“Why aren’t you wearing your speech processor?” she asked at the same time she was signing.
When I was a young child faced with life forever deaf, my mother had started me on the track of learning to sign. When I’d gotten my cochlear implant done, I’d continued learning to sign, even though the majority of the time I wouldn’t need it as long as I had the transmitter and speech processor on.
My mother was the type of woman who was always prepared, though. Which meant that I learned whether I needed it or not, and so did everyone in my family. My brother, my sister, my father, and some of our aunts and cousins.
Well, the aunts and cousins had done it by choice since we’d all started, my mom hadn’t made them do it like she had my siblings.
“I went outside last night to demand our new neighbor turn off his loud radio so he wouldn’t wake Autumn, who is still sleeping and fever free, by the way, when I was jostled and fell. The bush I fell behind yanked it off, and when I picked it back up, I dropped it again when some man startled me. Then he stepped on it.”
I wouldn’t be telling her the entire truth. My sister was protective of me. If she knew that a man had manhandled me last night, she would go freakin’ berserk, storm over there, and likely receive the same treatment as I had.
And since I didn’t want that, I chose not to tell her at all.
Alana’s face fell. “You just got that one.”
I nodded, feeling the agony all over again.
“But…” she paused. “Should we call Tyler?”
Tyler was my big brother, and other than kicking the guy’s ass who broke it, there really wasn’t much he could do.
She stopped and turned toward the door, walking swiftly.
The doorbell must have rung, or someone had knocked, because she wouldn’t have cut off in the middle of our conversation like that if there hadn’t been something to interrupt her.
My suspicions were confirmed moments later when she got to the door and swung it open wide, not bothering to check to see who it was.
Big no-no. Tyler would have her ass for that. Tyler being our brother, who was also a chief of police for the Hostel Police Department.
Luckily it wasn’t Tyler, and instead was a large man wearing a suit.
“Mr. Rivera wanted the lady to have this as his apologies for last night. He apologizes for his bodyguard’s rough handling of the situation and hopes that you will accept his apology,” the stiff-suited man said.
His face and mouth were clear to me, so I got everything without having to ask my sister what he’d said.
Alana reached out and took the box, looking at it in confusion.
Then I saw the name on the side and the exact model number of the transmitter and speech processor of the one that’d been broken last night.
My heart soared.
Though it would have to be fine-tuned by the audiologist, I would have one.
Holy shit! That wasn’t chump change!
“Thank you,” I said, hoping that it didn’t come out as loud as I feared.
Obviously, I’d miscalculated, and the man’s eyes twitched, but he didn’t say anything, and I didn’t either.
Alana handed me the box, said something that I couldn’t see, and the man in the suit nodded and turned, descending back down our walkway the same way he came.
“Wow,” I breathed.
A hand on my arm had me turning my face to my sister.
“Why does it seem like there is more to the story that you haven’t told me?”
I shrugged and pulled out my phone, texting my audiologist with my plea to fit me in some time that day, and walked away.
One of the good things about being deaf was that when people were talking to you, you could ignore them and you had a perfectly legitimate excuse.
Once I was done with my texting and got my appointment confirmed, I stared at the box.
How had someone—anyone—gotten that before the night was even through?
And who the hell was this neighbor of ours that he had a bodyguard?
Seriously, I felt lost, and I needed answers.
So that became the first day I started to spy on my neighbor.
Chapter 4
I pretend that coffee helps, but really, I’m just a bitch.
-Coffee Cup
Henley
Day seven of spying on my neighbor turned out to be fruitful.
I finally got a full headshot of the man, and I studied it almost relentlessly.
My eyes took in the dark, handsome man, and I knew that I knew him. Somehow. From somewhere.
I knew, but I still couldn’t figure out how.
“What are you doing?” my sister asked.
I backed away from my telescope that was set up in our backyard jungle gym and stared down at my sister.
“I’m investigating,” I said. “I can’t figure out who this guy is, and it’s bothering the shit out of me.”
My sister snorted. “What makes you think he’s famous?”
“Normal people don’t have bodyguards. Normal people can’t buy five thousand dollars’ worth of stuff in less than eight hours and have it in your hands before morning.”
She nodded.
That she could understand.
We lived paycheck to paycheck. Or at least I did. My sister was a little better off than I was.
Nobody I knew could afford to drop five grand for a person they didn’t even know, despite being the reason behind why the thing was broken in the first place. But still.
“Anyway, I’m happy either way,” she said. “But I have to go to bed. Mom’s coming over to get Autumn in a few minutes, and she’ll get her dressed. You’re free to go to bed, too.”
I gave her a thumb up from my elevated position and then watched her turn around and head back inside. “I’ll see you tonight.”
My sister waved at me over her shoulder, and I turned my attention back to the street where the sexy, bearded god was standing next to his motorcycle.
A sleek black Harley that looked like it went really, really fast.
