27. Lizzie
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Lizzie
Iswear to God, every nurse who has walked into this room has gawked at Holden. I’m more than convinced their coworkers sent a few of them in to ‘grab something’—a roll of tape, a washcloth, you name it—out of the cupboards to check him out.
They’re all young, pretty, and probably much more pleasant than I am. At least, right at this moment.
And I’m a hot mess in old cutoff shorts, a T-shirt with paint splatters, and a tear at the neckline. While their hair is long and straightened with perfect highlights or up in cute-looking messy buns, my hair is just… messy.
When yet another nurse comes in under the guise of grabbing a gown out of the closet, I lose it. I hear the annoyed huff that escapes me, and then mutter under my breath, “For fuck’s sake. This is absurd.”
“Lizzie!” Holden scolds me, but there’s an amused air to his voice, and he chuckles.
The nurse apparently isn’t done, and when I glance up, she’s standing there staring in our direction. I’m sure it’s at him and not me or us. Unless she’s staring at us thinking, Why is he here with her?
“Do you need something else?” I ask her.
I sound like a total bitch, and I hate it. But I broke my arm, I’m in pain, and the man who crushed my heart a decade ago is, of course, the one who came to my rescue.
Without even glancing at the girl, Holden twists his body to face me.
“You okay?” This time, there’s a softness to his voice, and I don’t know if that pleases me or scares me. Maybe it’s both. I don’t have the emotional energy to unpack that right now.
The nurse walks out of the room, and I turn my head away from him. No, I can’t handle him being sweet and tender to me, not when I’m like this. A tear escapes and rolls down my face. Its friends quickly follow.
“Hey? What’s going on, Lizette?” He scoots his chair closer to the gurney I’m on.
I don’t stop him as he wipes away one of my tears with his thumb, nor do I correct him for using my full name. Lizette, the name I never wanted anyone to call me again after things ended with him. It was too hard to hear it and not think about him.
“Come on. Tell me what’s going on,” he urges.
I refuse to look at him as the tears continue to come.
“I’m tired, and my arm hurts, and it’s broken, and they haven’t given me any pain medicine, and I don’t want to take any because I have to go home and take care of Simon, but it really hurts, and all these nurses are coming in here and gawking at you like you’re a piece of meat, like they’ve never seen an attractive man before.
” After the words rush out of my mouth, I suck in a breath.
That might be the longest run-on sentence ever.
“Hey, look at me.”
I reluctantly turn my head in his direction, but I can’t bring my eyes to meet his, and they remain downcast.
“Come on, please.”
I slowly drag my eyes up until they meet his, but before he can say anything else, a voice comes across the intercom in the room.
“How can I help you?” a woman asks.
“Yes, the doctor said he was going to get pain medicine for her if she wanted it, and no one has offered it yet. Could somebody please bring her something?”
It strikes me that he used the call bell for me. To get me help.
“Yes, sir. We’ll be right in.” Her saccharine voice makes me roll my eyes.
When I hear the intercom click off, I can’t help but mimic her, “Yes, sir. We’ll be right in,” in a high-pitched voice.
Holden chuckles. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, thinking people are coming in here to look at me. And even if they were, I don’t care. But I did notice that you said I was attractive,” he teases.
My tears are slowing.
“Really? That’s what you recall out of everything I said there? That I think you’re attractive?”
“I mean, yeah. That was the most important thing you said, except that you were in pain.”
I roll my eyes at him. “I’m not an idiot, Holden. I know I haven’t been in town long, but I’ve already heard about your reputation. So, don’t let me stop you. If you want to get one of their numbers, go for it.”
I hate the bitterness I hear in my voice, but what I despise even more is the wince that flashes across his face at my words.
He’s about to say something, opening his mouth, when a nurse walks in and smiles at him, then looks at me.
“Name and date of birth, please.” Her tone is a bit sharp, and I’m guessing her coworker spilled the beans on my bit of sass from a little earlier.
“Lizette Winslow, July 8, 1993,” Holden chimes in. I look at him, my jaw dropping. He remembers my birthday.
