Forever Devoted

by Virginia Nelson

  That his hands shook as he tugged at her jeans, that his motions seemed almost as desperate as she felt, soothed years of rejections she’d imagined in his actions. “Why did you, then?”

  He froze, his gaze fastened on hers. She didn’t miss the sincerity in his words or the hard line of his jaw as he obviously restrained his own needs to speak. “I’ve never wanted to hurt you, my Robbie. I certainly wouldn’t take advantage of you when you were fighting so damned hard to reclaim yourself.”

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered. Peppering kisses across his chest, she then hugged him close. “I’m so damned sorry.”

  “For what? Tempting me?” His attempt at brevity didn’t match the way his hands streaked across her back, holding her ever closer as if he’d pull her inside himself to protect her.

  “For the accident. For what you’ve been through. I—”

  His fingertip on her lips silenced her as she began to tear up. “Don’t apologize. It wasn’t your fault.”

  But it was. They both knew that.

  Backing away from his touch, she got off the bed. The tears? She understood what her doctors had said. She’d likely be raw—a walking nerve, prone to tears and joy in lightning fast, see-sawing succession—for a long time to come. Him forgiving her for putting them both through months of hell? Forgiving her a mistake she’d likely never fully recover from, even in the best-case scenarios, since she’d damaged her damned brain….

  “Robbie?”

  “I want you, Gray.”

  “I’m hearing a silent ‘but’ in there.”

  “But I want you to leave.”

  “Robbie….”

  She didn’t answer, knowing him well enough to know he’d do as she asked, even if neither of them really wanted him to. Sure enough, moments later, he’d left the room and closed the door behind him.

  For the first time since she’d come to his house, she placed her hand on the knob. Only hesitating for a second, she turned the lock. Some weird connection to him, brought to life by the moments tangled with him on the bed, let her know he stood just outside the door and heard her decision in that lock turning.

  Facing the bed, she couldn’t get back in it, knowing it would smell like him. She could be having sex with him right then instead of moving to the window to look outside at spring struggling to break through winter’s cold claws. But she flattened her palms on the glass and counted her breaths just like the doctor had taught her.

  She could be having outstanding sex with the man she’d loved most of her life, but she wouldn’t. Because he loved her….

  Which meant he deserved better than what she’d become. She wasn’t a woman, not any more. She was an invalid, broken on the inside where no one could fix her. She’d done that; she’d made the bad choice. If he nursed some twisted Florence Nightingale syndrome….

  He deserved better than that.

  Gray didn’t need to be dragged down with her, not just because she’d made a mistake. She needed out so he could move on with his life. He ought to have better than what she had to offer at this point.

  Because she loved him, she’d make sure she didn’t chose as poorly for him as she had for herself.

  Chapter Eight

  May

  Though they lived in the same house, Robbie managed to avoid being alone with Gray for more than a few minutes at any given point in time for the better part of a month. It grated on his nerves, not to mention driving his protectiveness crazy. She seemed determined to prove to him and everyone else that she was independent, that she didn’t need cared for constantly.

  Her cheeks hollowed out because she overdid it. When her clothes hung off her, loose from her weight loss, he didn’t push her to eat, although his system practically jangled with the need to do so. Too often, he caught her with her hand braced on the wall, held up by sheer stubbornness, even though she was clearly exhausted.

  Too often, he caught her scrambling or misusing a word then covering it up and laughing it off. Once in a while, her body won the silent battle she waged. He saw when headaches forced her into her room to darken the windows with blankets and cover her head with a pillow until the pain subsided. Most days it seemed she won, nails dug stubbornly into the idea of recovery and being treated “normal.”

  But it was her birthday, so he had an excuse to pop over to the store—flowers and a paperback novel in a series he knew she’d been reading in hand—to wish her a happy birthday.

  He hadn’t kissed her, not once, since she’d told him to leave her room. Neither of them broached the topic, which didn’t seem to bother her in the least. It bothered him, and if she thought he’d give up on them so easily, then she’d not been paying attention while he fought by her side during her reclamation of her mind.

  For a moment, he stood outside the store and just looked his fill at her. Lately, he’d tried to match her distance, resisting the need to watch her because he knew she’d snap and snarl that he was hovering again. Her hair was pulled back from her face with a red scarf that matched the color she’d slicked on her plump, wide smile. The white uniform shirt and gold nametag somehow made the vibrancy of the crimson take on an air of jubilance that didn’t match her eyes.

  She looked tired. She’d been pushing too hard and had managed to shove him so neatly into a corner that he couldn’t even insist she take it easier. On one hand, he was proud of her since her doctors were amazed at her progress. On the other, he longed to curl up with her each night, as he had for so many nights, just holding her to reassure himself she was indeed okay.

  Many nights, he woke tangled in his sheets. Her detailed descriptions of her accident painted a vivid and pain-filled portrait in his mind. Nightmares of her, metal crunching like tin foil around her as she bounced off the inside of a truck cabin, haunted him. Seeing her safe soothed him, let him know the demons of his dreams didn’t nip at her heels in the light of day.

