Strummin' Up Love

by Erin Wright

  He stopped.

  He pulled back and looked around. What in the bloody hell was he doing? There they were on the floor of the forest, making out like a pair of randy teenagers where anyone could come along and find them. He jerked back and scooted away from Louisa like she had some contagious disease he was afraid to catch – lustritous? – and gulped in air, trying to get oxygen back into his body. He couldn’t do this to her. He couldn’t use his position of power against her.

  Stupid, stupid, stupid Zane.

  Chapter 22

  Louisa

  Louisa laid on the ground, trying to bring herself back to reality. One moment, she was on cloud nine, feeling like she’d never felt before, and the next, she was…being rejected?

  The thought hurt so damn bad, she felt like someone was tearing at her heart, destroying it. After months of keeping her hands to herself, of being a good girl, of not touching this Greek god she’d somehow found herself living with, he finally makes the moves on her, and then, he turns away from her in disgust.

  She didn’t know she was that ugly, that she could turn the stomach of someone to the point of them not even being able to look at her any longer. And make no mistake, that was exactly what Zane was doing. He was staring off into the trees, refusing to meet her eyes, his breaths ragged.

  And still he didn’t speak, or look at her. The silence was getting thick. Painful. Insurmountable.

  She scrambled to her feet, straightening her bra, yanking at her t-shirt, running fingers through her hair, trying to get any leaves or twigs or other evidence of what they’d done out of it. She didn’t have a mirror and she wasn’t about to ask Zane for help, so she did the best she could and then quickly rebraided it, her fingers flying down the braid, as automatic as breathing.

  “I’m sorry,” Zane said formally after he pushed himself to his feet. “I shouldn’t have done that.”

  Still, he wasn’t meeting her eyes, and she wanted to take him by the shoulders and shake him and ask him if she was really that ugly that he could not bear to look at her but she didn’t. She refused to. No self-respecting Latina would prostrate herself like that. She was going to get back on her horse, ride back to the therapy camp, and pretend this never happened.

  Her pride refused to let her do anything else. She would never let him know how much his rejection hurt.

  Stupid, stupid, stupid Louisa.

  Chapter 23

  Zane

  “What’s wrong?”

  Skyler’s eyes were flitting between him and Louisa as he sat in the backseat of the Audi, watching them both closely. He’d always been so good at watching the moods shift between him and Tamara, monitoring their relationship for the slightest change, and apparently, he hadn’t lost that ability.

  My very own mood detector.

  Why couldn’t his son be oblivious to everything around him like most 12-year-old boys were?

  “Nothing,” Louisa said reassuringly, shooting Skyler a bright smile over her shoulder.

  It was as believable as those trompe l’oeil paintings. From far away, you just might be fooled, but up close, you could tell it wasn’t real.

  Skyler raised his eyebrows skeptically.

  Nope, not fooled one bit.

  Despite how awkward it was currently making his life, Zane found himself a little proud of his son for being so observant. It would be ever so much easier if he’d turn that observant streak somewhere else, but Zane had to hand it to him – Skyler wasn’t about to fall for someone’s bullshit.

  The quiet in the car stretched out, and Zane began wishing quite desperately that they’d been able to find a house to rent that was closer to Sawyer. When his agent had first found him a handicap-accessible home outside of Franklin, Zane had been so grateful, he hadn’t paid a lot of attention to the distance between that home and…well, anything else. It was way up in the mountains – not even close to Franklin, let alone Sawyer, where the therapy camp was actually taking place.

  How many handicap-accessible houses do you think there are up in the Goldfork Mountains? Stop your bitching.

  But still, he was counting the miles until they got home and he could escape to his studio. Maybe reworking a song would help him clear his head. Get it screwed on straight.

  Clearly deciding that he wasn’t going to get a straight answer out of either of them, Skyler changed subjects. “Juan wants to go kayaking with us. Can we go kayaking together? All of us?”

  “We’ll have to ask his parents, but I don’t see why not,” Zane said with a quick smile over his shoulder. He’d loved going kayaking with Louisa and Skyler. Turned out, he was a hell of a lot better in a kayak than he was on the back of a horse.

  Something he was definitely going to keep between him and the fence post. If his publicist heard him saying that out loud…

  “Louisa, I want to be stronger,” Skyler said seriously, as they finally turned down the bumpy dirt road that led back to the house. Zane had kept meaning to get someone out there to fix the damn thing but there they were, nearing the end of summer, and he still hadn’t called anyone. “Can you help me?”

  “That’s an excellent idea!” she replied, genuine excitement in her voice this time. “If we added lifting weights into your routine every morning, you could use your arms more efficiently to compensate for your lack of muscle control in your legs. Not to say that you shouldn’t continue to do your leg exercises, of course, but—” She paused and then shrugged. “It’s a fact of life that your arms are always going to be stronger than your legs.”

  Zane winced at that, but Skyler wasn’t paying attention, for once.

  “I can be a bodybuilder!” he crowed, flexing his arms in the typical bodybuilder pose, showing off his string-bean limbs.

  “Although I like your enthusiasm,” Louisa said, holding up her hand to slow his gush of excitement, “it’s actually not good for someone your age to try to bulk up by lifting weights. You can do real damage to your body.”

