After the Storm

by Amy Knupp

  “It’s from Bay City Grill. I owe you another apology,” she said, coming up next to his twin bed. “For screwing up our date.”

  “That was a lifetime ago.”

  “I know. But I never apologized, not after I ran out.” She’d said she was sorry several times before she’d left to handle the emergency at work, but she should have faced him afterward. Instead, she’d guessed he was pissed, so she’d taken the easy way out—avoidance. “I’m sorry I had to leave early that night.”

  “It’s fine,” he said, but he didn’t sound fine. “Ancient history. Forget about it.”

  “When was the last time you ate?”

  “Beats me.”

  “How much walking have you done today?” she asked.

  “That’d be a goose egg.” His tone was becoming defiant.

  Alarm shot through her. “The nurse said you’re supposed to walk several times a day, Penn.”

  “Haven’t felt like getting up just yet, Nadia.”

  “Come on. We can walk and you can eat. Hurry up before your roommate gets all the good food.”

  “You don’t listen well, do you?” he asked.

  “Don’t you want to heal? As fully as possible?”

  He eyed her but didn’t respond.

  A radio message burst into the momentary silence, startling Nadia.

  “What was that?” she asked.

  “Emergency services scanner. Better company than a lot of people,” he said pointedly.

  Nadia bit her lip and scowled, frustration pulsing through her. “How can you just lie there when your future depends on getting your butt out of bed and working your muscles?”

  The continuing silence pushed her until she hit a point where she couldn’t not take action. Anger fueling her boldness, she stepped forward and whipped the blankets back, throwing them to the foot of the bed, relieved he wasn’t naked below them. Though the nylon running shorts that left little to the imagination weren’t much better.

  “Like what you see?” His tone was as hard as his muscles.

  “Come on, Penn. You’re walking. Three minutes. I refuse to stand by and have it on my conscience when you don’t make a full recovery. Do you want to get your career back or not?”

  His jaw stiffened. “Maybe it should be on your conscience.”

  “I’ve got that covered, thanks,” Nadia snapped back. She worked to tamp down her irritation. That was what he was going for, she realized, but it didn’t make it easy to ignore. “You’re only hurting yourself.”

  “Too bad the hurricane name wasn’t due to start with the letter N,” he muttered through a clenched jaw. “Hurricane Nadia has a certain ring....”

  “There’s still time this season to get to N.” She crossed her arms and waited. “Come on, Penn. You’re starting to piss me off.”

  “I’m starting to piss you off?” he yelled. “I’m stuck here in my flipping bed, barely able to get up to take a whiz, I have a goddamn grandma-chair in my shower, all because you couldn’t follow evacuation orders, and you’re mad?”

  She closed her eyes as acid churned in her gut. Taking a few steps back, she considered walking away from his abuse. Except…she deserved every last bit of it. Her eyes burned with tears. Dabbing the corners of them with her fingers, she swallowed and straightened, reminding herself that no matter how much this sucked for her, it was ten times worse for him. She inhaled slowly to steel herself and faced him again.

  “Okay,” she said. “This is doable. Three minutes of walking at a time, right?” She paused but he didn’t move a muscle. “Three little minutes. One hundred and eighty seconds. And then food… You need to eat so you can heal, and you have some of the best food on the island out there waiting for you. Just getting out of this bed, this room, would probably help your mental state—”

  Penn pounded the mattress beside him and swore, making Nadia jump. He breathed hard several times, raging silently.

  “Get out of my room,” he said in a low, measured voice. “Get out of my condo and go home. When I need your rah-rah crap I’ll be sure to call you.”

  She narrowed her eyes at him, any desire to help him clouded over. She stared, waiting to see if he’d realize what a jerk he was being, take back his words. He turned his head away from her and stared angrily at nothing.

  “Okay.” She feigned a tone that said she wasn’t bothered in the least. “Go ahead and rot in your bed for all I care. I’m sure your roommate will appreciate some extra dinner.”