  He was so enraptured with just the sight of her that it took him a second to realize who she aimed that heart-stopping smile at. But then he noticed the man….

  His fist clenched around the flowers, and the blooms broke as he used that hand to shove open the glass door to the store. “Get the fuck away from her,” he bellowed, rage a white-hot spike steeling his spine and preparing him for battle.

  Faces swiveled in his direction, Robbie’s included, but the asshole only bowed his head. His arms were braced on the side of the conveyer belt of her aisle, and Gray watched as the muscles bunched across the other man’s shoulders as he rolled them before turning. Finally, he faced Gray as the door to Twinkie’s office opened and his friend peeked out.

  In two strides, he was close enough to hit the man, but Twinkie caught him in a flying tackle, wrestling him to the cold linoleum before he could make contact. “Get the hell off me, Twinkles.”

  “She doesn’t need you arrested for assault on top of everything else. Come with me, I’ll explain.”

  “Explain what?” Robbie knelt over him, her hands swatting at Twinkie. “Get off him, Twinks, or I swear I’ll clock you a good one.”

  “Is he gone?” Twinkie asked.

  “Is who gone?” Robbie sounded baffled, but Twinkie’s head twisted to see past her while Gray struggled to dislodge him.

  “Okay, get up. You can thank me when your temper cools.” Twinkie moved off Gray as he spoke, but Gray didn’t get up. He couldn’t since Robbie had practically thrown herself on him.

  “Are you okay? What the hell, Twinkie? Why would you knock him down?”

  Brushing a hand across her cheek, Gray sat but roped his arms around her so she couldn’t escape. Not caring who saw him, he cradled her close and whispered in her ear, “Are you okay?”

  “I wasn’t the one tackled in a grocery store. I’m fine. Lemme up,” she added the last a bit breathlessly, unable to hide her reaction to him while in his arms. She still wanted him, the knowledge a poor balm to the raw scrapes in his ego from her continued d
istance.

  They both stood, and she brushed at her uniform as if the scuffle might have mussed it in some way. “What the fuck, Twinks? Why was he here?” Gray demanded.

  “She doesn’t remember him. He’s been in here before. He always chooses her line, but she doesn’t remember him, and he never says anything about it.” Twinkie smacked his shoulder. “It is okay. We live in a small town. It wasn’t like you thought she’d never see him again.”

  All true enough technically, but regardless of whether or not they ran into one another, that bastard didn’t deserve her smile. “That’s bullshit, Twinkie, and you know it.”

  “Would someone please explain? Who? Who don’t I remember, and why does it matter?”

  Frustrated, Robbie rounded on Twinkie, but Gray answered her.

  “That was the bastard who almost killed you, Robs.”

  The color drained out of her face, and he caught her when she crumpled.

  ***

  She’d thought she remembered everything. She’d not been sleeping well, not for weeks, because she relived the accident each night when she lay down to sleep. It seemed to be her penance for stupidity, a small price to pay to walk away with her life mostly intact.

  Sure, she remembered grabbing the holy shit bar. She’d become weightless for a couple seconds while the world outside the truck seemed to rotate, sky becoming ground and vice versa in such rapid succession she was dizzied just watching the mental movie play out. The sounds—she could live a hundred years and she was sure she’d never forget what metal sounded like as it crunched like tin foil in an angry child’s hand. The glass shattering had been soundless, the view a bit like watching stars explode into glittering confetti that blew around her in a jagged cloud.

  She couldn’t stop the motion, thrown around like a ragdoll in a tornado, banging off things and sure she was about to die.

  Her last thoughts when she hung from the seatbelt, suspended upside down and seeing her own blood dripping like red jewels to land on the gray roof of the truck below her—all of it horrible and pretty since her red blood looked oddly lovely amidst the glittering glass illuminated by the dashboard lights—

  Gray told me not to go.

  She remembered all of it so crystal clear—she’d literally relived it each night in the past month or so.

  Yet she’d forgotten the guy. The driver, the man who flipped her life upside down when he’d rolled his truck.

  Blinking, she struggled to focus, but couldn’t past the nausea. “Gray, I’m going to be sick.”

  How she knew his arms were the ones that cradled her, she didn’t know. But it was him, and her words sprung him into motion. In a blurry but small amount of time, her head dangled above a toilet and a cool cloth pressed to her neck.

  “You’re still breathing too fast. Remember? We’ve done this before, Robs. In for a count of three…out for a count of three. Breathe with me, remember? Just listen to how I do it and match me, okay?”

  She tried to nod, and the world tilted at an angle, gray dots spiking across her vision. Closing her eyes, because the dots and movement were making her dizzier, she focused on the sound of him breathing behind her. He’d pressed himself against her back, so she could feel him as well as hear him. In for three, out for three.

  Her pulse seemed to slow, matching the breathing, and she brought her hands up to brace on the toilet seat. When she would have pressed her head to the lid, suddenly too heavy to hold up with her weirdly noodle-limp neck, he turned her and cradled her into his shoulder.

