In Dark Woods (Signal Bend Series #4.5)

by Fanetti, Susan

  Show opened the door. “Welcome home, boss.”

  Isaac glared and said nothing. Lilli rolled his chair up, and he considered his options. He could grab the top of the doorframe and swing out, but the fucking truck was too fucking tall, and he’d have to drop down to the chair. If he missed, who knew what damage he’d do to himself—setting aside the humiliation.

  “I got ya.” Show leaned in, ready to pick Isaac up. Oh, to hell with that bullshit.

  “Back off, Show. I’ll work it out.”

  He didn’t know how. They’d had a ramp at the center that brought the chair up to the height he needed so he could get in himself. That’s a ramp he’d have liked to have now. He sat there and tried to figure it out.

  “So, you’re going to sit in the truck from now on? Should I bring out some bedding for you? Maybe a magazine?” If he’d thought Lilli was doing her ass-kicking bit, as she’d done often over the past months, trying to help him keep his head straight, he’d have made a snarky comeback and been fine. But considering the timbre of their relationship at the moment, he didn’t think that was what it was. He thought she was just being a bitch.

  “You can fuck off.”

  “Fine.” She threw her hands up and headed to the house. Show turned and watched her go. When he looked back at Isaac, his eyebrows were high. “This still about the money? You haven’t smoothed it out?”

  “Just keep the fuck out of our business, asshole.”

  Show’s face went dark. “You got it. You want help here or not?”

  There was no way he was getting out of this fucking SUV on his own.

  “Yeah. Fuck me sideways.”

  Show picked Isaac up like a goddamn kid and set him in his chair. Stowing his humiliation for later, when he was alone and could let it fuck him up good and hard, he rolled down the new, wide wood-slat walkway to the ramp that covered the porch steps leading to his house. All the Horde were there, lined up to greet him. And there was a bright vinyl banner hanging from the porch roof: WELCOME HOME, BOSS!

  Boss. Right.

  He stowed that, too, and faced the onslaught of leather kuttes with all the emotional fortitude and good grace he could muster.

  ~oOo~

  Show and Shannon stayed on after the rest of the Horde had left. Shannon and Lilli were in the kitchen cleaning up. Gia was down for the night. Isaac sat in his wheelchair in his living room and stared at the fire. Show sat on the couch and was quiet.

  He hated being home with a cold passion. Everything was wrong. His goddamn front door was wrong. They’d widened it to accommodate his fucking chair, and now there was a new door—a plain, fake wood, steel core door with no glass—to replace the heavy oak door with beveled glass that had been there for decades—fuck, for centuries. Half their furniture, most of it made with his own two hands, was who knew where, so that he could get through the living room to the kitchen. And the bed, also made by his hand, was gone. In its place was a fucking hospital bed with that fucking leverage contraption dangling over it, and a plain twin mattress and frame at its side. For Lilli, he presumed.

  It was all so goddamn wrong.

  And that wasn’t even the worst part of the day, seeing his ancestral home torn up to serve his weakness. The worst part was the Horde presenting him with a new goddamn kutte. What the fuck was that, and why the fuck had Show okayed it?

  His kutte had been ruined by the buckshot that had ruined his life. But he was trapped in a motherfucking wheelchair. He wasn’t Horde. He couldn’t be Horde. They should be looking to take his ink, not making a damn ceremony of handing him fresh leather. With the President’s patch on it, all shiny and white. Jesus motherfucking Christ. He turned from the fire and glared at it where it lay on the coffee table.

  “Isaac. Are we gonna talk about any of it?”

  For a while, Isaac ignored him. He didn’t want to hear Show’s measured, thoughtful wisdom about any of it. He didn’t want a cool head. He wanted to tear the world into shreds.

  “I should burn that fucking kutte. It’s an offense.”

  “No. It’s right. When you can ride, you’ll take your place at the head. Where you belong.”

  “No. You’re President now. That patch should be yours. I’m out, Show. I’m not gettin’ out of this chair. And it’s like a goddamn knife in my chest to have that kutte laying there, reminding me what I lost.”