  She marched out of his room, her pulse hammering. When she reached the front door, she glanced toward the kitchen to see Cooper staring back at her from the doorway. His eyebrows rose in question.

  Ensuring that Penn hadn’t followed her out—not that he could move that quickly, anyway—Nadia walked to the kitchen and let out a frustrated grunt.

  “No go?” Cooper asked.

  “Didn’t you hear him?”

  “Yeah.” His eyes were sympathetic. “Everyone in the building could have heard him.”

  “Maybe I pushed him too hard.”

  “Maybe he needs to be pushed.”

  The food was still untouched. “There’s dinner for two in here,” she said, unzipping the insulated bag and removing numerous containers. “Sirloin, salmon and shrimp something or other, red potatoes, veggies. Help yourself to whatever you want.”

  Cooper wasn’t shy about opening each container to check it out and then claiming the seafood. “Thanks, Nadia.”

  She nodded distractedly. “Am I the only one who’s dropped by to see him since he got home?”

  Cooper shook his head as he got silverware out of a drawer on the other side of the kitchen island. “Several of the guys have been here, some around lunchtime, a couple this afternoon.”

  So Penn hadn’t had been stewing by himself all day. “Has…has he been like this to everyone?” she asked, waving a hand in the general direction of Penn’s room.

  Cooper jabbed a piece of shrimp directly from the foil container and shook his head. “He’s been okay, acted upbeat when the guys were here. But they were all bullshitting. Keeping it light.”

  “I’ve tried to apologize but…that doesn’t help, does it?” she said.

  “Who knows what he’s going through, Nadia.” Cooper set the food aside on the counter. “You’ve got to realize he’s a guy who’s always been active. As firefighters, we define ourselves by our strength and conditioning as much as anything. Penn’s never been one to lie around much and now he can barely sit upright.”

  A bad taste rose in her throat from the overwhelming guilt. She attempted to swallow it again and not make this about her. She must have failed to keep her feelings hidden, though, because Cooper stepped closer, concern on his face.

  “Don’t beat yourself up. Danger is a part of our job. We face risk every single time we answer a call. Penn’s luck just ran out.”

  “Because of a poor decision I made.”

  “Let him adjust to things. This is huge for anyone, but especially for a guy like him.”

  Nadia nodded, knowing Cooper was right. Whether Penn would admit it or not, he had to be reeling on so many levels. “So…what? I just leave him be? I’m not sure I can do that. I want to do whatever I can for him.”

  “Even if he makes it clear he doesn’t want your help?” Cooper asked gently.

  Nadia considered the question. Reran the exchange with Penn just minutes ago. Hiding away in her cozy little world while Penn dealt with his life-changing injury—whether that change was temporary or permanent—wasn’t an option. She might be consumed by her career for most of her waking hours and some of her sleeping ones, but she couldn’t just forget about his circumstances. Couldn’t blow off what had happened because of her.

  She raised her chin slightly and met Cooper’s gaze. “I can take a lot more than what he gave today.”

  Cooper smirked in approval. “Then I say have at it. You’ve got to do what you’ve got to do.”

  She’d give Penn sp
ace, but she wasn’t going to desert him. He was going to need someone in his corner, and though it would be hard for her to take much time off work what with the usual load plus annual budgets due in less than a month, it seemed the least she could do was be that person.

  If he wouldn’t let her do it for his sake, then she was going to do it for hers.

  CHAPTER SIX

  ANGER WAS WHAT FINALLY got Penn to move.

  After Nadia had left, he’d continued to work himself up, rationalizing that he had every right to blow up at her. So what if he was normally the nice guy? There was nothing normal about being incapable of just about everything. Nothing status quo about feeling worthless and helpless, like an invalid instead of a guy people depended on in the worst of situations.

  News flash: three freaking minutes was an eternity to walk when you had an incision in your back that was swollen and sore and muscles that had no interest in doing what you’d always taken for granted.

