From the light streaming into the room, I knew it was getting close to dinnertime, but the endless hammering that had commenced a few hours ago continued on, making me wish I had a pair of earplugs. I didn’t need to ask what was being built outside. Even though I’d sent back the wheelchair, I knew what they were working on. Poor Mrs. Gibson. She’d probably figured she’d one day have to accept a ramp being built up to her front door since her husband’s body would have to give out eventually after ranching for sixty-plus years, but I doubted she’d anticipated her daughter’s boyfriend who’d become paralyzed after getting thrown from a bull named VooDoo being responsible for the ramp.
To drown out the sound of the hammering, I squeezed my eyes closed and tried to fall asleep. Somehow, that only exacerbated the noise, so I just kept my eyes open and hoped that when night fell, they’d put away their hammers and give it up for a few hours.
But when night finally did come, those hammers were still pounding. I was getting close to throwing my head back and hollering for someone when a figure magically appeared in the doorway. I thought I’d seen Rowen pissed before, and I had—only about a few hundred times—but this was different. Based upon her expression, this was pissed to the tenth power.
Stepping inside the room, she shoved the door closed. It slammed, rattling the window across the room. Her hair was pulled back into some messy bun, and she was wearing a mix of her country clothes and what I guessed was her Seattle wardrobe, making her look as though someone with split personalities had dressed her. Rowen’s skin was so white I’d always teased her that sunlight actually bounced off her skin instead of absorbing into it, but tonight, at least in her face, she was so flushed she looked more red than white.
She stayed by the door, butting her shoulder into it and shifting her eyes in my direction. “We’re going to have our talk now,” she stated in a relatively calm voice.
“Been looking forward to it.”
Her eyebrows peaked. “You remember how this is going to work? Maybe I should recap . . . by having a talk, I mean I’m going to talk and you’re going to listen.” She pointed at me before zipping her fingers across the seam of her lips. “Is that understood?”
My eyes rolled. Rowen and I didn’t do one-sided conversations too well. “No promises.”
Shoving off the door, she reached into her back pocket and removed a roll of duct tape. From the look of it, the roll was brand new. From the look of her, she was planning on using every last scrap of it on me.
When she took her first step my direction, I would have made a zipping motion across my lips if I could have. Instead, I clamped my lips tight and gave her a “Happy now?” look. She paused, probably waiting to see if I really could keep my mouth shut, before moving closer and sliding the duct tape roll over her wrist like it was a bracelet. I didn’t doubt that she wore duct tape rolls as bracelets any old time, which meant Jesse got off cheap and easy when it came time to go jewelry shopping.
“You’re behaving like an asshole. A really big one,” she said, situating a hand on each hip as she glowered at me. “But instead of concentrating your assholery on yourself, as you typically have in the past, you’re focusing it on everyone who cares about you or wants to help you. That’s not okay.” Her voice was mostly calm, although that was probably because I was keeping up with my whole lips-zipped thing. “I know why you’re doing it. I get why you’re pushing us away when, really, you need us most.”
Of course another eye roll was in order, but she didn’t threaten me with the duct tape again, so I guessed eye rolls were acceptable.
“I understand what you’re thinking because, God, it actually pains me to say this—no joke, I feel like I’m about to shove a samurai sword through my stomach right now”—Rowen’s face pulled into a pronounced wince before continuing—“but I understand what you’re thinking because you and I are more alike than we’re different. And shit, I just said that, didn’t I?” She shook her head, looking as if that might have been the most sobering reality she’d had to wrap her mind around to date. “But my point is that I get you, Garth. You go and bust your back, and instead of relying on people to help you because that’s what people do when someone they care about gets hurt, you’d rather push them away because that, Garth Black, is how we think we’re proving our love for those people. We love them, therefore we can’t allow them to spend their time taking care of us or attending to our needs or staying at our side, even when life throws us a cruel curve ball. I get that kind of thinking so much it’s scary.” She looked around like she was searching for a chair to settle into, but since none were close by, she just sat on the edge of my bed and curled her leg beneath her. “We love them so much we don’t want to bury them with burdens. Right?”