  “You can’t find it again if you quit. You’re right that you won’t get out of there if you’re gonna pussy out and give up.”

  Rage boiled up through Isaac’s veins. There was an empty glass on the table next to him. He grabbed it and slammed it on the edge of the table, breaking the top away in shards and leaving angry spikes of heavy, bubbled amber glass. Without even a pause, he drove the glass, spikes first, into his dead right thigh.

  Show had leapt up, and Lilli and Shannon had run to the doorway, at the sound of the glass breaking. Now he looked up at all three of them. “I am never getting out of this fucking chair. My legs are dead. This means nothing to me.” He pulled the glass out and slammed it back into his thigh.

  “Christ, Isaac!” Show leapt forward and yanked the glass away.

  Isaac was unmoved. “Take that fucking thing out of my house. And get rid of my goddamn bike. Sell it, burn it, use it for parts. I could not give less of a fuck.”

  “Do what he says, Show.” Lilli’s voice was flat, and Isaac looked at her. She met his eyes and then turned around and walked away.

  He turned back to the fire.

  Ride or die.

  He couldn’t ride.

  ~oOo~

  Saying she had his first aid under control, Lilli sent Show and Shannon home right after that. Show rode Isaac’s bike away. Lilli came back in from the porch and stood at the entrance of the living room, her arms crossed.

  “You want me to clean that up, or would you rather sit there and maybe bleed out? Your call.”

  He took a deep breath—his lung power was a lot better these days—and found calm. The wounds in his leg were bleeding, but not gushing.

  “What I really want is for you to stop shutting me out. I have enough shit, Sport. My head is packed full with it. I need us to figure ours out.”

  She walked through the living room, past him and into the kitchen without at word. He heard her rummaging around in there, and then she came back with scissors and the first aid kit. She knelt in front of him and began cutting the right leg of his sweatpants away.

  “Throwing a tantrum because you’re stuck in that chair, when you’re the one who fucked up your chance to get out of it, strikes me as epically childish, Isaac. I’m so pissed at you I can barely look at you.”

  Rage spiking again, he pushed her away from him and tried to roll away. But there was no room to move around her. She had him trapped. He slammed his fists down onto the wheels of his chair. “Fuck you, Lilli. Fuck you for hiding that shit from me. And fuck you for making that decision without me. I have fucked things up enough. I won’t put us on the fucking street!”

  She went back to work, cutting the ruined part of his pants out in a large, uneven square. He looked down at the bare, bloody thigh. Skinny. Piece of fucking rotten meat. He’d done a decent number on it, leaving two overlapping rings of bloody gashes. A Venn diagram of impotent rage.

  Seeing the evidence, his worthless fury deflated. As he watched her check for pieces of glass, then wash the wounds with alcohol, and then coat them in antibiotic ointment, he said, “If you can’t deal with me like this, then go. I get it. But I won’t let you ruin us chasing a fucking fantasy of what I used to be.”

  She jerked her face up, and he saw that she was crying. “You are such an arrogant bastard, Isaac. You don’t even see. Jesus! I would have been ready to live out my days with you when you were bolted into a goddamn bed! I don’t care. It’s you! You collapse in on yourself the minute you hit a setback, the minute you’re alone for any time at all. You have a couple of weeks when you plateau, and you automatically think you�
��ve made all the progress you ever will. You’re the one who needs your body back. I’m trying to help you get it so I don’t fucking lose you! I didn’t tell you about the money because I knew this”—she waved around the room—“would happen. The center was the only place giving you hope so you’d keep fighting!”

  She sat back on her heels and sobbed. Isaac wanted to hold her, but he couldn’t reach her. She’d been out of his reach for almost two weeks, and he was going crazy. He needed them to be what they had been. What they were supposed to be. Not this cold bitterness between them.

  After a couple of minutes, she pulled herself together and looked back up at him. “You always say ‘ride or die.’ It doesn’t mean the same thing to me that it does to you, I guess. You say it like it means if you can’t ride, you might as well die. I think it means you’re up for any fight, no matter what, that you never fucking quit.”

