Not to mention my still-hard cock.
“What the hell?” I whispered as I stared at myself.
I closed my eyes and allowed my mind to bring up the image of the pert little ass in the snug boxer briefs.
I knew what the problem was. With the minor head injury and the fact that I was still coming down from all the excitement, my brain had changed Lex’s backside into a shapely ass in a pair of women’s sexy panties. It had been years since I’d been with a woman, so my dick was naturally reacting to the possibility of getting some action.
Yeah, that was it.
What else could it have been? It wasn’t like I was actually attracted to a man.
There was an uncomfortable niggle in my stomach, but I ignored it and forced out a breath. “Idiot,” I said to the mirror. “Overreact much?” I asked myself before turning off the water and leaving the bathroom. I felt more in control but that little niggle wasn’t going away.
I went back to the kitchen and made another sandwich before returning to my room. Thankfully, Lex had his front to me rather than his back and most of his body was covered by the comforter. His eyes were open and he had one hand resting on Brewer’s back. The big husky was leaning heavily against the bed.
“Gideon?” Lex asked when I entered the room.
“Yeah, it’s me,” I said. My voice sounded almost normal, so I gave myself a mental high five. I snatched the bottle of water off the floor and set it and the sandwich down on the nightstand. “Do you mind if I check your blood sugar again?”
Lex shook his head and dutifully held out his finger. I made quick work of testing his blood and was relieved to see it looked relatively normal. “I made you a sandwich. Turkey on whole wheat. I hope that’s okay.”
“Yes, thank you,” Lex murmured.
I handed him the plate, making sure he had a good grip on it before releasing it. Brewer eyed the plate hopefully but didn’t make a grab for the food.
As Lex took a bite from the sandwich, I grabbed the nearby chair I usually tossed my clothes onto each night and dragged it over to the bed. Lex jumped at the sound.
“Sorry,” I automatically said.
He shook his head. “No, it’s not your fault. I’m just… I’m not used to sounds just happening, I guess.”
His words made sense. How often did sighted people take for granted things like that? If he’d been able to see me, he would have known I was going for the chair and the sound wouldn’t have seemed to come out of nowhere.
I sat down and began looking through his little black shaving bag where he kept his testing supplies. “I’d like to test your blood sugar in about half an hour again and if it’s getting back to normal, I think you can start on the insulin again before dinner.”
Lex didn’t answer me, so I looked up. He was staring at his sandwich, but I doubted he was intentionally trying to look at it. It was likely just in his line of sight. “You okay?” I asked. I almost reached for his hand before I caught myself.
Lex nodded. “Yes, thank you.”
His politeness irritated me because it was so damn robotic. Where was the rude asshole from the day before? Hell, I’d even take the terrified young man who’d begged me not to tell anyone about what he’d done. At the moment he was too numb and that was a very dangerous thing.
I reminded myself that it wasn’t my problem and began pulling items out of his bag. Maybe I’d give Mr. Parnell a heads-up that his latest tenant seemed a bit under the weather and he could reach out to Lex’s family or something. I’d promised not to tell anyone about the note, but no way would I just sit around and let the man off himself.
As I sorted through his bag, I kept glancing his way. I told myself it was to evaluate his mood, but my eyes would always find some little part on his body that seemed to stand out. Like the curve of his jawline or the way he’d chew on his lower lip just a little between bites of food. And that Adam’s apple was like a goddamn beacon now that he was eating. I was mesmerized by its up and down journey every time he swallowed.
I froze when my body once again began to react.
What the fuck was wrong with me?
“How many units do you take?” I asked. I knew I’d caught him off guard with the loudness of my voice when he flinched slightly.
“Ten units usually,” he responded.
I felt sick to my stomach as I remembered the scene when I’d found him. There’d been an empty insulin pen on the floor next to the couch. That in itself hadn’t been unusual. What had been unusual had been the plastic safety seal on the floor next to the pen. It’d meant the cartridge had most likely been a brand new one. Even someone taking a higher dose of insulin would never need to push the entire contents of a cartridge in one sitting.