When she seemed to be waiting for some kind of response from me, I offered a nod, eyeing the duct tape roll still swinging from her wrist.
“There was a time when I would have rather let Jesse go than have him stay and feel obligated to dole out my medication or wipe my butt.”
My brows hit my hairline in warning. All things of a toileting nature were a sensitive topic, for obvious reasons.
“I thought that mindset was like the purest form of love there was—cutting someone loose when my life became a clusterfuck to spare them from the same thing happening to theirs—but that’s a seriously messed up view of love, and it sure as hell isn’t pure.” She shook her head, pulling at a thread dangling from the hem of her dark jeans. “That’s conditional love. The kind we might justify as being okay because it’s not us saying we’ll only love them if they do this or don’t do this, but instead we’ll only let them love us if we do this or don’t do this. But how is that real love, Black? How can we feel the way we do about the people we do and justify letting them go?”
When she paused again, I could tell from her eyes that she wanted me to answer—in words instead of facial expressions. “We justify it because we want the best for them, and we realize we’re not that.” My voice sounded tight. I wrote it off as being from the prolonged silence instead of the real reason I knew it was off.
“But would letting them go be what’s best for them really?” she asked in what was quite possibly the quietest voice Rowen Sterling-Walker possessed. “Would you like it if Josie did the same thing to you if she was in this bed instead of you? Would you believe her pushing you away and letting you go was what was ‘best for you’?”
She let those questions hang in the air for so long I doubted I’d ever be able to forget them. In some way, I knew those questions would always haunt me.
I felt my brows pinch together as I worked to put my thoughts together—they didn’t seem to want to stick. “Just because I know what I’d do if Josie’s and my situations were reversed doesn’t mean I can assume that’s the same choice she’d make for herself. Just because she’d have to wrestle me into an iron box, padlock it, and ship me off to Tel Aviv to push me away doesn’t mean I’ll have to do the same to her.”
Rowen graced me with a look that made it seem like she was having a conversation with a kindergartener. “Have you tried asking Josie for her opinion?” She lifted a brow and gave my arm what looked like a hard shove. I didn’t have to feel it to realize that was Rowen’s way of trying to shove, cram, or force some sense into me. “Have you tried talking to the woman you love, the one who loves you in return, to see what she has to say about what happens next? You know, hear her input on what she’d like for her future instead of choosing for her?”
I narrowed my eyes at her. “I’m picking up on your sarcasm, and after putting up with it for so long now, it no longer has an effect on me.”
“Come on, Black.” Another arm shove. “Ask her. That’s all I’m asking of you. Could you imagine if Josie started acting the way you’ve been lately because she was trying to do what was best for you without even asking you for your opinion on what was best for you?” Rowen’s nose wrinkled. “Damn, that was a mouthful, but did you get what I said?”
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“Yeah, I got it. You’ve never had much of an issue at getting your point across, Sterling-Walker.”
She lifted her eyes toward the ceiling before getting back to boring through mine. “Yeah, but does you getting it mean you’re actually going to ask her about what she thinks and wants? Or are you going to keep on playing the martyr who’s convinced himself that maybe he tricked life for a while but deep down he’s never deserved anything good because there’s nothing inside of him that’s good?”
When I looked away, she leaned over me until she was in my field of vision again. When I looked away again, she did the same thing. Finally, I gave in and met her pointed stare with one of my own. “Don’t project your warped views on me.”
“I’m not,” she said in that still-calm voice. “I’m identifying.”
My heartbeat was starting to pick up, not really from what Rowen was saying but from how what she was saying was hitting me. “Stop identifying then.”
She tilted her head, a partial smile crawling into place. “I will. When you stop trying to force my best friend into a life she doesn’t want.”
I huffed sharply. “That life she doesn’t want meaning taking care of a cripple for the next fifty years?”
