Chapter Four
Matt
Ashley Cork is a temptation I never asked for and don’t know how to refuse.
How else am I supposed to interpret it when day after damn day, I’m forced to be around the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen and expected to exercise restraint?
Six sessions in and the difference is real—I lifted my arm above shoulder height yesterday with one of her resistance bands wrapped around my forearm.
I held it there for the count she asked for without my face going gray.
The knee took my weight through a full step-up on her platform, three sets of ten, both legs working evenly for the first time since they put me back together.
And I felt the burn in the muscle, the way a body is supposed to, not in the joint the way it’s been hurting for months.
The numbers in her notebook keep getting better.
Every goddamn day, they get a tiny bit better.
It barely annoys me anymore when I hear her car approach or her dog bark excitedly when they step out.
Hell, I find myself listening for it. Her presence doesn’t feel as intrusive as it did the first couple of days, and there are mornings when I catch myself watching the clock, counting down to her arrival.
Neither of us has spoken about what happened on her second day here.
Not a word. She walked in the next morning with Penny at her heels and her notebook in her hand and acted like we’d never crossed that line.
I followed her lead because what the hell else was I going to do?
Tell my physical therapist I want to bend her over my workout bench?
She has her shoulders squared and her professional voice on every time she steps through my door, and I keep my hands to myself and answer her questions about pain and range of motion like a good patient.
She’s touched me—she has to, that’s the job—and every time her fingers land on my skin, I have to lock my jaw and think about anything but the way her hand looked wrapped around my cock that afternoon.
She hasn’t asked me about it. I haven’t offered. We’ve both been pretending, and we’ve both been failing.
But even worse, I’m not going to be able to keep pretending much longer.
The military taught me discipline, and despite poking at her on her first days, I’m a man who has mastered restraint.
Penny barks at the back door, and I let her out into the fenced yard without thinking about it, the way I’d let out my own dog.
I make extra coffee in the morning because Ashley likes it sweet and pale.
I keep treats in the jar topped up for the greyhound.
None of this was a decision. It just started happening.
She threatens me, threatens the solitude I’ve carved out for myself. Every time those stunning forest-green eyes lift to mine, they threaten to strip me and wreck the defenses I’ve worked hard to build for years.
And today, more than ever, I can’t have her around me. Not when my walls are so weak and battered after the storm that was my nightmare. More often than I want, the memories of that day flood in with such brutality that they threaten to undo me, and last night was especially brutal.
I can’t have Ashley around me when I’m this frayed.
Not when it feels like there is a hammer inside my skull. The painkillers I shot down barely grazed the surface of the headache. I consider taking another but decide against it, figuring I might as well give caffeine a shot.
The kitchen light drills into my skull and sends a fresh stab of pain when I stumble in.
I shuffle toward the machine and grab a cup.
My vision blurs for a second, and I consider adding a few shots of whiskey to my coffee, but I don’t like the idea of playing Russian roulette with different drugs and hoping one does the job.
The coffee will just have to do.
The aroma of the brewing coffee offers a small comfort, so I lean back and watch the dark liquid drip into the pot in a slow, agonizing process.
My left shoulder pulses with every heartbeat.
The exercises Ashley put me through yesterday left the muscle aching in a way that feels productive—like work, not damage—but right now, with the headache and the nightmare hangover, every part of me hurts.
My stomach churns, and every muscle in my body aches. I watch the coffee, refusing to let my mind wander back to the nightmare and the horrors that played in it.
I can’t think about their voices or their faces right before our world exploded.
The phone calls I made from my hospital bed once I could hold a phone steady.
The silence on the other end of the line when Henry’s daughter answered.
The way Jefferson’s girl asked, before I could even speak, if he’d suffered.
“Why them?” The question they’d always ask, followed by the silence hiding the question they wouldn’t, “Why not you?”
And I don’t have one goddamned answer for that. I didn’t have it for the men in my dreams, nor their living families. I don’t have it for myself.
“Matt?”