  She sighed. “If you’re okay as you are, then okay. I love you, and I’m not going anywhere. But I can’t be the only one fighting, Isaac. I’m exhausted. I’m just exhausted. I can’t do it for you on my own.”

  She taped gauze over his thigh and packed up the first aid kit. He watched her pack it with military precision, every item with its own particular place. So Lilli. It was a capacious kit. He lived a life where he often needed more than a garden variety Band-Aid.

  He had lived that life, at least.

  He had to stop that shit, constantly comparing what had been with what was. She was right.

  When she was about to stand, he said, “Sport, wait. I’m sorry. I needed to leave the center. I can’t bankrupt us. I can’t. But you’re right. I need my legs if I can have them, but if not, I need to figure out how to get right with that. This whole thing has fucked my head up, but I’ve been leaning too hard on you. I’ll fight. I’ll make what I can of what they do for me at County, and I’ll do what I can on my own. I’m gonna need you, but either way, I’ll fight. Until they tell me there’s no chance, I’ll fight.”

  She leaned forward and laid her head on his left thigh, and he put his hands in her hair. He could reach her again at last.

  SEVEN

  Lilli put the lid down on the toilet and sat, staring at the stick in her hand. From the time she’d felt Isaac’s semen running down her thigh two months ago, she’d known this was a possibility. Her periods hadn’t been remotely regular since Ellis and everything that had happened at Gia’s birth, and Isaac had pulled his bullshit ending his treatment shortly after Christmas, so she’d lost track of time, not sure when she should bother with a test. She wasn’t feeling sick or anything. But she’d never gone more than two months without at least spotting. So she’d gone ahead and peed on a stick.

  Yep.

  Five months ago, she would have been ecstatic. Five months ago, though, there would have been no way in hell she could have gotten pregnant, not without roofie-ing Isaac. He’d all but superglued a condom to his cock after Gia, refusing to even consider another child. She loved being a mother and wanted more. But even after Dr. Andrews had explained patiently to him that while, yes, the risk of hemorrhage would be greater with another pregnancy, and that yes, the consequences should one happen could be dire, there were plenty of precautions they could take to bring the odds back to something approaching normal, Isaac wouldn’t even talk about it.

  They’d had some really spectacular fights about it, and then she’d acquiesced. It had been Show who’d made her see beyond the fights and their mutual stubbornness to what they’d really been fighting about. Isaac had nearly lost her time and time again in the first year they were together. After that, he couldn’t tolerate any avoidable risk. And if something did happen, she’d be leaving him alone to raise their family.

  So, she’d stopped fighting and focused on what she had: her perfect little girl and her amazing old man. A good life, just as it was.

  But that was before. Before this new life they were living. She couldn’t see Isaac being any happier about the risk she’d undertake to carry and deliver a baby now, while he was in a wheelchair. Quite the opposite. And she didn’t want to do anything to derail him.

  The night he’d come home from the center—that still pissed her off, but she’d mostly set it aside—he’d promised he would fight, really fight, and not rely on her for every inch of will. And he’d been as good as his word. Noah, his fantastic chief therapist at the center, called to check in on him a few days after he was home and gave him a bunch of things they could do at home to augment what was clearly inferior therapy at County. But Isaac went every session and worked, and then they did what they could at home. And he kept his spirits up a lot better.

  He hadn’t yet had much progress, but he was fighting, on his own, for himself. Finally.

  She didn’t know if he could handle the worry he’d have with her pregnancy. And she didn’t know if she could handle being pregnant, and then caring for a newborn, while also caring for a very demanding toddler and a husband in a wheelchair.

  She didn’t know. What she did know was that it looked like she was going to find out. Because there was no way in hell she was going to do anything but let this pregnancy take its course.

  Isaac had had a few more erections—three, all in the past month, since he’d been home—but none of them as established as the one he’d had that night. His first since the shooting. On their second anniversary. The only time he’d been hard enough for penetration. The only time he’d ejaculated. And she’d caught pregnant.

