Chapter 16
THAD
December
“So…when do you decorate for Christmas?”
I grunted, looking over some images the intake team had passed along to me. The junior hockey player needed hip surgery. A torn labrum…maybe more.
“Doc?”
“Hmm?”
Cash’s hand appeared before the tablet. Shit.
With a sigh, I looked up at the man leaning against the back of the couch.
Instead of the pissed-off, frustrated look I expected, I found a smiling face and a shaking head, as if he found it adorable or something.
Swallowing, I said, “I’m sorry. What were you saying? ”
Cash laughed. “Must be an interesting case.”
I nodded. “No excuse.”
“Doc, you’re allowed to be excited about your work.
If I were still playing…well…I’m a goalie.
We’re a weird bunch, and I took the cake.
Game days, especially rivalry games or the playoffs…
” He shrugged, then said, “I’d be so zoned in on the game that even an earthquake wouldn’t penetrate.
So…no apologies. Besides…your passion and attention to your work and dedication to your patients…
? I can’t complain about that, given I’m benefiting from it. ”
I wanted to kiss him. More than anything, I wanted to reach out, wrap my hand around his neck, drag him onto my lap, and forget about everything else. The records I pored over were a ruse to keep me from doing something stupid.
“Now that I have your attention…when do you decorate for Christmas? Are you one of those day-before peeps?”
“I don’t.”
“Excuse me? What do you mean, ‘I don’t?’”
“Exactly that. I don’t decorate.”
“You don’t have a Christmas tree?” Cash asked, now standing at the end of the sectional, his crutches tucked beneath his arms. He stared at me before his gaze moved to the wall of glass, like a tree might materialize in front of the Pacific if he looked hard enough.
“No.”
“Where is it?”
“I don’t have one.”
His head whipped around. “At all?”
“That’s generally what ‘I don’t have one’ means,” I said, laughter huffing out my nose.
If his eyes got any bigger, I didn’t know that they would remain in his head. He paced away, so I picked up the tablet, swiping the screen to reopen the MRI I’d been studying. A few minutes later, the sound of his crutches returned, growing louder as he approached.
“What about decorations?”
“No.”
“Lights?”
“No,” I repeated, emphasizing the negative.
“Stockings?”
I lowered the tablet.
“Are you taking inventory?”
“I’m trying to figure out what the fuck is wrong with you.”
I laughed and went back to the patient notes on my screen. “I work,” I said with a shrug.
He threw his arms in the air, his left crutch dropping to the floor. “So does everybody else!” he cried.
“Not my hours.” I got up and made my way toward him, snatching the crutch from the floor.
Cash grabbed the crutch from me and made a sound that told me exactly what he thought of that answer.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“That definitely wasn’t nothing.”
“That was me deciding that calling your life depressing would hurt your feelings.”
“My feelings are remarkably resilient.”
“Oh good. I’m glad to hear it. Your. Life. Is. Depressing.”
I smiled.
“Noted, but…”
He rolled his eyes. “What?”
“You’re close, but the puck snuck by you.”
His forehead wrinkled as much as a twenty-three-year-old’s forehead can wrinkle. “What the hell are you trying so horribly to say?”
“You said is depressing.”
“It is.”
“Not anymore.”
Cash stared at me.
“What did you do before?”
“Before what?”
“Before you became a sad sack of shit who apparently celebrates Christmas by performing knee replacements.”
“I don’t perform knee replacements on Christmas.”
“Thank God. There’s hope for you yet.”
He started toward the kitchen.
The crutches hit the floor in an even rhythm.
I followed him with my eyes until he reached the island, stopped, and shifted one crutch so he could grab his water.
His gaze cut sideways.
“See something you like?”
I looked at his face.
His mouth curved.
“Your eyes were lower than that, Daddy.”
My cock twitched.
Fucking brat.
“I was watching your crutch.”
“Sure you were.”
“You’re my patient.”
“Unfortunately.”
“Unfortunately?”
Cash twisted the cap off his water. His eyes held mine as he lifted the bottle to his mouth, watching me watch him. He paused before taking a drink to say, “I’d rather be something else. But anyway, you need a tree.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“My house.”
“For now,” he said, and my eyebrows rose, but he disappeared without a glance or another word.
The car wound up the hill toward the house. Windows down, the smell of pine trees and salty ocean filled the car. The house, which you’d only know was there if you knew to look for it, came into view, and my mood lifted and my heart rate picked up.
A few moments later, the garage door closed behind me.
I reached for my bag, only to stop and stare at the packages on the passenger seat.
