by Molly Mirren
And from what Erin knew of Jay's father, she doubted the jerk would have been very vigilant in doing what was required to care for his son—like making sure Jay was out of his chair enough that he wasn't sitting on the same spot on his ass all day. Jay's pride and his father's general dickweedery would have been a bad combination.
Jay was facing her, his arm resting on a pillow that had been placed in front of his chest. Although his tan had faded, his skin still contrasted sharply with the white pillow. An IV was taped to the back of his hand and snaked up to the IV pole by his bed, and a hospital ID bracelet around his wrist somehow emphasized the sinew and masculinity of his arm and hand, the latent strength there, instead of taking away from it.
His golden surfer-boy hair was flat and looked a bit darker—it probably hadn't been washed for a few days—and he had a blond beard that was way beyond the stubble stage, passing into Ragnar the Viking territory. Despite his rather unkempt look, his lips looked even more kissable outlined by the beard.
Although he was still the hottest fallen angel she'd ever seen, it was hard to see him so vulnerable. Her heart broke to think he'd been going through all this alone, but, at the same time, she could have easily wrung his neck for not telling her the truth. She blew out a loud, angry sigh.
It must have penetrated his sleep, because his lashes fluttered open, revealing the deep grayish blue of his eyes. The waning afternoon light from the window behind her made them appear the color of a lake at midnight, reflecting the moon. “Erin?” he whispered, almost like he thought he might be imagining her.
“Hi,” she said, trying to sound neutral. She wasn't ready to put her cards on the table yet. She wanted to see what he would say for himself.
“Hi,” he rasped. Even hoarse, his voice still sent pleasant little shivers down her spine. That was all he said, though. He watched her, clearly waiting for the other shoe to drop, for her to lay into him.
“Nice place you got here,” she said with false cheer, pointedly looking around the stark, sterile-looking hospital room.
“Thanks,” he said, going along with the game, but wary and still waiting.
“I was in the neighborhood, thought I'd come say hi, see how the work was coming.”
“It's . . . been busy.”
She nodded like she wasn't about to have steam coming out of her ears. “Yeah. That's what you said in your text—you know, the one where you explained why you were a no-show last night?”
He held her gaze, still going along with the fake banter, but she thought she saw guilt flicker in his features.
“Too bad you couldn't make it,” she said. “I have some news I wanted to tell you. I got an agent. She's going to shop my mystery novel around, see if she can sell it to a publisher.”
His wariness faded for the moment, and he smiled. “I knew you could do it.”
“I know you did. So thanks for believing in me.”
“You're welcome.”
Their eyes locked, and he seemed to be facing her as if she were a firing squad, as if he knew he was a condemned man. Unable to hold back any longer, Erin said, “What the fuck, Jay?”
His jaw went rigid.
She folded her arms over her chest and tried to make her voice sound less bitter than the betrayal and hurt simmering inside her. “So, you know how you begged me to forgive you for lying to me? How you said you wanted to earn back my trust? Well, here's a tip: Lying to me and telling me you were in Oakland instead of in a hospital in Stockton and then standing me up is not a good way to go about it!”
He closed his eyes, and his forehead creased in that ardent, sincere way he had that always made her want to believe anything he said. “I'm sorry.”
“Okay. Good start.” This time Erin was the one who waited, but he apparently wasn't going to say any more. “Is that it?”
He opened his eyes and met hers, but he still wasn't talking.
“Tell me why you would do that, Jay. Tell me why you would lie. Again!”
“How did you find me?” he deflected.
Erin's eyes stung, but she was not going to let him see her cry. “Luis.”
“He wasn't supposed to tell anyone.”
She drew in a hard breath and looked up to the ceiling before training her gaze back on him. “I don't understand you. After everything that's happened, after you bugged the shit out of me to talk to you for months, I thought I meant more to you. For fuck's sake, you said you loved me. More than once! Was that a lie, too?”
He didn't answer.
She was outraged that he was being so closed up. “You know,” she said, picking up her purse and throwing the strap over her head, “I wanted to see you in person, to find out what's going on with you and between us. Looks like I got my answer. Nothing.” She stood up. “Thanks for the closure, shithead.”
She stalked over and grabbed her big black suitcase on rollers that was against the wall near the door. She'd lugged the thing on three different buses to get to Jay's hospital. And what the hell was she going to do now? Zac and the band were at least three hours away, over halfway to Santa Barbara. She'd have to find another bus.
She shouldn't have come (understatement of the century). She was now the undisputed queen of idiots. Her brain gloated, saying, “I told you so,” while her heart cracked in two.
She had her hand on the handle of the door when Jay spoke, his deep, anguished voice slicing through the quiet of the room. “I didn't want you to see me like this, Erin.”
She froze. If he'd said just about anything else, she probably would have kept going, but that, she couldn't ignore. She let go of her suitcase and walked back over to sit down in the chair by his bed. “Why?”
Again the muscle in his jaw went taut. “I didn't want your pity. I thought I'd have the back surgery and be better by the time I saw you again—if you ever forgave me. That's why I didn't tell you. But then there were complications.”
“I heard. You give new meaning to the term 'bad ass.'”