My head shoots up at the voice, and I realize it’s coming from the front of the house.
Ashley. Fuck, I didn’t hear her drive up.
I always hear her car when she approaches, but not today.
Too lost in my head to notice that my coffee is ready, too.
I turn away from it and walk to the front door, surprised to find Ashley standing alone.
“My grandparents took Penny to the vet today,” she explains.
Something in my chest dips. I’ve spent the past week pretending I haven’t been looking forward to that copper streak shooting past Ashley’s legs every morning, the click of her nails on my hardwood, the way she trots straight to the workout room and curls up on the bed I put there for her.
Penny has a way of standing too close. Bony shoulder against my thigh while Ashley lays out her notebook, like the spot belongs to her now and she’s just confirming it’s still there.
The first time she did it, I stood like a dumbass with my hand frozen over her head because the muscle memory was there.
But the dog was new, and the two didn’t fit together yet.
She didn’t seem to notice or care. She just stayed until I remembered how to breathe and how to scratch behind a dog’s ear. She’s done it every morning since.
Today, it’s just Ashley. And the headache. And the silence.
“You should probably take a day off too,” I tell her, blocking the door. “Go home, Ashley.”
“Really, you’re doing this again?” She frowns, and I watch her eyes track over my face—the dark circles, the unshaven jaw, whatever else she’s reading there. “I thought we were past it. I’m not going to quit, Matt. Not until your brother fires me.”
“I want you to leave!” The words come out lower than I mean them to, more tired than angry.
“If you want a day off, all you have to do is ask. I’ll write you down instructions on what to do—”
“Fine, I’m asking. Now leave.”
Hurt crosses her expression for a brief second before it’s quickly replaced by concern. “Something’s wrong,” she says, her brows furrowing. “What’s wrong?”
I can’t understand why I don’t simply walk back inside and slam the door shut. The truth is the same reason I made extra coffee this morning. I don’t want her gone. I want her here. And the wanting is precisely what scares me on a day when I can’t trust myself to be steady.
“Ashley—”
“Please, tell me,” she whispers, undoing me.
Goddamn it.
“Look,” I say, my tone gentler. “Why don’t you take a day off, and we’ll continue with the sessions tomorrow?”
She doesn’t speak a word and, for several seconds, stands silently watching me. “It’s your head,” she finally says. “You have a headache.”
Before I can react, I find myself backed into my own house by a woman who weighs half of what I do.
“Come with me.”
I follow her because, of course, I do. I follow her because today, with my head splitting open and the nightmare still pressing on my chest, I don’t have the strength to keep her out. And maybe—though I won’t say it out loud—because I’m tired of keeping her out.
“Ashley—”
“Sit,” she orders, dropping her bag on the couch and pointing to the empty spot.
When I don’t move, we stare at each other until I realize I don’t have the mental capacity for it, so I simply drop down on the spot she indicates. She walks around the couch and settles behind me, then leans forward, the delicate, flowery scent she wears washing over me.
“Where does it hurt the most?” Her voice is a calming balm, and I find myself closing my eyes, sighing when those delicate hands touch my head. “Matt?”
“I can’t tell where it begins or ends.”
“Alright,” she whispers, dropping her hands to my nape.
I bite down a groan when her fingers find the knots in my shoulders, and I wince as she begins to work on them.
The pressure is both exquisite and agonizing.
Her thumbs knead the muscles at the base of my skull, and I start to feel something loosening.
The pain doesn’t vanish, but it begins to recede, like a tide pulling back from a ravaged shore.
“Better?”
I grunt in response, groaning when she moves to my temples, her fingertips tracing gentle circles. “Keep talking,” I grunt, hoping to get lost in her touch, sound, and scent.
“My grandpa taught me this technique. Years ago, when my grandmother used to get migraines, he would do this to her, and she’d start to feel better.
He taught me just in case she ever needed help and he wasn’t around.
” Her thumbs press against a spot on my temple that sends the pressure spreading before completely melting away.
“The trick is in applying the right amount of pressure on certain points.”