“Is that accurate, ma’am?”
“Yes,” I tell her, never taking my eyes off him.
She scans my wrist, then hands me a small paper cup with two pills in it and extends a glass of water to me. Before I can take it, Holden grabs it. I toss the pills back, and he holds the water up to my mouth. I suck on the straw to swallow the pills down.
If jealousy had a face, I think it would look like this girl right now. Yes, he’s being very sweet, but clearly she mistakes it for something it’s not.
“Thank you,” I say to the girl, and she leaves without acknowledging me.
“Thank you for getting me the medicine and for bringing me here.” Ah, finally, my bitchy alter ego has decided to let nice Lizzie out to play. It might have something to do with the fact that I swear I keep seeing cameos of library Holden tonight.
“I’m just glad I was there. Nearly broke my heart to see the look on your little guy’s face as he was trying to lift that countertop off you.”
My tears, which had just stopped, start flowing again.
“I didn’t mean to make you feel bad.” He grips the back of his neck with one hand. “He clearly loves you very much, and he’s a sweet kid.”
I smile at him through my tears and say, “I like to think so. He’s a good boy.”
“He’s very polite. Seems like you’re doing a great job with him. I always thought you’d be a good mom.”
A laugh bursts out of me.
“You’re kidding, right?”
“No, I’m serious. I used to think about those things. I don’t know. I wasn’t… Never mind.”
“What were you gonna say?” My curiosity is piqued.
Before I can nag an answer out of him, a very attractive man in a T-shirt and scrub bottoms walks into the room, pushing a cart. He’s got a tiny bit of stubble on his face, slightly messy hair, and piercing gray eyes.
“Hi. Are you Lizette Winslow?” he asks in a cheery voice.
“I am.”
He doesn’t even glance at Holden.
Holden says hello back, but I can hear the strain in his voice.
“Well, Miss Winslow, I’m Jace, and I’m here to put your temporary cast on. Is that okay?”
“Yeah, sure. Thank you.”
I just want to get this over with and get home. The sooner, the better, as I’m exhausted, and Georgie took Simon home from the pizza place to get him settled in for the night.
Jace comes around to the side opposite Holden, lowers the bed rail, then pulls a stool over from under a shelf behind the bed and sits on it.
“All right, I’m gonna be really gentle here, but if I hurt you, I want you to tell me so I can adjust. Does that sound all right, Lizette?”
“Okay,” I answer softly. I glance in Holden’s direction, and he scowls.
“She likes to be called Lizzie,” he corrects the guy. It comes out of the blue and surprises me.
“It’s okay. You can call me Lizette or Lizzie,” I rush to add.
Holden huffs next to me, and I’m not sure why he’s being so challenging.
Over the next fifteen minutes, Jace works on my splint, effectively distracting me with conversation. I learned he is a firefighter-paramedic and works here in the emergency room part-time. When he hears that we live in Aron Falls, he asks me about it.
“Have you seen the national park yet? It’s something you most definitely need to experience.”
“No, not yet. I’ve been super busy, but I’ll try to make time soon. I could use a break, and I love to hike.” I yawn, feeling drowsiness set in. I’m not sure if it’s from the medications or plain old fatigue.
“You definitely should soon. Or at least in the fall when the leaves change. It’s gorgeous then.”
When I tell him that I’m about to open my bakery, he makes a big deal of it and says he’d love to come check it out.
“It’s a bit far for you to come for a cup of coffee and a pastry, isn’t it?” Holden’s tone has a bite to it. Since I’ve been back, this is the first time I’ve heard this much edginess in Holden’s voice.
“Holden,” I scold.
The man glances up at him and grins, then looks down at me, and his smile widens again.
“Don’t worry,” he winks at me. “I’d be on guard, too, if I were with a woman as beautiful as you.” He glances over at Holden. “No worries, man. I get that she’s off the market.”
My cheeks heat, and Holden goes completely still.
“Oh, we’re not together,” I explain.
The man’s eyes dart over to Holden, then back to me. “Huh. Does he know that?” It’s clearly a joke—I think—but the tension in the room just increased tenfold.