boredom, but I suspected she also felt like she needed to contribute. She couldn't go more than a few hours without thanking me, saying something about how she's sorry she's such a chore.
A chore.
Her.
Like there was anything laborious about picking her up, carrying her around, being close to her.
Maybe it came from being a father figure to my siblings, but I liked taking care of people. I especially liked being able to take care of her when she needed me.
The first few days had been blissful, both of us lounging in bed, taking showers together. The shower always led to my fingers working her, and most times, her taking me into her mouth. I would wake her up with my own some mornings as well.
It held us over, but there was no denying that as time went on, as her pain went away and we were just in the limbo of having a giant cast always making everything difficult, it was getting more and more frustrating to hold off, to deny ourselves what we really wanted.
Every morning she would take the coffee from my hands, look up at me, sigh, and tell me how many days it was until she could get her cast off.
Forty-eight.
Twenty-five.
Seventeen.
Then, the sigh became a smile as the numbers dwindled down to single digits.
Ten.
Eight.
Two.
One.
"I hate him," she hissed as we got back in the car.
"He's just looking out for your best interest," I tried to play devil's advocate even though I shared in her frustration.
"I'm gonna cut it off myself," she added, getting more worked up than I had ever seen her, and I had once seen her lecture someone for forty-five minutes for keeping a beta fish in a glass bowl with no filter.
"It's one more week, Savvy," I reminded her, hand landing on her thigh, giving it a squeeze.
"He hates me and wants me to suffer," she added, sullenly looking out the window.
"He wants you to not have to walk with a limp for the rest of your life."
"Sure, defend the quack," she rumbled, but shook her head at herself. "I can't do it anymore," she added, voice small, thick, her head slamming back into the rest, eyes squeezed tight, a couple tears sliding down her cheeks.
She'd been a fucking rock.
From the moment I lifted her off the floor in that warehouse, through all the testing and prognoses at the hospital, through the pain of the first days, she had held it together.
And, sure, as the time dragged on and she got sick of being on crutches or rolling around on a chair, she got more frustrated, grumbling, cursing at herself and the objects around her that didn't cooperate with her reduced state.
But she hadn't cried.
I wasn't sure if it was that she genuinely didn't need to, or she didn't want to do it in front of me, didn't want it to seem like she was wallowing or ungrateful.
"One week, Savvy," I told her, driving back to the house. "One week. And if he says no again, I will help you cut it off myself. I think you could pull off a limp."
To that, there was a snorting laugh as she reached up to swat at her cheeks.
I hadn't meant to do it, really.
I had dropped her off to run a few errands. One of them involved a trip to a specialty dog food store because Savea wanted me to get Paddy some new of kind frozen raw dog food to start mixing with his regular food.
And, well, it was a weekend.
And on weekends, they had adoption fairs.
And Savvy was sitting in the living room, sad, defeated.
And, yeah, I knew one thing that could cheer her up.
"I got you something," I told her after tucking the puppy into a large box I had in the trunk from a delivery at work, the bottom padded with one of my shirts so she didn't hear her scratching or sliding around.
"A leg that works properly?" she asked, clearly still wallowing, completely oblivious as I moved closer, turning my back on her, placing the box down, my body blocking it from view as I lifted her.
Then turned.
I was pretty sure everyone in a ten-mile radius heard the squeal that came out of her.
All thoughts of defeat or frustration or sadness slipped away as a smile spread across her face with enough voltage to blind a man.
"Oh, my God. Oh, my God."
"She was the ugliest one I could find," I informed her, looking down at the pint-sized thing with long, multi-colored hair, giant eyes, both different colors: blue and black.
She'd told me once that she would only ever adopt the ugly dogs. Because the cute ones would find homes easily.
"It's a girl?" she squeaked. "Is she sweet? How old is she? Did she give you kisses? Does she have a name?"
Yeah, I was pretty sure I did good as I sat down beside her, placing the puppy in her lap as Padfoot came rushing over, butt wiggling, smelling his new sister, nudging her with his nose.
"She is very sweet. She likes to bite shoelaces. She is twelve weeks old. She gives very sloppy kisses. And the name the rescue gave her is Petunia. But we can change it."
"She probably already knows it, don't you, sweet baby?
" she asked, lifting her like people did with babies, out wide, then pulling her in, rubbing her face against her soft fur.
"Besides, it works. Padfoot and Petunia.
Do you like her, Paddy? She can't roughhouse with you like Hannibal, but she's going to use you like her own personal playground.
" Her head turned back to me, eyes still beaming.
"You can't just get me a puppy every time I'm sad, you know. "
"Why not? You have a giant piece of land. Plenty of room for them to play."
"Well," she said, resting her head on my shoulder. "I can't fight with such sound logic, now, can I?"
So, we got a puppy.
And a week later, her cast came off.
She went back to work two weeks later, once Petunia was good enough with potty training to go with her or stay with me. She'd been halfway there when we had gotten her, and Savea insisted that if we stopped using the wee wee pad method, she would pick it up faster.
We'd had the closest thing to an argument about it as we ever had, me insisting she should take some more time, her saying she was going stir crazy, that she was worried about the animals, that she didn't trust that Harry was doing as good a job as he was saying he was.
And maybe it was selfish of me to want to keep her in the apartment where I could pop in whenever I had a free moment to spend some time with her.
We couldn't live like that forever. Things had to go back to normal. We had to find a rhythm like a normal couple.
That didn't mean my stomach wasn't in a knot that first day when I left her there in her old store, Petunia with her, Padfoot coming with me because I was worried he would be too much to handle.
She was in physical therapy, but her leg was still a lot weaker than the other one.
If Paddy pulled, I was worried he might knock her off-balance.
She spent five whole minutes apologizing to Padfoot about not being able to have him stay with her, telling him he was a good boy, that she would make it up to him later.
"What, is he the office mascot now?" Nixon asked when I brought Paddy in, letting him loose in the office.
"I promised Savvy I would bring him today so he wasn't sad all alone since she took Petunia to work with her."
"Whipped, man."
"Say that in front of her next time," I invited.
"I'm not saying shit in front of her," he shot back. "She was always a nice, quiet girl until you started fucking her. Now she's got nothing but shit to give me."
"You bring it on yourself. You are always picking at her."
"Don't know what you're talking about."
"You wrote a dirty haiku on her cast," I reminded him. "She had a giant black square on there to cover it. The doctor even asked about it. She had to say it was a signature from someone she didn't like anymore. Which, at the moment, wasn't even a lie."
"It was a nice little poem."
"It had the words fuck and suck in it," I reminded him.
"It was an ode to your relationship."
"You're a dick."
'Yep," he agreed, smirking as he walked away.
I had thought it was actually pretty clever for someone I would have figured as allergic to the finer things in life like poetry, like good manners.
Inappropriate, sure, but that was Nixon.
He had no filter.
For better or worse.
And, well, since that cast was off, all we had been doing was falling into bed. We were careful of her ankle still, but there was no clunky cast to get in our way.
Being back inside her felt like coming home, like it was where I had always belonged. And, well, I couldn't get enough of her. Luckily, she had been likewise afflicted. I was pretty sure I lost a couple gallons of sweat that first week, feeling constantly dehydrated and aching in all my muscles.
Every inch of my apartment had seen us in all sorts of ways. Me on top, her on top. Soft, sweet. Rough, hard. Making love. Straight up fucking.
We were insatiable.
I had maybe stopped in for a lunchtime quickie every single day. And was somewhat disappointed at not having that opportunity today.
But this was life.
It was time we got back to it.
We couldn't live in the fantasy forever.