“Georgia, the cabbie and the truck driver scraped you off the road and called the ambulance. She called me at the Blink, she’s been here for hours, but she had to get back to work.”
He groaned. He remembered Georgia was working double shifts this week. He’d barely been able to get his hands on her since spending Sunday night in her bed. He’d planned to spend this weekend there too.
“What’s wrong with me?”
Angus snorted in derision and Taylor jumped in. “You’re blind. When did you go completely blind?”
He shook his head and had to swallow bile, coughing against the plug of it in his throat.
“Leave it, Tay.” Ah, thank God for Angus.
“I won’t. I want to know how long he’s been losing sight. How long it was going to take to tell us? You nearly fell off the stage because you couldn’t see the great fat glow-in-the-dark line we painted there for you. You went para-fucking-sailing and you didn’t think it might be smart for one of us to know what was going on with you.”
“Tay, if the bastard wants to keep secrets from people who’ve had his back his whole fucking life, then there’s nothing to talk about.”
Oh shit. Angus’ fury hurt more than all his other aches. “Look, it’s not what you think.” His head hurt, his reasoning, persuading, placating brain space was clearly so distended it had ceased all activity. It was exactly what they thought and he had no words to tell them any different.
“I stopped the nurses calling your parents. You need to tell someone if you want them here. You have concussion. Six stitches over your eye. You’re banged up but nothing is broken.”
What registered as new information was tell someone, meaning Angus was bailing. Angus who’d never walked away from any stupid thing he’d ever done. Always had his back. There was zero point appealing to Taylor. You didn’t need to be sentient to know that. Might as well sleep again; he was useless to the world awake.
The next noise he heard was Sam. “Nah, he looks bad, but it’s only concussion.” He opened his eyes and Sam said, “Hey, he’s awake. Call you later.” Then Sam was closer, the side of the bed rattled. “Mate, you could’ve lost an eye.”
There was a gruff laugh, Jamie or Angus, hard to tell. Who was Sam talking to on the phone?
“Seriously stupid, man. What were you thinking? Angus is so pissed off with you.” So it was Jamie in the room. “Taylor has cut you out of her will.”
He grunted and it hurt his head. Lost an eye, trust Sam. It was funny, but better to have lost an eye than his best friends, than his new girl, because if this didn’t scare Georgia off, he was the luckiest man alive.
And he was already the luckiest man alive. And the stupidest. He could just as easy have gone under the truck. He’d spent the whole of the week since opening his eyes to nothing but black in denial. He didn’t call Lina, his parents. He didn’t arrange for a long cane. He risked his life in front of all the people he loved most for a Sunday thrill-seeking expedition because he’d needed to prove to himself that nothing was going to change.
“You’re right, Sam.” The words were hard to get out past whatever was wrong with his throat. “That you, Jamie?”
“Yeah, mate. Shit, Damon. Georgia is shook up. She thinks it’s her fault that she didn’t put you in the taxi.”
“Oh fuck.” He lifted his head and the world tilted on a new axis, but he sat up anyway and let it spin till he felt like he might throw up his heart. He deserved to feel this bad, but it wouldn’t right things with anyone. “How long do I have to stay here?”
“Tonight,” said Jamie. “You can come home tomorrow if you check out okay.”
He wanted to go home now, but his chances of getting anyone to help him do that were severely impacted by the fact he’d been such a fuckwit.
He cleared his throat and that seemed to hurt his ribcage. “How come you guys are still talking to me?”
“This isn’t talking, this is gloating,” said Jamie.
“Yeah, this makes me feel like a freaking genius,” said Sam.
So the chances of getting one of them to find his phone so he could call Georgia were remote and frozen over like Antarctica. “Would you—”
“Nope.” Jamie.
“I need—”
“No way.” Sam.
“I have to talk to Georgia.”
“Forget it.” Angus. Shit, he was still here. Was that better or worse?
“Fuck.”
