Chapter 7 #2
I couldn’t help the smirk that played at my lips as his eyes locked on my hand and the cock I palmed. I gave it a squeeze as I adjusted myself. I’d place money on him not realizing how closely he tracked the movement or that his tongue licked his lips as if he hungered for a taste.
God, I’d love to have that man’s beard burning my thighs while my dick stretched those luscious lips still wet from the best kiss I could ever remember. “Well, that tracks with how shitty my life has always been.”
I turned back to the desk where I left the binder Davina gave me.
“What’s that mean?”
I laughed, holding up the binder and waving it around. “I have around twelve grand to my name and no health insurance, Doc. I can’t afford your miraculous cure. The Breakers are only obligated to pay for shit to maintain the knee I have.”
Twelve instead of fifteen because I’d purchased money orders for Mrs. P so she couldn’t refuse the rent I owed for over staying the end of the lease.
“I’m not worried about the payment, Cash. Anyone who is a resident at Halo House is covered financially—”
“Absolutely fucking not. No. I’m no charity case. Just living there without pitching in—”
“Cash, you aren’t a charity case. You are a smart, resourceful guy taking advantage—”
“Of a program. Yeah, Doc, sounds like a charity case.”
“Cash, I donate hundreds of thousands of dollars in free and discounted healthcare to Halo House a year. If it’s outside my wheelhouse, I hand it off to a network of doctors I’ve compiled who do the same.
This surgery will be just another tax break for me.
It’s a life-changing opportunity for you.
Hopefully a game changer, but it doesn’t make you a charity case.
It would make me your patron. It’s how Halo House functions. It’s how we help residents—”
“Well,” I interrupted, “you let the medical licensing board make decisions for you, so how about you let me determine what makes me a fucking charity case, since I’m the expert on how that feels,” I said, dropping the binder on the desk before leaving the office and him behind.
I couldn’t get away fast enough. I’d behaved like an ass.
I knew it. I owned it. And now I needed to put space between us.
Especially with the trauma of my childhood echoing in my head.
Trauma I locked away years ago. Sometimes it leaked out though.
Sometimes something smashed the box to smithereens.
This shit with my knee had pulverized the fucking thing.
Sunlight nearly blinded me when I shoved through the building’s entrance and stepped onto the sidewalk.
Thad’s offices were in the medical pavilion next to the hospital.
A pedway connected the two buildings. I stared up at the rays of sunlight filtering between the buildings.
The hustle of people overwhelmed me after several bumped into me with little more than a muttered apology.
I turned, walking away from the hospital to the small outdoor space I knew sat just a few blocks away. Whenever I had imaging appointments at the hospital, I always came here to wait for someone to pick me up.
In the beginning, it had been one of the guys or someone from the team.
But then the second surgery happened, and the guys had been working their asses off to make the playoffs, so I’d stopped asking.
Then the third surgery happened, and I stopped asking anyone for anything. I could see the pity in their eyes.
Why the team hadn’t referred me to Thad in the beginning, I didn’t know. If I ever saw any of those fuckers, that would be the first question I asked.
Before I made it to the park, my unbraced knee protested—the pace or just the walking in general, who knew.
Spending so long on my feet on Halloween still had me fucked up.
Walking or standing for long without being braced wasn’t advisable, but neither was biting off the head of the doctor who just offered to do my surgery for fucking free.
I just couldn’t bring myself to let him do it. It probably would save him thousands of dollars in taxes if he could classify it as a donation to Halo House, but I couldn’t fathom letting someone give me that kind of cash. Especially not someone whose cock I wanted to ride.
Karma, life, whatever you wanted to call it, hated me. I’d known that my entire life. My earliest memory began the pattern, and today nailed the lid shut on the box I locked all the evidence in until the next time I allowed hope to loosen the top.
An imprisoned-then-murdered, child-abusing, wife-beating father.
A drug-addicted mother who pimped herself out to put the poison that killed her in her belly and later her arms while her kid starved.
Foster placement after foster placement, all of which sucked until the one family who didn’t died in a car crash.
An on-fire AHL career, with the NHL on the cusp, ended when a big-ass defender landed on me while I butterflied to save the game-tying goal from hitting the back of the net.
I hadn’t saved the goal and my backup hadn’t kept the next two from finding their home in the net either.
And now this.
A man who looked at me and talked to me like I was worth something kept out of my bed and personal life because of medical ethics.
And as Thad called it, a life-changing, potentially game-changing, surgery out of reach because I couldn’t afford it.
“Sir…we’ve arrived.”
Shaking my head, I muttered, “Thanks,” and got out of the car and walked up the stairs, if that’s what you could call stumbling and bitching while climbing the front steps.
“Hey, Cash.”
I sighed. I didn’t know that I had it in me to be sweet right now, and Maxie was the sweetest little shit I’d ever met. He didn’t deserve me being an ass. Taking a deep breath, I turned.
“Hey, Maxie. What are you up to today?”
“Not much. Looking forward to the patron gathering coming up. I’d love to find someone who could help me get a foot in the door of the art world.”
I stared at him for a minute before I swallowed the retort that made its presence known on my tongue. “Mind if I ask some questions?”
Maxie looked confused when he answered, “Sure, but Phoenix or Dr. Vale would be a better—”
“Yeah, I know, but I want someone who’s a resident, not someone who might benefit in any way,” I said, walking into the kitchen.
His footsteps echoed behind me as I rummaged through cabinets and the fridge to pull together some lunch. “What do you want to know?”
I looked over at him, pointing at the cheeseburger bowl I was making. “Do you want some?” I asked.
He snarled his nose, and I couldn’t help but laugh at how adorable he was.
I hadn’t been around many littles like Maxie.
My former foster brother, Aiden, was a boy, and there were a few guys I’d played with who had baby girls, but Maxie was nothing like anyone I’d ever met before.
He was just this sweet little shit who regressed and seemed much younger than he actually was.
“It’s just a cheeseburger in a bowl, kid,” I explained.
“There’s like lettuce and wet things in that bowl. I’ve seen you eat it several times since you’ve been here.”
“You’re loss,” I said.
“So…what do you want to know?” he asked.
“Nothing personal that you don’t want to share. I’m just having a problem wrapping my head around the concept of a patron.”
“Oh! Well, I’m an artist and an open book. The patron thing is old news in the art world. I don’t know much about the hockey world. And by much, I mean nothing, but for as long as there have been artists and rich people who enjoy art, there’ve been patrons.”
“Interesting,” I said, sitting at the table across from him with my food.
I hated eating in this room. No matter where you sat, your back was to a door.
I sat in the only chair I was willing to use because you could see who entered the room from the hallway in the glass doors of the upper cabinets.
Several times since moving in, I’d stood in the corner of the cabinets so I could watch all the entrances.
“Do you…? I mean, is there something you’re worried about?” he asked.
I chewed several bites without acknowledging his question.
Once the words sorted themselves out in my head, I said, “I grew up in a world where you had to prove your worth. Where nothing came without a price—usually a pretty steep one.” I took another bite, then said, covering my mouth with the back of the hand that held my fork, “I worry what the price will be.”
I didn’t mention the trauma of growing up with a mother who whored herself out to the club of bikers she scored her drugs from.
“Maxie…can you give Cash and me the room?”