That was how I’d known Lex had injected himself with more insulin than he’d needed. The note he’d left had only confirmed my suspicions.
I shook my head as I considered what would have happened if I’d decided to go home and eat lunch before checking on Birch Cabin. The idea of reaching out to touch Lex’s forehead and having it be cold left me light-headed. I told myself it was because the idea of his death was as disturbing as if he’d been anyone, but that little niggle in the back of my brain started bouncing around like a goddamn ping-pong ball.
“I tried to undo it,” Lex whispered. His voice broke through the tumultuous emotions I couldn’t make sense of. I was about to ask him what he was talking about when he added, “I knew as soon as I pushed the button that it was a mistake, but I was just…”
When he didn’t continue, I found myself leaning forward. “Just what?” I asked. Ten minutes earlier I’d promised myself I wouldn’t involve myself in the man’s personal life, but I found myself holding my breath in anticipation of what he’d say next.
“Tired,” he said after the longest time. “I had a couple of granola bars in my bag. I thought they’d be enough.”
I remembered the wrappers I’d seen on the floor. So he’d tried to raise his blood sugar to counteract the overdose of insulin he’d taken but the food hadn’t been enough.
“You had orange juice in the fridge,” I reminded him.
“I’d finally started to warm up…”
It took me a moment to understand what he was saying. He hadn’t wanted to leave the comfort of the cocoon of blankets because he’d been too cold?
“Why didn’t you start a fire, Lex?” I asked. “There were logs and kindling in the fireplace and a lighter on top of the mantle.”
Lex dropped his eyes. I saw his cheeks flush with color. When he didn’t answer, I found myself reaching out to tip his chin back up because I knew him looking away had absolutely nothing to do with not being able to see me. He was embarrassed, plain and simple.
Little sparks of electricity once again fired along my arm, but I ignored them and kept my finger where it was so he’d be forced to look at me as he spoke.
“I’m from LA, Gideon.”
Something about the way he said my name had all sorts of weird things happening inside of me.
“They don’t have fireplaces in LA?” I asked teasingly.
But he didn’t respond to my attempt to lighten the mood. “Lex—”
“I couldn’t find the switch, okay?” Lex snapped. He jerked his head away.
“What switch?” I asked stupidly.
Lex shook his head slowly back and forth. “I thought you turned the fireplace on with a switch.”
Understanding dawned and I felt like a complete and utter horse’s ass. “Lex, I’m sorr—”
“For what?” he bit out. “I’m the guy who’s too stupid to know—”
“Don’t do that!” I interjected. I grabbed his chin again and held it firmly. “Don’t call yourself that!” I repeated. I was practically nose to nose with him when I did it.
In the seconds that followed, I became very aware that Lex was looking straight at me for the first time. I knew he couldn’t actually see me, but he wasn’t trying to pull away, and
for some reason that felt like progress. Like we’d finally gotten past some unseen line in the sand.
It made no sense.
I had no reason to want to make progress on anything with this virtual stranger. I didn’t want to know his problems or share in his burdens. Fisher Cove was my escape and there was no room in it for the vulnerable man in front of me. Even if I could get past the strange sensations he stirred within me, I wasn’t looking for a friend or confidante. And I wasn’t looking to be that for someone else.
I forced myself to release Lex. “Sorry about that,” I mumbled. I busied myself with looking through his kit.
“Me too,” Lex said.
I wasn’t sure what he was apologizing for, but I didn’t really want to know either. “What is this?” I asked, then realized the stupidity of my question. I reached for Lex’s hand and placed the object in it. He took a second to feel the small piece of plastic that looked like a chunky Band-Aid.
“It’s a patch pump. A disposable one.”
“It’s wireless?” I asked as I took it back from him.
“Yeah, it comes with a controller. It’s got a blood glucose monitor in it too,” Lex said.
“Really? That’s pretty cool,” I said. “I don’t think there was anything around like this when—” I began before I caught myself.
“When what?” Lex asked.
The wave of grief that settled over me was like a cloud threatening to steal every last ounce of oxygen from my lungs.