Angus moved closer. “You need to think about what you just did, apart from nearly getting yourself killed. Bloody selfish to do that to all of us, and for what? Stinking pride, Damon. Fucking stupid ego. Did you really think it would make any difference to us if we knew?”
“We still don’t know.” Oh Jesus, Taylor still here too. “What can you see?” He put his hand to his head. The concussion was going to make him cry.
“Nothing. I can see nothing.” He sighed. “No light, no shapes, no movement.”
“Maate,” from Sam, and Taylor’s hand on his leg over the sheet. She’d hit his sore knee and he flinched.
“I screwed up.”
“Understatement of the millennium.” Jamie moving around the room.
“I’ll fix it.”
“Major fucking breach of trust, Damon.” Angus, an immoveable object and righteous in his anger.
Damon dropped his head into his hands and that hurt too and the room spun and spun with fake rotations and the real damage he’d done. I’m sorry wasn’t going to cut it, but it had to be said, as a start. He coughed and his head pounded.
“I’m sorry.” There was a hubbub of movement, feet shuffling, clothing ruffling, voices mingling, murmuring words too low to distinguish. Taylor’s hand lifted away. He cleared his throat. “I know that’s not enough. I don’t know what else to say.”
“You’re The Voice, you better find some words. You better find some way to make those words feel real.” Angus from across the room
More movement, this time he picked it as the group preparing to leave. Exactly what they should do, leave his sorry arse to sweat in the mess he’d made. He didn’t want them to go. There’d be a nurse, someone paid to help, someone whose opinion he didn’t need to care about, who’d treat him as a professional and forget him the moment he was gone. He didn’t want to be left alone with no familiar voices to guide him in the world.
“We’re going.” Angus, with no apology for it.
“You need to sleep.” Jamie.
“The nurses are cute. But not Bruce. He’s not your type.” Sam.
Taylor’s hand to his cheek. “I’ll be here to pick you up in the morning.” The gentle stroke of her thumb along his cheekbone. “I hate you right now.”
Movement. A phone ringing. Sam said, “Yeah, sorry, dude. I’ll be there in ten.” Everyone else’s life was going on without him. Silence in the room. Only the distant noise from outside.
He was alone with a head that felt five times too heavy for his body, with the swilling nausea and the aches and pains and the weight of reality. He saw nothing. He’d carried on as though that was nothing, he’d hurt the people he relied on and loved as if they were less than nothing and he’d likely reduced his relationship with Georgia to nothing, when it was on the fast track to meaning everything.
He leaned over the side of the bed and vomited. The smell of it, the sound it made as it splattered on the floor, made him retch again.
They’d left him, but they’d given him exactly what he needed from them. No sympathy. He’d never wanted that and, when they might’ve justifiably served it up, they were calling him to task on his behaviour. He loved these people and he’d find a way to make it up to them, and to Georgia too.
20: Rottweiler
Georgia transferred Fluffy from his tank to a water jug. The tank needed a clean and she needed something to do. She’d already scrubbed the bathroom, done two loads of washing in the shared laundry, swept the floor and remade the bed with fresh sheets. That last activity was a
leftover from a weekend with different expectations. Now her only expectation was a clean fish tank, because the clean sheets weren’t going to be seeing any action beyond her own tossing and turning.
She took Fluffy’s bridge out of the tank and tipped the pebbles onto the draining board. She scrubbed the glass. But no amount of elbow action was going to be enough to erase the fact she’d let Damon get hurt. She’d had a call from Angus, another from Jamie, a badly mistyped text from Sam. Damon was allowed home this morning, no lasting consequences, but he was still badly knocked around. He could be dead. Only the fact that the traffic was moving so slowly and the truck was near stationary, the taxi driver on the ball, had saved him from being run down. And she’d let that happen, because he’d kept the truth from her.
