Chapter 12 #2
I looked at him incredulously. “You’ve got to be joking. Right? You’re not seriously suggesting you would have stayed in a water-damaged room that probably needs mold remediation?”
I swore under my breath at the razor-sharp edge in my voice, but I refused to take back what I said. Not even knowing that I was exhausted and Cash was in pain. A pain that racked his body until he shook with it, even though he pretended he wasn’t.
I took a deep breath. My hand snagged on the waves in my thick hair when I dragged it over my face and head.
“Get some sleep, if you can,” I said as gently as possible. “We can fight about your insanity around independence while wearing a locked hinged leg brace when you’re not sweating through the sheets and mattress in my guest room.”
“At least the mattress is good,” he said with a yawn. “But the sheets are ugly.”
“They’re just gray.”
Another yawn followed by, “Yes. Exactly. Ugly.”
Cash’s eyes drifted shut, and I sighed. The pain carved grooves between his brows. The medicine wouldn’t eliminate the pain. Not even the shot I offered would. Given his sensitivity to the anesthesia, nothing I could safely give him at home would.
That sensitivity kept me up, watching him like a hawk, fingers crossed and a prayer on my lips.
Rescue meds stood ready—in the nightstand, the kitchen, my car, the SUV.
But as the medication took hold, the deep crease between his eyes softened, and the still-too-rapid breaths I’d been listening to extra closely evened out.
Not quite as much as I would’ve liked, but enough that I didn’t have to fight myself to stay put and not run for my stethoscope and the pulse ox I had in my medical bags.
One in the house, one in each car. With Cash in the house and having had issues coming to yesterday, I seriously contemplated adding one to this room and every floor of the house.
The last sight I remembered from the night, before sunlight streaming through the windows woke me, was the soft muttering of my name as the last vestiges of pain left Cash’s face.
I sat up, my back protesting the move, cracking and popping like rice cereal as my feet dropped softly to the floor between the bed and the chair that would be replaced with my Eames chair and ottoman from my room.
I could order another, but the medieval torture device I spent the night in would be leaving this house today if I had any say in the matter.
“That sounded painful.”
My eyes flew to Cash’s face. He looked ten times better than he had last night. I glanced at the clock and back at his face. The telltale groove between his brows was back. Nowhere near where it had been, but enough that he needed more medication and to have his frozen water bottles replaced ASAP.
But first, I snarked back, “Excellent observation skills, kid.” I stretched, popping my back and neck further. “But the decorator failed to mention that this chair was designed only to be seen and not used.”
“I doubt you can lay your creaking and cracking at their feet. I’m sure they meant for the chair to be used for its designated purpose. I’m sure they filled a house this big with furniture meant for sleeping other than the one I’m lying in.”
God, he was a brat. A beautiful, sexy, troublemaking brat who made me smile and my dick throb painfully. Ignoring the issue he’d caused in my pants, I stood, handed him all the bottles for his morning meds, and then helped him sit up with his back cushioned against the pillows and headboard.
“Take those while I change out the ice—”
“Can you help me up first?” he asked softly as I turned to the door with the water bottles from the cold-therapy unit.
I almost asked why, then nodded. “Of course,” I said, grabbing the crutches that leaned against the wall between the bed and nightstand.
“If I’d seen those, I wouldn’t be sitting here about to piss myself.”
“Sorry, I should’ve pointed them out,” I apologized, helping him to his feet. “Don’t—”
He laughed mirthlessly. “I know, Doc. Old hat at this. Remember?”
An embarrassed laughed burst from me while heat painted my face, making me uncomfortably warm. “Right. Sorry.”
“No worries,” he said, moving slowly but surely through the bedroom to the bathroom.
He shut the bathroom door, and I picked up the water bottles, but I worried about leaving him in the bathroom while I went to the kitchen. Finally, I realized how ridiculous I was being and walked out of the room.
When I returned, Cash sat in the chair I’d slept in at the end of the bed, his right leg stretched out on the mattress, his left foot on the floor, while his bare torso drew my gaze.
“I can’t believe you slept in this chair. It’s uncomfortable to even sit in.”
“Maybe I’m a tiny bit of a masochist,” I muttered.
The chair was the least of the evidence to support that statement.
I put the man I wanted to fuck but couldn’t in my house.
A man who apparently didn’t like to wear a shirt and whose naked chest turned off the filter between my brain and mouth.
I could’ve hired a nurse or sent him to a rehab facility, but no.
I put him in my car, drove him the hour to my house, cooked him dinner, and slept in the most uncomfortable chair on this planet when I had a top-of-the-line bed upstairs.
His eyes twinkled and a smile tugged at his mouth. The little shit. Squatting, I opened the cooler to avoid being even more seen.
“How long did you stay yesterday? In recovery.”
The bottle I was pulling out of the cooler dropped back into the water, making it splash over the sides, wetting the rug. I cleared my throat. “A few hours.”
“How many?”
“Cash—”
“I remember Michael being there at one point. And Davina. At least I think it was them. I didn’t see them, but I think it was their voices I remember hearing. I remember you talking to whoever it was.” His brow furrowed in confusion. “Then I woke up again, and you were still there.”
“You took longer than expected to become consistently alert. Your oxygen saturation kept dropping. Your heart rate was slow, and you were nauseated.”
“But I was in recovery.”
“Yes.”
“With nurses.”
“The best ones.”
“And Michael.”
I sighed, scratching the back of my head. “Yes. Off and on. Michael doesn’t work for me. He works for the surgical center and had other surgeries yesterday.”
A surgical center I owned, but didn’t manage. I left that up to the hospital.
His gaze never wavered. “So why were you still there?”
I busied myself checking the cold-therapy unit, although it didn’t need anything yet. “I wanted to make sure you were stable.”
“Do you stay beside every patient until they’re stable?”
“Every patient is stable before they leave recovery.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
No, it wasn’t. Cash had spent most of our time together searching for the transaction hidden beneath every offer. The cost. The debt. The point at which kindness became something he would have to repay. A half-answer or partial truth would only give him another reason to keep searching.
“No, I don’t stay with all my patients. But then again, you knew that.
You know why I stayed. You’re just still looking for other explanations and hidden meanings.
I stayed because it was you. And not because of Halo House or because you’re my patient.
I stayed because something is brewing between us that intrigues me.
You intrigue me. You also turn me on and frustrate the fucking hell out of me,” I said, my gaze locked on his face.
The air changed between us, becoming charged with something I couldn’t name but could see Cash felt too.
He looked away first. “I need coffee.”
“You need breakfast,” I groused, helping him to his feet before handing him his crutches.
Braced leg held out in front of him, he took off out of the guest room toward the kitchen, calling out, “I need coffee before I can survive breakfast.”
“That sounds like a dependency.”
“Says the man who has multiple coffeemakers in his kitchen. Don’t think I didn’t clock the old-fashioned pot, the French press, the fancy single-use pod maker, and the expensive as fuck espresso maker that probably costs more than one of my AHL paychecks.”
“Mine is a carefully managed medical necessity.”
“So, mine’s a character flaw?” he asked, turning to face me.
“Obviously,” I stated, drowning in the electric-blue of his gaze. His quiet laugh loosened something in my chest. I stood before I did something foolish, like touching his face simply because I wanted to.
“I’ll make coffee.”
“Thad?”
“Yeah?”
“I’m glad you were there when I woke up. It was nice. No one’s ever done that before.”