But I knew from experience that it wouldn’t. It wouldn’t be that kind.
“Gideon?”
The reminder that I wasn’t alone had me shaking my head before I remembered Lex couldn’t see me. “Why aren’t you wearing it?” I asked.
I didn’t look at Lex as I set the patch aside. The man was blind, but he wasn’t stupid. He’d recognize my switching the conversation back to him for what it was.
“The battery for the controller died and with the power out, I couldn’t recharge it. I keep the pens and regular glucose monitor as a backup.”
“Why didn’t you call Harvey about the power? He would have reached out to me.”
Lex dropped his eyes again and I felt the loss more than I wanted to admit. “I lost my phone outside when I was trying to get the generator started. Even if I could have found a landline inside the cabin, I wouldn’t have known the number to call. I was so cold and tired that I decided to just lie down and wait for the power to come back on.”
It was on the tip of my tongue to ask him how he’d gone from that to overdosing on his insulin and then trying to undo what he’d done, but then I remembered that I wasn’t supposed to care. The silence between us grew awkward fast, so I returned all of his supplies to his kit and set it on the nightstand. As soon as I did, though, I couldn’t stop staring at the damn thing. “Try to finish your sandwich,” I murmured as I stood. “Call out if you need anything,” I added, though my eyes were still on Lex’s little black bag.
Lex didn’t say anything and he didn’t move, making the silence in the room even more pronounced. I climbed to my feet and turned to leave the room. In the process, I snagged the bag as discreetly as I could, hoping like hell that Lex hadn’t heard the rustling of the material as I did so. The whole thing felt wrong somehow, like I was deceiving him or something. But I took the bag anyway and left the room.
I figured if Lex really wanted to end his life, he’d figure out some way to do it, but he sure as shit wasn’t going to do it while on my watch.
Chapter Five
Lex
He'd taken the bag with him.
I knew that only because the bag made a crinkling sound every time it moved. With the silence that had surrounded Gideon and me, I'd been able to hear a lot more than usual. That crinkle had been there when he’d been sorting through my bag and then I'd heard it again as he’d placed it near me, presumably on a nightstand or table by the bed. There had been a beat of silence and then the crinkling had begun all over again.
I felt sick to my stomach as I reached out to search for the bag. I really wanted to be wrong about the whole thing. But when my fingers didn't come into contact with the distinctive material, I felt my stomach drop out.
"What did you expect?" I murmured to myself.
I put my hand out again to look for the sandwich that I’d put down earlier. I had absolutely no appetite, but I knew that I needed to get my blood sugar up. I'd been honest with Gideon when I’d told him that I'd known I'd made a terrible mistake when I'd injected myself with an entire cartridge of insulin. The second the distinctive click had registered in my brain I'd wanted to undo it. I'd downed two granola bars that I'd had in my bag as quickly as I could, but it hadn't been enough. The insulin had worked quickly and by the time I'd realized the food hadn't counteracted the medicine, it had been too late. I’d started to feel the telltale signs of a hypoglycemic event, but I'd been helpless to do anything about it.
I tried not to think about what would've happened if Gideon hadn't shown up when he had. The fact was that I owed the man my life.
The sandwich tasted like sawdust as I forced it down. I drank at least half of the water bottle and then just sat on the side of the bed with the weight of the food feeling like lead in my belly. There was a warm, furry body pressed against my leg, so I reached out my hand. Brewer automatically licked it and I found myself smiling. I'd never been around dogs much, so just feeling the animal’s soft fur was a strange kind of treat for me.
When I’d learned years earlier that my condition was irreversible and I’d slowly started to lose my sight, I'd refused any efforts by my doctors to get me into therapy so I could start to both mentally and physically prepare myself for what was to come. Even when the spots had started to appear, followed by increasingly blurrier and blurrier moments, I still hadn't accepted the inevitable. Many of the doctors had reminded me that I had other senses I could rely on, along with advances in technology, to live a relatively normal life, but I’d ignored them. The fact was that they hadn't understood that losing my sight wasn't just changing my life, it was ending it.