  She fit there, like a puzzle piece locking into place. Closing her eyes, she kept focusing on the breathing while the scent of him—citrus and man—soothed her on a bone-deep level. “How did I forget him? I remember all of it….” Her question trailed off as she tried to make sense of the insensible.

  His hand traced up and down her back, the motion an added tenderness when everything about his actions spoke of caring. “I don’t know.”

  “Why is he here? They settled things….” She’d been out of it while most of the business end of her life being wrecked resolved. Insurance claims, medical decisions—she wasn’t sure how or what happened exactly, and when Gray tried to explain it to her, she couldn’t seem to drum up much concern about it. Something about losing your mind, having your very brain damaged, made things like money and insurance forms seem so damned petty and meaningless.

  “They did,” Gray agreed.

  “I lost my house. I lost my job. I’m just barely getting back my body... Did you see how healthy he is? Was he even hurt?”

  “I know you don’t like being carried, but would you be offended if I carried you to the truck? I want to take you home. I don’t want to have this discussion in a grocery store employee restroom.”

  Swallowing, she noticed how dry her throat was. “Yes, please. I’m still dizzy.”

  “I know.” Gray’s voice seemed emotionless, a chalkboard wiped clean of anything aside from calm and efficiency. In moments, he’d bundled her up and placed her in the truck. As he snapped the seatbelt in place, his face was near hers for a minute, and their eyes met.

  The careful blankness in his tone wasn’t reflected in his eyes. Storm-tossed and worried, his expression spoke volumes. Without thinking, she reached out and pulled his face close so that their cheeks rested against each other.

  His sigh seemed to be full of everything he wasn’t saying. He released her, moving to his side of the vehicle, and she opened her window to let the warmth and clean scents of spring inside.

  Eyes closed, she didn’t speak as he drove them the few blocks home and didn’t complain when he collected her from her seat to carry her inside. Once the door was locked, he didn’t put her down. Instead, he held her close and curled them both into the couch.

  “I would feel better if you let me hold you for a while. Seeing him…then you going white and passing out? I would—”

  “You don’t have to explain.” Since her fingers were buried in his shirt, clinging like she was a burr, she figured she made her thoughts on the matter clear. “Not about that.”

  He nodded, one hand wrapped around her neck as he kept their faces close together.

  “He wasn’t hurt. A couple bruises, a few scrapes from the glass flying around the inside of the truck, but otherwise his airbags protected him from serious injury. Maybe he got a black eye? Nothing much insofar as physical repercussions for his stupidity. He wasn’t even hospitalized. From what he told the police in the report, the passenger side airbag was turned off because he had his niece in the truck earlier that day…So nothing protected you from injury. From what I heard, he got a three-day stay at the county jail, paid less than three hundred dollars, and lost his license for six months. Since they gave him work-driving privileges, I hardly think he even started to pay for what he did to you.”

  Biting her lips, she shook her head. What a strange world. The accident that stole so much from her, and he’d been the driver….

  Yet he’d walked away from that mangled metal as if nothing had happened. Well, he’d been out a truck, but she’d lost almost everything. Shaking her head at the strangeness of the idea, she inhaled his scent and wrapped herself more thoroughly into his embrace. “What are the chances of that?”

  His lips grazed her throat, an open-mouthed kiss that stole her breath. “It wasn’t fair. I hate him.”

  She snorted, fingers delving into his hair. She could feel the warmth of him near the scalp, the heat penetrating the soul-deep coldness that seemed to leech the strength from her. “How did I not recognize him? I mean, I remembered so much. I can tell you how the truck smelled, how my blood smelled….” Her breath was speeding again, which she recognized and corrected by listening to his breathing again.

  “You’ve never asked. Not once, not even in the hospital when you were in and out of it and asked the same damned questions again and again….” Gray’s fingers twitched, digging into her before relaxing ag
ain.

  “Huh.” She shook her head, amused despite herself at the odd pieces falling into place. “You’d think….”

  Well, it would make sense for her to have been concerned for the person in the accident with her. It would make sense for them to have been equally injured or—

  Then again, nothing about any of it made sense. Perhaps her broken brain just couldn’t work its way around the reality because she was too close to it.

  The reminder of her broken brain brought her position into stark focus. Plucking herself free of Gray’s hold, she moved to stand. “I’m sorry. I’m doing it to you again. I’ll—”

  “Quit fucking doing that.”

  The resounding anger in his tone startled her, and she stopped trying to untangle herself from his embrace. “Excuse me?”

  “Quit pushing me away. Quit apologizing. Whatever the hell is going on in that blonde blockhead of yours, just knock it the hell off.” Fury etched his features into hard and unrelenting lines. With fingertips still shaking from the shocks of her day, she traced those lines, pleased when the ones on his forehead eased a bit.

  “You’re right. I should talk to you about it. Here I sit, bemoaning the unfairness of the accident and the strangeness of those events, yet I’ve been avoiding discussing…this for almost a month.”

  He nodded, waiting.

  “I’ve been at the grocery store long enough now that I’ve almost saved up enough for first month and security on a new place of my own. Twinkle is willing to loan me any amount over what I’ve saved that I’ll need, and Rowdy says he’s kept some of my furniture in his garage, so—”