  “Oh,” Skyler said, sinking down in his seat, deflating like a balloon.

  “But just because you don’t end up looking like a bodybuilder when you’re done doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t do it,” Louisa hurried on. “Like I said, your arms are always going to be stronger than your legs. It’s a damn good idea to strengthen them as much as possible. Were you thinking about how hard it is to paddle a kayak for a long time?”

  “Yeah,” he said, his voice still flat. “I want to be able to kayak longer, and also push my wheelchair around more without getting tired. Am I ever going to walk?”

  The question landed in the quiet of the car just as Zane had turned off the engine, the garage door sliding closed behind them. He froze, his mind racing, his hand hovering in midair, stopped in the act of pulling back from the ignition button.

  Skyler had only asked that question once before, and the nurse in the hospital had brushed him off, saying that whether someone walked or not wasn’t a big deal.

  It was a statement that Zane had thought was patently stupid. Of course it was a big deal. Who was she trying to kid?

  Skyler had taken the nurse’s words to mean that he wasn’t going to because otherwise, she would’ve said so, right? Zane had seen it in his son’s eyes as he sunk back against the pillow. He was giving up right in front of them.

  Zane’d frozen up then. He wasn’t a nurse. Hell, he barely knew how to apply a bandaid. Was his son ever going to walk again? He didn’t know. The doctors didn’t know. Was it better to lie and say that he absolutely would? Was it better to say nothing at all?

  A therapist had come in then and life had moved on and Zane never really had to make a choice. He had just let it go and Skyler hadn’t asked again and Zane had forgotten the question had even been asked in the haze of guilt and grief and anger and flat-out terror after the accident.

  But although Zane had been willing to let the question go, Skyler hadn’t. All these months later, and it was still haunting him.

  I am a terribl
e father. My son…I haven’t been there for him. Just like I’d been so damn worried that I would, I screwed everything up.

  Louisa began talking then, and even before he knew what Louisa’s answer was going to be, a large part of him was just so damn grateful that she was talking. She didn’t seem to suffer from performance anxiety and freeze up in the face of tough questions.

  Thank God.

  “I told you before that I read over your charts, right?” Louisa said carefully, turning in her seat to look back at Skyler. He nodded slowly. “I was a nurse for a long time. Reading medical charts is just one of my many talents.” Skyler laughed a little at that as she’d intended, but grew serious again immediately. He did not want to be sidetracked. He wanted a straight answer, and he knew Louisa would give it to him.

  Smart kid.

  “There’s nothing in your charts that told me you couldn’t walk again. There was also nothing in your charts that said it would be easy. We’ve been doing exercises every morning together, and you’ve been doing all right, but I know you’ve got more to you than what you’ve been giving me. You do those exercises because you want the remote back for your Xbox, not so you can walk again, and that makes all of the difference in the world. Do you know what the number one indicator is of whether someone will walk again or not?” Zane watched in the rearview mirror as Skyler slowly shook his head.

  Zane was still frozen, not wanting to disturb the moment. This was it; this was a turning point for his son. He knew it like he knew Tamara was dead that night in the limo. He knew it in his gut – an unshakeable knowledge.

  “Whether they believe that they can,” Louisa said simply. “There are limitations, of course. Modern medicine is damn good, but not perfect. Not yet. If the spinal cord is severed, it’s like cutting the power line going into a house. No information is going to make it through and there isn’t a damn thing we can do about that. Yet. But in cases like yours, your spinal cord wasn’t severed. It was heavily bruised, but it wasn’t crushed and it wasn’t cut. The one thing keeping you from getting out of the car and walking into the house is that you haven’t worked hard enough for it. Cariño, you cannot give 80%. You can’t even give 90%. You have to give it all when we’re doing your exercises, and you have to want it so badly, you can taste it.”

  There was silence in the SUV then, and a small part of Zane wondered how it was that they always seemed to end up having life-changing discussions while sitting in the damn garage. Couldn’t they talk about this while he was sitting in a recliner, beer in hand?

  But much more importantly than that was the fact that Louisa had been asked The Question, and she hadn’t frozen up like he had. She’d known what to say.

  What if Louisa had been there in the hospital after the accident? What if she’d been the one talking to the doctors and nurses and therapists instead of me? What if she’d been the one talking to Skyler? He would probably be walking right now. My failure as a parent is why Skyler is trapped in that damn chair. It isn’t his fault; it’s mine.

  He realized he had his hands gripped into fists, the anger at himself pulsing through his veins. Failure. Failure. Failure. The voice was mocking him and he deserved every bit of it.

  He realized then that Louisa and Skyler were heading into the house, Louisa walking beside Skyler as he rolled along, chatting about how hard he was going to work and how someday, he was going to beat Juan in a footrace, and–

  The door to the house shut behind them, cutting off their voices, leaving Zane behind in the SUV to wrestle with his guilt. He had so much more to learn. So much more growth ahead of him.

  But if he could convince Louisa to stay with them; if he could just convince Louisa to move back to Tennessee, he might have a chance. He could become the dad he should’ve been from day one.