She’d seen him to a taxi many times by now. It was easier outside her flat because cabs were able to pull up at the kerb. At Avocado it was a little tricker and involved the taxi double parking. But he was always aware of the movement of vehicles, he never made her doubt. Until he stepped straight into the path of the truck. She thought he’d done it because she’d distracted him, because the traffic crawled forward and he simply misjudged. She nearly ate her own heart when he crumpled to the road, effectively king-hitting himself. There was blood everywhere from the cut on his face and his eyes had rolled into the back of his head. He never made a sound. The truck driver stopped the traffic, the cabbie phoned for an ambulance and she sat on the road with his head in her lap and a corner of her shirt pressed to the cut on his forehead, calmly wondering if she’d killed him.
After Angus’s call she knew Damon did it because he no longer had his remaining sight and he’d kept that a secret. So he’d lied by omission and he’d put himself in danger. He’d lied and that made her rethink everything.
And whether he acknowledged it or not, irrespective of what he might want, Damon was going to need more help. And that wasn’t an opinion, not a judgement call, it was a fact.
It wasn’t her plan to fall in love with a man who’d need her in that way again. And it wasn’t hard to figure out that one of the reasons he hadn’t told her was because he knew that.
Angus was angry with Damon. Georgia was like soap scum on the shower curtain. She’d wanted a clean start, and she’d scrubbed her life to get it, but there was a howling inevitability to finding herself in the same place again. Soap scum always reappeared no matter how you tried to avoid it.
She was angry with Damon too, but not like Angus. She wasn’t angry because of the lie, but because of the new twist it put on things. She rinsed the fish tank and set in on the draining board to dry. Fluffy looked at her through the lemon and orange slices painted on the water jug. She was angry because she was going to have to decide all over again what to do about Damon.
Starstruck, then arm’s distance, then on, off, hot, cold, insecure, delighted, fallen, jealous. He made a mess of her, without needing to do anything to inspire it. She had the experience to coolly hold and protect his comatose body, but not the worldliness to deal with the phenomenon of him or the impact he had on her.
And she ached for him in his new world of permanent darkness and for the fact he’d chosen to meet that moment entirely alone.
She loved him. And that was a problem. Because it wasn’t the plan, because it didn’t make sense she would find someone to love so soon, so deeply, and want to push aside all her fears about being needed as a helpmate and not a lover so quickly. What if she did that in the flush of lust, simply jumped in and damn the consequences and she tired of it when the flush fell flat? She’d be stuck again. She’d have done the wrong thing by herself, by him.
She loved him and that might only be a this week, this month, this year thing. She loved Damon and she hadn’t told him that, because it would be as idiotic as staying with Hamish all those years when they didn’t love each other was. And hell, he’d told her she was important to him, not a fly-by-night romance, but she’d known him for two seconds in the scheme of life and that wasn’t near long enough for anything to be anchored in reality.
She also knew what Carmella would say, or rather what Carmella would want Georgia to say in answer to her probing questions, her irritating little therapist nods that gave nothing away, but were designed to prompt a re-evaluation of everything you thought was true.
It was gospel that she’d always been the fix-it girl, but she had a new commandment: to move on from that behaviour because you couldn’t fix people and you shouldn’t try. An alcoholic father, Jeffrey, and a bad marriage should’ve taught her that, and then there was the fact that Damon didn’t want to be fixed. He didn’t need to ask for help, so why was she freaked out about his state of dependence?
It wasn’t rational, but it was real. It gave her an upset stomach and no tolerance for food.
Carmella would say Georgia was taking this all too seriously. That she should step back to gain perspective. That it was important to make new friends and reconnect with old ones. And there was no reason she couldn’t have a good time with Damon as his friend, even a lover, and those things didn’t need to mean it was a lifelong commitment, didn’t make her responsible for him.
And Georgia agreed. Everything Carmella said was sensible, a good plan to live by, sensitive to her triggers and designed with her welfare in mind. Irritating nods aside, seeing Carmella was good for her.
Damon was not good for her, because it wasn’t possible to be so casual, so detached about him. Not from day one, and since then there’d been fish and hot kisses on the gantry, Princess dresses and the kind of sexual attraction that took everything she understood about human emotion and made it do backflips; took everything she understood about being disabled and made it run away and join the circus.
