Chapter 13
CASH
Two afternoons later, we sat in the living room.
Me propped in the corner of the couch, my leg stretched out along the back cushions on an elevated pillow.
The other was thrown wide and resting on an ottoman.
Thad sat facing me, with a tablet in hand, another lying on the sofa cushion next to him, and his laptop open to an MRI. Whose I couldn’t tell, nor did I care.
My mind was focused elsewhere, and it wasn’t on the massive television that, until Thad turned it on yesterday, had looked like an expensive piece of artwork. No. It wasn’t the television or the nature documentary that caught my interest.
My eyes were glued to the clock across the room. The second the minute and hour hands reached the point I’d been waiting for, I said, “I need a shower.”
Thad responded without even looking up, “No.”
“I wasn’t asking permission.”
“Then why announce it?” he asked.
“Because I need help getting to the bathroom.”
Thad set the tablet aside. “You can’t safely shower alone.”
“I know.”
“You’re still unsteady at random moments, and you’re taking medication that makes it worse. You can’t put weight on that leg, and the dressing has to remain dry. And besides all that, you nearly hit the floor this morning.”
“I did not. I slipped. That’s all.”
“While standing still.”
“Okay, I slipped while standing still. I still need a shower.”
“And that’s what’s called nearly falling.”
My mouth flattened as I swallowed the growl that rumbled at the back of my throat. “I smell like vomit, sweat, hospital, and whatever antiseptic shit you painted half my leg with. I want a shower.”
“We cleaned you up after surgery.”
“Then we need to discuss your definition of clean.”
“I can bring you warm water and washcloths.”
The growl refused to be contained this time. “Dammit, Doc. I want a shower. Not a sponge bath.”
“Then you can wait one more day. Otherwise—”
I perked up and latched onto the word his face said he regretted uttering. “Otherwise? What’s the other option?”
His hands scrubbed his face and carded through his hair, and glee percolated under my skin. This would be good. He did that when he got frustrated and didn’t know how to deal with it. The things you learned about a person when you lived with them and had nothing else to occupy your time.
His expression didn’t change, but the pulse in his throat jumped. It beat frantically and visibly. And when he spoke, I had to strain to hear him. “I help you.”
Holy shit. The image those words conjured caused an immediate issue in my pants. My hands were already in my lap, and I hid my reaction easily, but at the same time, I thanked fuck my dick wasn’t as dead as it had been the day before.
“Help me how?” I asked, ignoring the hopeful tone in my voice.
Looking anywhere but me, he said, “I’ll set up the bathroom with the shower bench, wrap your leg to protect the dressing, and then I’ll stay close enough to keep you from falling.”
“While I’m naked.”
“Well, that is how showers work. Generally.”
A faint smile pulled at my mouth. “Generally.” When he didn’t say anything further, I asked, “You offering to get me naked, Doc?”
“No. I’m offering to help you shower safely,” he clarified. “That is not the same thing.”
“Right,” I said.
“You can wait, clean up with washcloths, or let me help you. Those are your choices.”
My eyes narrowed. “I hate when you do that.”
“Give you reasonable options?”
“Make all of them sound reasonable when only one gets me what I want.”
“It’s an important medical skill.”
“Yeah, I know. All the other surgeons used it as well. Just not as well as you do. I bet there’s a whole fucking class to train you fuckers how to do it.
” I sighed and looked toward the bathroom.
I hated vulnerability. I hated that the first time he’d see me naked, that our first shower together, would be clinical instead of sexual. “Fine.”
“Fine, what?”
I pushed carefully to my feet and grabbed my crutches, refusing to sit in my filth for a moment longer. “You can help me.”
The bathroom’s centerpiece was a large open shower with a built-in bench that ran the length of the back wall, double shower heads with two handheld sprayers, and a slip-resistant floor.
I knew all this because I’d been eyeing the thing for two damn days.
Every trip to the bathroom made me hanker for a shower more than the previous one, but I knew better to ask until the seventy-two-hour mark.
The wide, spacious room even held a stool. One I sat on while Thad puttered nervously around the bathroom. He stacked clean towels and moved all the hygiene items to within reach. When he turned, he took a deep breath, his brow pinched.
“You okay?”
“Fantastic.”
“Dizzy? Nauseated? Any pain?”
“No. No. And yes, there’s pain. I mean, a doctor did just drill a hole in the end of my femur and then hammered dead-guy bone into it. So, I think pain is to be expected for a while.”
He shook his head as he helped me into the shower. Thad knelt in front of me. The joke about him being on his knees for me died when he looked up and said, “Technically, it was two holes.”
The laugh that began in my throat died a sudden death when his hands gripped my athletic shorts. His molten brown eyes met mine, robbing me of breath. Under the shorts, I was naked as the day I was born, and I didn’t know if I could remain unaffected when he pulled them off.
“Cash, are you—”
“I’m sure,” I said, pushing the shorts down under my ass. I sat on the edge of the bench and pulled my left leg out of my shorts.
My shirt hung low enough to cover the softness between my legs that suddenly embarrassed me. I’d worried that getting hard while Thad undressed me would be humiliating. In reality, it was the fact that I didn’t—not even a little—that mortified me.
Thad worked the shorts down my leg, helped me move so my leg stretched out along the bench, and then released the brace wrapped around my leg.
The sound of those latches opening made my entire body go tense.
He’d only opened the brace twice—once when he put the cold-therapy wrap on and a second time when I had an itch and threatened to unlock it myself to scratch it.
Both times, I was sitting in a space—the bed or the couch—where I felt safe.
“Cash, the bench is wide enough for you to fully lie down. As long as you stay put…” he said as if he knew what thoughts raced through my mind.
“I know.”
Thad eased the brace out from underneath my leg and removed all the wrappings and bandages, leaving only the Steri-Strips. Without them, my leg looked vulnerable and grotesque with how swollen and bruised it was.
“It looks worse than it is,” he said, making quick work of covering the strips with what looked like the same shit my tattoo artist used over my tattoos.
It actually didn’t look as bad as it had after the accident or the first surgery. Or even the second and third surgeries. But it still felt off. And a bit numb. “It looks and feels like it belongs to someone else.”
“That’s mostly the swelling. It puts pressure on the tissues and makes the knee feel tight and strange.”
“Still giving me doctor answers.”
“It’s what you pay me for.”
My gaze snapped to his.
“Bad choice of words,” I said.
“No shit.” He cleared his throat. “Any numbness?”
I nodded, answering silently, but then added, “Yeah, but it feels like it did the first three times. I think the docs then said it had to do with the incisions disrupting the nerves.”
He nodded. “Yeah. That’s right.” He took a deep breath and said, “Okay. You should be able to reach the hot and cold, and”— he grabbed the hand held shower head, holding it out to me— “here’s the sprayer. I’ll be…umm…over by the door…so…umm…if you need anything…just yell.”
I nodded, and he turned. The man was adorable when flustered, and in that moment, I made it my mission in life to ruffle his feathers on the reg. Starting with…
“Hey, Doc?”
He looked back at me with a brow lifted.
“Catch!” I said, tossing him the T-shirt I pulled off. It smacked him in the face. My shorts, which he’d left lying on the bench, followed. He laughed, pulling the fabric from his head.
“Asshole.”
“Yep. I’d show it to you too—”
“Don’t you fucking dare. Your knee—”
“But I’m scared you’d have a fucking coronary since my knee’s going commando.”
“Take your damn shower, you fucking menace.”
I smirked before flipping on the shower and adjusting the water temperature.