He gave her the ghost of a playful Jay smirk, but his eyes were bleak.
She wanted to reach out and touch his cheek but refrained. She was in no way sure of what was happening here, although hope was trying to drag the two pieces of her cracked heart back together. “Does it look like I'm pitying you?”
He didn't comment.
Sighing, she took her purse back off and set it down, then leaned forward and idly ran her finger along the inside edge of his ID bracelet. It was as close as she dared get to touching him, at least for the moment. She didn't trust herself to do more, not until she knew where she stood with him. “I would have been here for you, Jay. All these months you've been dealing with this, and I wouldn't even talk to you.” She looked him in the eye. “I was such a bitch. I'm so sorry.”
His nostrils flared. “Now see, darlin'? That's what I'm talking about. You had good reason to be pissed at me, and I didn't want you to forgive me just because you felt sorry for me. I wanted you to forgive me because you were ready, because you wanted to.”
She stopped the motion of her finger. “So why did you keep lying after I forgave you? I thought we were getting close again. And why let me think you were coming to see me and then not show?”
“I'm sorry. I didn't know how to tell you.”
“Try words. I would have understood.”
He squeezed his eyes shut for a second as if pained and then said, “What was I supposed to say? 'Sorry, darlin', but I've got this nasty extra hole in my ass that I have to get fixed, so I can't make your show. But once I'm over that in a couple of months and not pissing my pants anymore because of this urinary tract infection I keep getting, how about we get together for dinner?'”
“Yes, Jay,” she said fervently. “That's exactly what you should have told me.” She was deliberate when she spoke, trying to make him hear her. “I would have understood.”
“Take a good look at me, Erin!” he growled, his features reddening.
Startled, she couldn't help
but obey the furious command. Her gaze traveled over him. She was a little embarrassed to see a catheter winding its way from beneath his covers to a bag collecting urine that was hanging on a hook on the side of his bed. She quickly bounced her eyes back to his face, but it was too late. He knew what she'd seen.
“That's what I'm talking about,” he said.
She sat back in her chair. “What? It's just a catheter, Jay. It's not a big deal. I don't care.”
“You don't get it.” He fisted the pillow his arm was lying on. “I'm a fucking mess!” he raged. “This isn't some dev fairytale where the wheeler overcomes adversity, then gets healed, and everyone lives happily ever after. I've been bedridden for weeks. I keep getting UTIs, and then there's this goddamn pressure sore that will take me months to get over—and that's if everything goes the way it's supposed to. Welcome to the land of SCI, Erin! Is this what you want, a man who can't even sit up in a fucking chair anymore?”
“I don't know what you want from me, Jay! Are you trying to scare me away? You want me to leave?”
His fury seemed to have run its course, and he slowly closed his eyes. “You're a writer,” he said wearily. “You know how it goes. This is the part of the story where the author kills me off. The future for me isn't glamorous or romantic. I'm facing a lifetime of health problems, and there's no miracle cure. The cripple's not supposed to get the girl.”
“Where does that leave me, then, the freak who still wants you, who still loves you? By your reasoning, I should be written off, too.”
He frowned. “What?”
“You know”—she pointed at herself with both of her index fingers—“pervy dev here. I'll never be normal. I'm not fit for polite society. I'm subhuman, a bottom-feeder. Remember?”
His nostrils flared again. “You're never going to forget that, are you?”
“No,” she said, giving him a rueful smile. “But I can forgive it.” She leaned toward him, elbows on the edge of his bed and chin resting on her interlaced fingers. “Let's face it, though. I'm certainly not your typical heroine. I should definitely be killed off. In fact, too bad I didn't succeed in killing myself. That would have been a profound and just ending. Don't you think?”
“No,” he said. “That's bullshit. And stop saying you're a perv. I think . . . ” He trailed off and his eyes darted away, as if looking for words.
“You think what?”
He focused on her again, intense and penetrating. “I think you have this . . . I don't know . . . this tremendous capacity to see the beauty in everything—even in things that sometimes inspire pity or repulse others. That's a gift, not a perversion.”
The sweetness of his words bloomed within her, and this time Erin's eyes welled up with love for him.
He took one of her hands in a gentle arm-wrestler's hold, palm to palm, then laid their hands together back onto the pillow. The warmth of his hand spread through her whole body. “So don't ever fucking say that shit again about dying,” he said in a husky grumble. “Don't ever even think it.”
“Same goes for you, hot shot,” she said softly.
He brought the back of her hand to his lips, and a joyful energy hummed through her. She couldn't take her eyes off his mouth. “Does this mean you don't want me to leave?”
“I should be all noble and tell you to go.”
She rolled her eyes. “Good thing you're not noble.”
He grinned, flashing his pearly whites, and it stopped her heart. “Good thing.”
She tugged on his beard with her free hand. “So, I think we need to promise each other full disclosure and honesty from now on. Slate of bad stuff is erased. We start clean.”
His grin faded. “Okay. Then I'm going to be honest here. You sure you want to get pulled into my shit?”
“Would you shut up? I know this sucks and you're in a funk right now, but it's not forever. You're going to get better, Jay.”