Gifts for Cash because…tomorrow was Christmas Eve, and given the conversation we’d had about decorations, I worried he bought me something.
I couldn’t not have a gift— or ten— for him.
Yes, I channeled Sheldon Cooper. Sue me. Sighing, I placed the presents on the floorboard of the back seat, knowing the tinted windows would keep him from seeing what was back there. With everything stowed out of sight, I grabbed my bag from the passenger seat, got out, and walked into the house.
Three steps inside, I stopped, the doorknob still in my hand.
Pine.
Fresh pine.
I wiggled my nose and sniffed, chalking up the tingle in my nostrils to driving home with the windows down.
I shucked my jacket and shoes in the mudroom.
Prior to Cash, I wouldn’t have bothered with the shoes, but he had a thing about wearing outside shoes inside.
Just one of the many things I knew about him after nearly two months of sharing a house with the man.
When I turned the corner from the garage entrance to the open expanse of the living area , I came to a halt. A screeching halt.
A Christmas tree stood before the wall of glass.
“Cash?”
“Before you say anything, I didn’t do shit.”
I closed my eyes. I dropped my bag on the kitchen island.
A Christmas tree stood.
Not decorated.
Not lit.
Just enormous, green, and very fucking present in the middle of my previously tree-free living room.
And stationed on the sectional with his right leg stretched along the cushions sat Cash Benjamin, wearing a grin big enough to power half of Southern California.
“Merry Christmas, Doc.”
I looked at the tree.
Then him.
Then the tree.
“You…bought a tree,” I stated, still not sure how I felt or should react to the ginormous green monstrosity taking up a very large portion of my living room.
“Ordered.”
“Huh?” I asked
“Ordered, Doc. I ordered a Christmas tree. The delivery people brought it inside.”
I looked at the stand for several minutes, then pointed at the metal legs and water bowl holding up the…
tree. The word felt way too tiny. Why wasn’t there another word for a tree after it got big enough to have two whole forests of tree offspring and grand saplings ?
Like…it had to be bigger than a Sequoia.
“They put it in there too.”
Shaking my head, I let his words compute and said, “I didn’t ask.”
“You pointed and were totally going to ask.”
I absolutely was.
In my periphery, Cash stood. The distinctive sound of his crutches told me he had moved to stand behind me.
“So,” he began, pausing probably for me to look at him, but the massive tree in the living room still held my attention.
He continued with a sigh, “Before Dr. Vale shows up to ruin my surprise with the third degree, lemme break it down for you. I opened the door. I pointed. I supervised while they did everything else. No half-crippled hockey players carried or lifted or in any way participated in the making of this Christmas. Well, other than ordering the tree and paying for it.”
My gaze snapped to his.
“Don’t call yourself that,” I growled, the words and tone harsher than I’d ever spoken to him.
His grin disappeared. His eyes fell shut.
Fuck.
Cash looked toward the tree.
I scrubbed both hands over my face, tired and frustrated from a shitty day at work. I didn’t give a fuck about the tree or decorating.
The tree had nothing to do with it. I’d stopped doing Christmas when Chelly and I split. Somewhere along the way, decorating a house I barely lived in for a family I didn’t have had felt fucking pathetic.
And now Cash had filled that house with a massive tree because apparently my life was depressing, and I’d thanked him by wiping the smile off his face.
“Cash, I’m—”
“No worries, Doc.”
I walked over and stopped in front of him. His eyes stayed on the branches.
“Cash.”
“What?”
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have barked at you like that.”
“I’m sorry too. It’s just—”
I waited.
And waited.
And waited some more. The seconds and minutes ticked by until I wasn’t sure he would actually look at me, but eventually, those gorgeous blue eyes I regularly got lost in found mine.
I held his gaze. And I knew…that flippant comment hid the loss of his career and the fear he had around not returning to the ice.
“Just what?”
For a long moment, he said nothing.
“It’s easier to joke about it.”
“You don’t have to do that with me,” I said, hoping he understood he could be real with me. That I wanted his most authentic self, not the brash jokester he showed everyone else when the world and reality closed in.
His jaw worked as if he were chewing on the words, and then…he nodded once. His silent reply was hardly reassuring. But…
I let it go. I’d ruined things enough for one day.
Moving my eyes around the room, they lit on the boxes sitting beside the tree. Multiple boxes I’d failed to notice because of the tree that dwarfed my normally massive-feeling open-concept home, turning it from empty-warehouse huge to a packed-to-the-brim closet.
“You bought decorations too,” I said, gesturing at the boxes.