I sighed and gave Brewer a couple more pats and then settled back down on the bed. My mind drifted to a place it probably shouldn't have been going.
Gideon.
I hated that I had no clue what he looked like. From the clothes he'd given me, I could tell he was larger than me. His gruff voice and blunt way of saying things made me think he was the type of guy who didn't put up with a lot of bullshit. He clearly had some knowledge about diabetes, but I wasn't sure if he too was struggling with the same disease or if it was someone he loved. I hadn't heard anybody else in the house since we'd arrived, but since I had no idea what time it was, it was entirely reasonable that someone would be coming home anytime soon. A wife maybe. Or girlfriend. I only smelled his unique scent on the bed I was in, but that was probably only because I loved the woodsy, clean aroma.
I reached out to the second pillow on the bed and drew it closer to me. I inhaled deeply but there were no hints of any other smell besides his. No flowery or fruity scents of any kind.
Instead of returning the pillow to its place on the bed, I found myself wrapping my arms around it. For some reason it helped settle the nerves in my belly. At the moment, I was entirely dependent upon Gideon and that should have frightened me. Not to mention that he'd seen me at my most vulnerable. But somehow, lying there in his big bed with his scent wrapped around me like a blanket, I felt safe. Cared for, even.
Although my mind wanted me to stay awake purely for self-preservation purposes, my body ultimately gave in to the need to sleep. When I opened my eyes, I had that painful split second that I had every morning when I realized yet again that the blurred vision and dark spots that danced before my eyes weren’t just left over from sleeping. It was like learning I was going blind all over again. I wondered if there would ever be a day when I woke up and saw only blackness and didn't have that moment of fear that something was wrong. It would jus
t be… normal.
Typically, I would've used my phone to figure out what time it was, but since that wasn't an option and I didn't hear anything around me except for the creaking of the house, I swung my legs over the bed and sat there as I tried to get my bearings. I no longer felt Brewer in the bed with me. I knew I should probably call out for Gideon, but it just felt wrong to do so.
I'd come to these woods to figure out how to accept my new reality… to see if I even could. That hadn't changed. There wouldn't always be someone around to call for. I forced myself to get up and waited to see how I felt. I'd had plenty of hypoglycemic episodes before, some even more serious than the one I'd had today, so I knew the physical ramifications would take some time to get past. Especially the exhaustion.
My legs felt surprisingly strong as I stood up. I closed my eyes because the blurriness would just make me feel more off balance. When I'd run out of the room earlier in the day, I hadn't noticed anything about my surroundings. I’d truly been running blind and hadn't cared what had stood in my path. The only thing I really remembered during my episode of flight was stumbling down some stairs and landing on snow that might as well have been cement.
And then Gideon had been there…
I shoved away thoughts of how it’d felt to have his strong arms around me and focused on getting out of the room. It was a painfully long process and it wasn’t pretty. My feet, knees, and hands bumped against countless items as I felt my way along the wall and through the door. I had no way of knowing which way to go when I left the room, so I spent several long minutes trying one direction, only to find that it was a dead end. I went the other way, taking my time to feel along the wall. Luckily, I didn't run into any more furniture. But then I reached another doorway and I was once again faced with not knowing which way to go. I reluctantly opened my mouth to call for Gideon when I heard Brewer whining and then his big body was pressing against my legs.
"Hey, buddy," I said as I carefully knelt down and greeted the dog. I wished I could see what color his coat was. From the feel of it, I guessed that he was a very beautiful animal. I righted myself and began feeling my way around again. Surprisingly, Brewer stayed pressed up against me and I found myself using the dog to stay grounded. When I took a step forward, Brewer was right there beside me. The same with the next step, and the next. I was completely disoriented because I was out in the open with nothing to hang on to, but Brewer's presence gave me confidence. I slowly put one foot in front of the other, letting out the breath I'd been holding. I found myself dropping my hand so I could keep it on Brewer's back.
Foreseen: Lex (The Four Book 2) Page 5