He hesitated, his gaze brimming with strong emotion. “What if I don't?” he said on a ragged breath.
That was the crux of all this: He was scared. Erin reached forward and combed her fingers through his hair, needing to touch him, to allay his fear. “You will,” she said gently. “You're one of the strongest people I know.”
“I've been lucky since my injury, Erin. I haven't had a lot of the issues others with SCI have, until now. It's like it all converged on me at once.”
“And that's why you're so freaked out. Plus, you've been going through all this alone. I'm guessing your dad wasn't much help?”
His expression hardened, and the disdain for his father came off him in a wave that was almost palpable. “No.”
She squeezed his hand. “See? There's your problem. You'll be fine now that I'm here.”
He let go of her hand and reached for the nape of her neck, pulling her to him so they were almost nose to nose. “I think this is the part where you convince me life is still worth living.”
She smiled, happy to oblige. She brushed her lips over his, light at first but quickly getting swept up in the euphoria of sharing his air, of finally being with him again, of feeling his beard tickle her mouth and her chin, of having him open up to her and their tongues mingling in a hot, wet dance. Toes were curling. Heart rate was soaring. And he smelled like heaven: eau de hospital disinfectant mixed with the musky scent of Jay.
When they broke apart, she said a little breathlessly, “How was that?”
His mouth curved into the sexy Jay grin. “I suddenly have a new lease on life, darlin'.” And he pulled her to him again.
Chapter 32
“Goddammit,” Jay groaned, putting his arm over his forehead and closing his eyes, mortified. He'd just farted—there was no mistaking the sound—at the worst possible time imaginable, right when he and Erin were planning to have sex.
It was another fun side effect of paraplegia, the fact that he couldn't control when he passed gas. He was past the point of being embarrassed about it and usually ignored it or, if the moment called for it, uttered a polite “excuse me.” But this was different. Stinking up the bed wasn't exactly the method he had in mind for seducing his girlfriend.
“Hey, Bontrager, you got a squirrel under the covers, or are you just happy to see me?”
Then again, this was Erin he was talking about.
He opened his eyes to see her standing by the bed. She'd been in their bathroom doing whatever girls did to get ready for sex. She was buck naked, her tight, petite body curving in all the right places. She looked magnificent, and Jay couldn't wait to get his hands on her.
If possible, she'd grown more beautiful in the six months they'd been together. She was more confident and no longer so hard on herself, and there was something really sexy about that. It also hadn't hurt her self-esteem that her agent had finally sold her mystery novel to a small publisher.
She'd stuck by Jay through his long recovery from the pressure sore and all the other shit he'd dealt with, including his old man. They'd stayed with him in Stockton until recently, when Jay had been well enough to go back to work. He and Erin had rented an apartment together in Oakland, where he was finally heading the effort to open a branch of Luis's office. Erin was waiting tables part time at a nearby sports bar and working on her next writing project.
His dad had been his usual asshole self around Erin, but she'd given as good as she got. Jay had been afraid for her, since his old man wasn't above hitting a woman (his mom being a perfect example), but Butch had never laid a hand on Erin. Instead—maybe because she was one of the few people who'd ever stood up to him—he seemed to have developed a grudging respect for her toward the end of their stay with him. That had been a good thing because Jay would have happily killed him if he'd touched a single hair on Erin's head.
The pressure sore had finally healed, the back surgery hadn’t completely gotten rid of his back pain but had reduced it to a level he could manage, and so far Jay had gone a month without a UTI. He drank cranberry juice by the gallons, even though he hated
it, and it seemed to be helping stave off infection—that, and the simple fact that he was active again and better able to take care of himself. He knew better than to think he was home free, but he was taking things day by day and enjoying the good ones while they lasted.
He followed Erin's amused gaze down to where the bedsheet was tented just below his waist and laughed. Apparently the Cialis he'd taken earlier had kicked in. “A squirrel?”
Erin's light-hazel eyes were dancing. “Hmm. You don't like 'squirrel'?”
“Dudes don't want their dicks compared to squirrels. How about 'rod' or 'staff'?”
“Nope. Too biblical,” she said, shaking her head.
She grasped the top of the covers as if to pull them back, but Jay put his hand over hers to stop her. “In the interest of full disclosure, I wouldn't do that if I were you,” he said.
“Why?”
He sighed, hating that he had to tell her. “Because I farted while you were getting ready for bed. Trust me. You don't want it to escape.”
“Nice,” she said on a laugh, and something uncoiled inside Jay. She didn't care. To her, it wasn't a big deal, and he loved that she could joke about it. It took the weight from it, made it ordinary.
She yanked back the covers, and he grinned, suddenly not feeling even a hint of embarrassment that she'd so abruptly exposed his naked body and set the fart free.
“Peeugh!” she exclaimed, making a comical face, not blinking an eye at his state of undress or his very erect penis. “You're right. That one was something to be proud of.” She waved her hand back and forth and flapped the sheet, shooing away the odor. “I'll be right back.”
Disappearing into their bathroom, she reappeared with his deodorant and sprayed it under the covers, filling the room with the smell of Degree Sport antiperspirant for men.
“At least my dick won't get B.O.,” he said wryly.