Rowen leaned in closer and arched an eyebrow. “Spending the rest of her life without the person she loves.”
YESTERDAY I’D BEEN hell-bent on skipping the doctor appointment Josie had made for me. How I’d wound up in the medical transport service van today, propped up in one of their loaner wheelchairs—which looked identical to the one I’d sent back—was beyond me, but I supposed it had something to do with what Rowen had said to me. Or more accurately, what she’d pounded into me.
I wasn’t sold on what she’d said or converted to the way she viewed love versus the way I did, but she’d given me enough to chew on through the night and into the morning. So when Josie had peeked her head in earlier, asking me if I still wanted her to cancel the appointment, I told her I’d go, doing my best to keep my doubt and skepticism to myself. If she wanted to believe there was a chance for me to make a recovery, I wouldn’t rob her of that. I would have given my useless left nut to still feel any margin of hope.
She’d been so out-of-her-mind happy I’d agreed to go that she’d rushed over, thrown herself over my lap, and kissed me so hard and so long I almost forgot I couldn’t feel anything from the neck down because everything north of that area was feeling pretty damn amazing. Only when I went to fold my arm around her back to pull her closer was I abruptly reminded of my predicament . . . if you can consider being a quadriplegic a “predicament.”
That kiss had been an escape, a vessel capable of transporting me to another world, and that realization led me to wonder if I could just spend the rest of my life kissing Joze. Then being paralyzed wouldn’t be so damn hard to face. If I could always feel her lips formed around mine, her soft breath warming my neck, her hands tangled in my hair . . . if I could just freeze that moment of perfection for the next however many more years I had left, I could do it. I could live as a paralyzed man and leave this world with a smile on my face. If only I could just keep Josie this close . . . if only . . .
I’d had so many “if only”s in my past I’d let them suck the life out of my present. But “if only” didn’t just apply to a person’s past—it could also direct one’s future. If only I’d gotten into that top-notch college. If only I’d gotten that promotion. If only I’d gotten that girl to fall in love with me. If only I’d achieved, earned, or succeeded at such and such, my life would be perfect. But that was a falsehood. A lie wrapped up in the veneer of what appeared to be the truth. If only I’d saved the world ten times over, earned the fame, glory, money, and the girl . . . and got to eat prime rib every day for breakfast, lunch, and dinner . . . my life wouldn’t be perfect. If only I could just keep kissing Josie for the rest of my life . . . my life wouldn’t be perfect. Because hers wouldn’t be.
I might have been, and still was to a certain extent, a selfish, single-minded son of a bitch, but even I couldn’t be okay with allowing my quest for a perfect life take away hers. Josie couldn’t spend the rest of her life kissing me. She had so much more to give and to experience and to see. She had more worlds to light on fire as she’d lit mine. She had more people to make laugh and smile and leave her impression on. She had a whole life to live, and just because my life had been so scaled down that kissing her for the next fifty years was all I wanted didn’t mean that was all she wanted. Or deserved.
My life had grown small. Microscopically small. Hers was still immense, spilling over into the realm of infinite almost. I wouldn’t allow her to shrink her world in order to stay in mine. I couldn’t. It would have been the cruelest, most despicable thing I’d ever done . . . and I’d done plenty of things that fell into those categories.
That didn’t mean I was resolved to keep pushing her away as quickly as I could—Rowen’s mini-sermon was still sitting heavily on my mind, and I couldn’t seem to shake it off quite yet—but it also didn’t mean I would let her spend her days and nights at my bedside. If there was a way to stay in each other’s lives while she still lived hers as fully as I knew she could and deserved, then I’d consider—consider—abandoning my pushing-away agenda. But I recognized that was more of a baseless hope than a founded reality.