  Lilli had been raised Catholic but had stopped going to church after her grandmother died, and she’d given up on God completely after her father died. But she felt like something bigger than her or Isaac must have been at work—whether it was God, or Shiva, or the alignment of the cosmos, or the Flying Spaghetti Monster—and she felt a superstitious need to see it through, no matter what. They’d been given a gift.

  She had to figure out how to tell Isaac, though. For now, until she could work that through in her head, she took the stick into the bedroom and tucked it in the back of her underwear drawer.

  ~oOo~

  One morning about a week later, Lilli woke before dawn, feeling inexplicably tense. She looked over to check on Isaac. He was awake, the head of his bed raised so that he was sitting, staring at his feet.

  “You okay, love? You need something?”

  He turned his head slowly toward her. His expression was enigmatic, to say the least, and Lilli was worried. “Isaac. What’s wrong?”

  “I think…I don’t know, but maybe…Lilli, I think I feel something. I think my foot itches.”

  “What?”

  “It stops when I concentrate, so I’m probably just fuckin’ hallucinating. Can you—will you—?”

  She was already up, hurrying to the end of his bed. Pulling the blankets aside, she asked, “Which foot?”

  “The right.”

  She wrapped her hand around his right foot, still as pale and cool as it ever was anymore. “Do you feel me?”

  He shook his head.

  Drawing the nail of her thumb down his arch, she asked, “How about this?”

  “No. Fuck.” He dropped his head back against the bed. “FUCK.”

  “Easy, love. It’s still something new. We should call the doctor. I’ll call the after-hours exchange.”

  “No. No. Forget it.”

  “Fuck that, Isaac. We need to check it out.”

  They stared at each other, and then he nodded. “But I don’t want to deal with just whoever’s on call. Wait until they open, talk to Kendrick.”

  “Okay. Can I get you anything?”

  He shook his head, and she turned to go back to bed. Not that she’d be doing any more sleeping.

  “Lilli, wait. Come up here with me?” He pushed a button, and the head of his bed lowered.

  She climbed up into Isaac’s hospital bed, and they lay together until the sun rose and Gia woke up.

  ~oOo~

  “I hate this fuckin’ shit. Why’d they have
us haul ass in here just to take up space in the goddamn waiting room?”

  If Isaac could have been pacing, he would have been. As it was, he was rolling his chair back and forth, three feet forward, three feet back, driving Lilli insane. But she understood why he was amped up, so she bit her tongue.

  When they were finally called back, a nurse helped him get into a hospital gown and set up on an examination table—which help Isaac accepted with surprising good grace. Then they had another wait. He was flushed and furious before Dr. Kendrick finally came into the room. But he managed to maintain.

  Lilli stood and went to his side, taking his hand. She’d grown used to holding his hand while he was wearing the fingerless leather gloves he now wore all day. As calloused as his hands normally were, pushing the wheels of his chair had still torn them up at first, and she’d bought him the gloves. They were becoming something she identified with him. He’d never put his leather cuffs back on, or any ring but his wedding band. All of that he associated with the Horde. Of the jewelry he wore daily before the shooting, he now only wore his wedding band—and Mjölnir. Thor’s hammer, around his neck.

  After the required pleasantries, Kendrick sat on his stool and said, “So tell me what you experienced this morning.”

  Isaac explained the sensation he was still feeling intermittently, an itch that eluded his concentration.

  “Any notable reaction to direct stimuli?”

  Lilli grinned when Isaac rolled and then closed his eyes. He hated the way doctors talked.

  “No. Just the itch.”

  Kendrick stood and took his pin-prick thing out of his pocket. “Okay, well, let’s do a couple of quick tests and see where we are.”

  Apparently feeling a need to be cruel, he lifted Isaac’s hospital gown and began the pinpricks at his waist, rather than his feet. And so began the long, torturous slog downward, Isaac glowering at the ceiling, while Kendrick pricked and asked, “That?” And Isaac said, “No.”