  You also have to keep your hands to yourself, asshole. Mauling Louisa while rolling around on the forest floor ain’t an option. You do that again, and you’ll lose her for sure. She was hurt once before by dating her boss, and she won’t repeat that mistake. For Skyler’s sake, you can’t touch Louisa ever again.

  He thought, as he climbed out of the Audi to head into the house, that the simple fact that he was willing to give up Louisa’s kisses for the rest of his life, the kind of touch that most men only dreamed about, was proof that he was already becoming a better father. That afternoon, as he’d held Louisa in his arms, he would’ve sworn he wouldn’t give her up for anything in the world.

  But now look at him. He was giving her up for his son.

  He ignored the slicing pain that lanced through him at the thought. It was about damn time that he become a real father, and if that meant him keeping it in his pants, then that’s just what he’d do.

  Chapter 24

  Louisa

  They pulled up to the Miller family farm, happiness bubbling up inside of Louisa. It was her tia’s 70th birthday, which of course Carmelita insisted on celebrating by cooking for three days and inviting everyone to come over and eat. Louisa never understood her tia’s obsession with cooking, much preferring to eat the hard labor of others than to cook it all herself.

  Which, she figured, made her and Carmelita a match made in heaven.

  Skyler was talking a million miles an hour, telling her and Zane everything that he and Juan were going to do that day, which mostly seemed to involve a lot of toy backhoes and dirt. It was a damn good thing that Carmelita didn’t expect – or even want – the kids to show up in button-up shirts and ties, hair carefully slicked back. She wanted them to be happy, and that meant playing in the dirt. And lots and lots of cookies.

  Louisa was sure Carmelita would come through on both accounts.

  As she stepped out of the Audi, carefully balancing an elaborate fruit plate that Chef Ralph had put together for the occasion, she spotted her mom’s van. She stopped dead in her tracks, shaking her head like a dog after getting out of the canal. That couldn’t be right. She blinked rapidly and then looked again.

  That was most definitely her mom’s van. Its side panels were a different color than the hood, the result of an accident in high school, and despite Louisa’s pleas for another vehicle – any other vehicle – her mother continued to have Louisa drive the van to school every day. It had been soooo embarrassing to teenage Louisa, and she’d grown to hate it.

  Of course, the damn thing was unbreakable – it would’ve been much too convenient on teenage Louisa for it to have died somewhere, forcing her mom to replace it – and so here it was, all these years later, still their family’s primary mode of transportation.

  But her mom wasn’t going to be able to come today. She’d said she had too much to do at home that she needed to catch up on. They’d discussed it via text just a couple of nights before.

  What changed?

  Skyler tugged on her elbow, pulling her out of her thoughts. “C’mon,” he said anxiously. “I think everyone’s out back. I can’t see Juan.”

  “Right.” She started forward, feeling Zane’s eyes trained on her back as they walked. Ever since that day by that gorgeous mountain stream when she’d completely grossed him out with her non-starlet body, Zane had been distant with her. She’d spent what felt like days, thinking it over and trying to figure out where they went wrong, and finally decided that it had to have been her body. She wasn’t a hefty girl but she also wasn’t a stick. He probably took one look at her thighs and realized that she weighed more than 97 pounds and every bit of lust for her had disappeared on the spot.

  Well, screw him. She wasn’t going to develop an eating disorder just to please some stupid fantasy men had about banging a bag of bones. If that’s what he wanted, then she wanted no part of him.

  “Remember me telling you about Frizzy?” she asked Skyler as they neared the front steps. He nodded eagerly as she put the platter on his lap and then began carefully pulling him backwards up the two steps and onto the porch. “Well, you’re about to meet them for yourself.”

  “I am?!” His voice br
oke, his excitement contagious, and she grinned at him.

  “Yup. Prepare yourself. I have like 19 younger siblings, and they’re all about to descend.”

  “You have five,” Skyler corrected her, giving her a don’t-bullshit-me look.

  “Close enough,” she said with a laughing grumble, and then knocked on the front door as she opened it. “¿Tia? ¿Mamá? We’re here.”

  “Oh, cariño,” her mom said, hurrying to the front door from the kitchen, her face wreathed in smiles, a younger version of the smile on Carmelita’s face, who was trailing in behind her. “We wanted to surprise you,” she said conspiratorially, pulling Louisa close for a long hug. Louisa felt herself melting into her mother’s arms, the world right again, even if just for a moment.

  “And you must be Skyler,” she said, pulling back and looking down at him. He’d suddenly gone bashful and Louisa was sure that if he could stand on his own two legs, he’d be hiding behind her or Zane. As it was, it was rather hard to hide while in a wheelchair, much to his chagrin. “Oh, you are just as handsome as mi hermana said you were. I am so glad to have you in my family. And you are Zane?”

  Her mother was looking at Zane evenly, openly sizing him up, trying to decide whether she liked him or not. Zane didn’t seem to be intimidated in the slightest, though, and stepped forward, holding out his hand to shake. “It’s nice to finally meet you,” he rumbled, his deep voice difficult to hear among the babble of the family. “I have heard so much about you. Now I know where your daughter gets her beauty.”