She didn’t care how new this was, how complicated by her background, by Damon’s. She didn’t care that going slow was wise, practical and advisable. Damon wasn’t Hamish. Disability wasn’t one size fits all. She loved Damon in a way that terrified her, because it wiped out every coherent argument she had against their match.
She gave the tank a once-over with a tea towel, rinsed off the pebbles and placed them inside. Next came the bridge and the fake foliage, then she refilled the tank and transferred Fluffy back inside. The fish swam a couple of laps, then went to hide under the bridge. Maybe Fluffy had more sense than she did.
She wasn’t going to hide any longer.
Angus had given her Damon’s address and his home phone number. His mobile had been smashed in the accident. He said Damon had wanted to call, but they’d all been so pissy with him they hadn’t offered him a phone to use. He apologised for that and so did Jamie. Sam volunteered to drive her to Damon’s.
He let her off outside a sprawling California bungalow with a wide verandah and a lush front garden. It wasn’t an ostentatious house, but it was in a good suburb, a lovely quiet street. Damon could’ve been showing this off, but he’d chosen to come to her pokey rental instead. The front door was ajar, rooms opened out either side of a hallway and she could see clear through to a large dining table. A battered suitcase stood in view.
She knocked and a voice called, “If you’re collecting for something we already gave. If you’re selling God, we’re devil worshippers. Go away.”
That had to be Taylor. Was it Taylor’s suitcase? Did Damon share the house, she’d never asked, he’d never said. Maybe he had a housemate. She knocked again and called out. “It’s Georgia. Is Damon home?”
A thump, bare feet on the dark wood floor, a swear word. Taylor appeared in the hallway in shorts, a bra top and a fresh baked scowl.
Georgia waved, smiled in a way she hoped didn’t telegraph fear. “Hi.”
“He’s asleep.”
“He’s okay?”
Taylor was inside the doorway. And she wasn’t going to invite Georgia in. “No, he’s not fucking okay, he split his head open, he’s got a buggered knee, he’s sore all over and he’s blinder than ever.”
“Why do you hate me?” I
t was out of Georgia’s mouth before she was fully conscious of wanting to take Taylor on, but the quick blink of surprise on Taylor’s face made it worth any concern she had about getting into a catfight while Damon was somewhere in the house.
“Because you’re a bleeding heart and he’ll learn to rely on you and when it all gets too much you’ll shoot through.”
Georgia opened and closed her hands at her sides. “That’s a bitch of a thing to say.”
Taylor narrowed her eyes. “Tell me you haven’t thought that. Go on, you tell me that no matter how sexy, how good in bed, how rich, handsome and interesting he is, you haven’t thought well shit, he’s blind and that’s going to cramp my style.”
Georgia shook her head, balled her fists. She wanted to slap Taylor, leave red fingerprints over her smart mouth.
“Yeah, see it’s all over you, the stink of do-good. He does not need a do-gooder.”
“Is that because he needs you, or you just want him to need you?” Not a slap but a hit all the same.
Taylor’s chin jerked up. “What?”
“I get he’s your friend. I get you want to protect him. I get you love him, but you have no right getting involved with what’s between us or to question my motives. Damon is not a kid. He doesn’t need you as his mother, or his Rottweiler.”
“And what would you know about what Damon needs?” Taylor jammed her hands on her fists.
“Nothing. I know nothing about what he needs. I know if I stick around he might tell me, show me, trust me to understand. I know I have to let him take the lead. I know I’m scared about what being in a relationship with him might mean. And I know that’s what I want. I also know it’s none of your damn business.”
Taylor harrumphed. “And that was right answer,” and then she smiled and it changed her whole face, the impact more shocking than a slap would’ve been. “He’s asleep in the garden. He’s desperate to see you. You’d better come in.”
21: Huge
Damon heard them talking. He wanted Taylor to disappear and for Georgia to lay down with him on the daybed, so he could hear the world in her and beg her for another chance.
Incapable (Love Triumphs Book 3) Page 20