  Food was slightly more motivating. The smell of whatever Nadia had brought had wafted back to his room. He’d ignored it while she was here, not in the mood to give in to bribery or even a simple friendly gesture. But yelling apparently worked up an appetite, and he’d be damned if he was going to let Coop have all the grub.

  Cussing himself through the dread of moving, he carefully rolled to his left side, then lowered his feet to the floor as he sat up. He gritted his teeth at the pain and realized what an idiot move skipping his meds had been just two days after surgery. After he caught his breath, he held on to the footboard and gradually stood up.

  He took several seconds to get his bearings and try to convince himself it didn’t hurt as bad as it did. Pain was an illusion, right?

  Like hell.

  He glanced down at his red running shorts and decided they’d have to do, as dressing himself had recently become an ordeal. He was supposed to lie down to pull any pants on and the heck if he was getting back in that bed right away. He took three slow steps to his closet to hunt for a shirt.

  “Who the hell in their right mind under the age of sixty owns button-down shirts?” he muttered as he bypassed the sloppy stack of T-shirts on the top shelf. Getting into his shirt yesterday at the hospital had required the nurse’s humiliating assistance, and even worse, Coop had had to help him get it back off when he got home. Not even being half out of it from his meds had dimmed that kind of embarrassment.

  He whisked the hangers from one side to the other, futilely searching for something other than jeans and the very few dress clothes he owned. When he got to the last hanger, the one that had been hidden away by everything else he owned since the beginning of time, he snorted. “Finally I have a use for this butt-ugly thing.” He took out the god-awful blue-and-purple-flowered shirt Coop had brought him from Hawaii and pulled it on one arm at a time, leaving it unbuttoned, then made his slow way to the kitchen, holding on to the wall.

  “Holy aloha!” Cooper cackled from one of the bar stools when Penn entered the room. “The red shorts make the outfit, dude.”

  Penn succinctly told his roommate where to go.

  “Glad you made it out of bed,” Coop said more seriously. “I was about to start in on dinner number two.”

  “What’d she bring?”

  “She, meaning the highly attractive, thoughtful blonde that you just yelled at, brought steak and seafood, some veggies, potatoes, all kinds of good stuff my body probably won’t recognize. I left you the sirloin and anything resembling vegetables. Have a seat.”

  Penn eyed the set of bar stools along the kitchen island bar and scoffed. “Remind me again why we don’t have a real dining table with chairs?”

  “Because we’re bachelors who eat in front of the television the nights we’re home and at the Shell Shack all the others.”

  Penn’s stomach rumbled and he took a plate from the cabinet. He carried the covered foil container with his dinner in it to the lower counter next to the sink.

  “Where are you going to sit?” Coop asked.

  “I’m not.” He opened the drawer for a knife and fork and went to work on the steak.

  “So what was that, blowing up and sending a woman who wants to nurse you back to health out the door?”

  “Just trying to get some peace.” Even before the accident, whenever Nadia was around, he’d felt anything but peaceful. Now that was amplified about a hundred times. She put him in a rage.

  “Seems like she genuinely feels awful about what happened to you.”

  “Don’t we all,” Penn muttered. He took a bite of tender, medium-rare steak and closed his eyes. He hadn’t realized how hungry he’d been but now he didn’t know if he would ever stop eating. He turned slightly toward Coop and felt the movement in his back. Yeah, he’d stop. He wasn’t going to be able to stay on his feet for much longer. He picked up speed, sawing the meat and shoving it in his mouth.

  “What’s really going on here, Griff?”

  “Making up for not eating all day.” He knew he was playing stupid and Coop knew it, too, but the fact of the matter was he didn’t know what was going on or why he was responding to Nadia the way he was. Didn’t care to analyze it. Rationally, he knew she didn’t deserve his anger. He couldn’t seem to hold on to that when she was in the room, though.

  “If it’d been a stranger on the other end of that rescue call, you wouldn’t hold it against them.”

  “Nope.”

  Cooper stared critically at him from the side, his arms crossed. Penn concentrated on scooping food in so he could go back to bed. Maybe finding those pain meds would be worthwhile, as well.