Josie could tell my head was heavy with something, and by the time we rolled to a stop in front of the doctor’s building adjoined to the hospital, she’d already asked me three times what I was thinking. I didn’t tell her what was really on my mind, but I answered with a partial truth about thinking of the future. From the way she’d looked away from me after I answered her the same way for the third time, I knew she could tell I was hiding something. She was right of course, but I couldn’t very well tell her I was contemplating the best possible future for her and if that involved me in some fraction of a capacity.
The guy driving the medical van came around to open the large back doors. I didn’t know how much this little trip had cost—probably not nearly as much as the fifteen-hour ambulance ride—but I couldn’t keep racking up these kinds of bills. I felt the hospital bill from down in Casper coming, and from what I knew of the tests they’d run on me, paired with people’s complaints about the astronomical costs associated with hospitals stays and procedures, I knew I’d probably require a fifth of Jack before I could open that envelope. Too bad I’d given up drinking the hard stuff months ago. I’d probably never needed a drink more, so of course this was the point in my life I’d grown a conscience.
“Have a nice ride?” the driver, whose nametag identified him as Lou, asked. He lent Josie a hand to guide her out of the van.
I tried not to glare at his hand curling around hers. But it was a gesture I would have sold my soul to be able to do, and I couldn’t keep my glare contained. I think it became more of a scowl even.
“It was fucking fantastic,” I answered as he messed with some dials and buttons to lower the platform I was on. “But since I didn’t see any comment cards floating around back there—not that I could fill them out in my current state—here’s a few suggestions: Get an air freshener because it smells like nothing short of a hundred people have shit themselves in the back of this thing in the past month, screw down whatever the hell is rattling around in the front of the van before you become responsible for driving a physically disabled person mentally disabled to match, and please, this is the most important part . . .” My gaze lifted to the bumper stickers plastered around the interior of the van as the ramp lowered me closer to the ground. “Get rid of the slew of positive affirmations you have glued to every inch of bare wall inside there. ‘Believe you can, and you’re halfway there’? ‘Every day is a second chance’? ‘Don’t be afraid to fail, be afraid not to try’?” A sharp laugh slipped past my lips as I shook my head. “You do realize that with the business you’re in—transporting people so handicapped they can’t move themselves—concepts like every day being a second ch
ance and just giving it your best are not realistic or even viable solutions to our problems, right? Just thinking myself happy or inhaling love and exhaling hate won’t make me whole. So why don’t you rip down those damn things and save the rest of your transports from being reminded of how small their lives are and how they’ve lost most, if not all, control of them?”
I hadn’t meant to end my spiel shouting and red-faced. I hadn’t even meant to go off like that, but from the looks on Lou’s and Joze’s faces, I might as well have been spilling my internal organs on the pavement. Lou’s smile fell as he focused on lowering the platform the rest of the way to the ground, and Josie’s eyes shifted from narrowing to looking close to spilling over with tears. I regretted saying what I had. Thinking it was one thing, but spewing all of my anger and frustration when people were around—especially the person I cared about most—was not acceptable. Even if I did decide I needed to push her away.
“Sorry,” I said around a sigh. “Just ignore the bitter, raving madman in the wheelchair. The world pissed on him, so he’s trying to piss on it right back. I’ll try harder not to take it out on innocent bystanders.”
When I looked at Josie, she was clearly avoiding making eye contact with me. Lou seemed to be of the same mindset. Josie stepped up on the curb and waited while Lou moved my wheelchair from the platform and headed for the sidewalk.
“Just give me a ring when your appointment’s over, and I’ll pick you back up here,” he said in a formal voice to Josie.
She nodded, working up a small smile as she stood beside me once Lou had me on the sidewalk.
“Do you want me to show you again how this operates?” he asked her.
“Nah, I’m pretty sure I’ve got it,” she said. “If I need some help, I can play a pretty convincing damsel in distress.”
That got a chuckle out of Lou and a bristle out of me. I didn’t like the idea of someone besides me rushing in to save the day or the moment or whatever needed saving in Josie’s life. I didn’t like scanning the people moving in and out of the hospital and wondering which one or ones would rush in to help a girl like Joze.