  “What happened between you two? She deserted you on a date a few months back, right? Was there more?”

  Penn set his knife loudly on the edge of his plate. He speared another bite of steak. Stuck it in his mouth, took his sweet time chewing it. He had another bite halfway to his mouth when he saw his roommate shaking his head at him as if he was the biggest wuss on the island. Without lowering his fork, he made an effort not to grit his teeth and explained. “We were supposed to go out the week before our infamous half date. That time, she texted me at 4:00 p.m. to cancel our seven o’clock date. Work again, in case you’re keeping track.”

  “Ouch.”

  “I was a dumbass to try a second time.”

  “But you liked her enough to try.”

  Yes, he goddamn liked her enough to try. That was the bitch of it. Out loud, he admitted to nothing.

  Cooper set two smaller to-go boxes next to him. Penn popped the lids off them and jabbed several green beans from one. “Nadia is a workaholic. I don’t care how much I’m attracted to a woman—if she can’t set aside three hours for a first date…” He shook his head. “The whole reason she was nearly stranded on the island during the hurricane was she couldn’t evacuate without some precious files from work.”

  “Thing is,” Cooper said, stealing a bite of red potato, “she seems to have a thing for you.”

  Penn stared straight ahead at the walnut cabinet. “Yeah, and that thing is called guilt.”

  “It’s a safe bet that’s part of it. So you going to keep making her pay?”

  “If it makes me feel better, yeah.” Penn shoved the empty plate aside. Fought to hide a grimace at the increasing pain in his lower back. “I need to get off my feet.”

  “I got this,” Cooper said, gesturing to the dinner remains. “Go relax.”

  Relax. Yeah, right. He nodded his thanks to his roommate and shuffled toward the bathroom in search of his pills. Nothing quite like settling in with a good old dose of resentment while waiting for oblivion to take over.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  IT TURNED OUT PENN wasn’t much for lying around in bed all day doing nothing. Not that he’d ever thought he was, but up until this morning, hiding from reality was the only thing he wanted to do, and bed seemed like the place to do that. Today he still had no interest in reality but he couldn’t stand staring at his bedroom ceiling for another minute.

/>   He’d walked his three minutes. Twice. Wasn’t he a good patient?

  Damn. He rubbed his hand over his face from forehead to chin. The wait for his follow-up doctor appointment was killing him, as that was when the doctor would give him word on whether he’d be able to return to his career. It was tough to be positive when there was a big question mark hanging over your head.

  Penn walked into the kitchen and went directly to the fridge. As usual there wasn’t much in it besides beer and summer sausage, Cooper’s main nourishment. If his roommate died tomorrow, an autopsy would probably find only beer and sausage in his veins.

  It took him a moment to locate the leftovers of what Nadia had delivered yesterday. Coop had stashed them on the bottom shelf beneath the lunch-meat drawer. Penn started to bend for them, swore and remembered he wasn’t supposed to bend for anything. Knowing Coop and food, he’d probably hidden everything down low for that very reason. Penn bent his knees to get hold of the green beans and red potatoes he hadn’t finished last night before he’d needed to get horizontal.

  “Don’t hurt yourself,” Coop said as he breezed into the kitchen with a fast-food bag in his hand.

  “Don’t put stuff on the bottom shelf,” Penn shot back as he slowly straightened. “I’ll forgive you if there’s something in that bag for me.”

  “Might’ve gotten you a couple ketchup packets.”

  A knock at the door prevented Penn from telling his roommate what he thought about that. “I’ll get it.”

  Cooper had started toward the living room and stopped, giving Penn a questioning look.

  “I got it,” Penn repeated, irritated. Answering the door was a normal thing to do, and since he was already upright and longing for any semblance of normalcy…

  He opened the door and felt his jaw drop at the sight of the little sister he hadn’t seen for a couple of years. “Zoe?”

  “Mom is one seriously ticked-off woman, Penn Griffin. And insane.” She stepped across the threshold. “Oh, and hi.”