He straddled the bike and was gone moments later, making my ears vibrate with his departure.
I sighed and pulled away from the telescope.
I would have to make sure to say thank you to him the next time I saw him.
Little did I know that I’d be seeing him again—only not where I ever thought I’d see him.
Chapter 5
Re-annoyed: when something that happened years ago still annoys you.
-Henley’s secret thoughts
Henley
I hadn’t seen my neighbor in seven days. Seven long, horrible, very long days.
What was wrong with me?
I’d become obsessed. I looked out my window. If I heard something during the day, I’d be wide awake, and couldn’t go back to bed until I either A, got up to look, or B, berated myself for forty-five minutes. I’d even taken to wearing my transmitter to bed. That was how bad it’d gotten.
Needless to say, I was a fucking mess by the time the end of my shift at work rolled around on Friday morning at six.
I was tired, irritable, and I’d had a bad day at work. Or, well…night.
I had a man that I worked with that liked to tease me mercilessly, and I was fairly sure that he was doing some bad shit at work, yet I couldn’t ever catch him doing said bad shit.
So, I worked with the asshole who thought it was the greatest thing in the world to grab my ass and knock my stack of sorted mail off the fucking table like a goddamn child.
“You okay, dear?”
I smiled at the elderly woman that volunteered with me on Fridays. I was coming up the walkway from the parking lot to my second job, although this was one was unpaid.
“Yes, ma’am.” I smiled weakly. “I’m just tired. It was a long night at work.”
She smiled at me, and it was a little wobbly, too.
“M
y Judson has been gone for two months now,” she said. “Sometimes I wake up in the mornings, make him coffee, and then remember that he’s not here anymore. Today was one of those days.”
My problems instantly seemed small in comparison.
Mrs. Castillo, Rona, was a sweet old woman and had been volunteering with me every Friday for what felt like years. Two months ago, her husband of sixty-two years died while in his sleep next to her, and since then, she’d been carrying on. But she’d been doing it like she was half a person—as if half her soul was missing.
And honestly, maybe it was.
Maybe when her husband had died, that half of her soul went with him, and now she was living, but not really living.
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Castillo.” I patted her papery skin. “Would you like to come over to our house for dinner this weekend?”
She looked away and started to shuffle forward.
“No, honey. But thank you. I’m going to spend my weekend with my sister-in-law. We’re two peas in a pod lately.”
I looked away and kept pace with her, not separating from her until we got into the hospital.
When she reached the reception desk where she volunteered, I waved goodbye and continued on my way.
When I arrived, the first person I saw started in.
“We got a new one,” the nurse at station two said. “He’s in room four. He was in a motorcycle accident four days ago and in a coma. The swelling on his brain is going up, and they’re not sure whether he’s going to be able to ever wake up. They’ve done surgery on him two times now. He’s also got a scary blood condition that’s keeping them from doing any more surgery. The doctor is recommending to the family that they come in and say goodbye.”
That made my heart hurt.
I’d been volunteering at the hospital in Longview, Texas for over four years now. I knew when I was young that I wanted to make a difference in people’s lives.
I’d originally set out to do that by becoming a nurse. I’d been in school for it for two years when I decided that nursing wasn’t for me. However, my desire to change peoples’ lives never waned.
Therefore, I started volunteering.
On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays I volunteered for three hours a day after my shift at the post office.
On Mondays, I sat with tiny little babies who didn’t have families, or whose families couldn’t come to visit during the day due to work, in the NICU.
On Wednesdays, I went to rehab and sat with elderly patients, encouraged them, and was ultimately the friend that they needed during a trying time in their life.
On Fridays, which was today, I went to the ICU. There, I sat with coma patients. I talked to them, read them stories, and sometimes just watched TV with them so they didn’t have to be alone.
I gave the nurse a thumbs up and headed to room number four, but stopped halfway and turned back around. “What’s his name?”
“Rhys Rivera.”
The name sounded familiar, but I couldn’t place where, exactly, I’d heard it before.
Moments later I walked in, and I saw a man with really dark hair that was buzzed off on one side. His face was wrapped in white gauze, and there was a slightly red spot on the top of his head, with a drain running out the side.
It was halfway filled with a watery red drainage that made my stomach turn.
Which had been one of the reasons I left nursing school.
I became queasy at the sight of blood.
And not even a little bit. A lot.
I found out the hard way, four hours into my shift, when the nurse I was shadowing for the day made me help change a dressing on a bed sore.
I’d helped pull the gauze off and then was hit with not only a horrid, gut-tightening smell but also a line of thick, viscous blood.
All of the blood had drained from my face, and I had to take evasive measures to keep myself from face-planting into the old woman’s ass.
I’d gone home after that.
I hadn’t even stopped to tell my teacher that I was done. I’d just grabbed my lunch kit, jacket, and keys and checked the fuck out.
I’d gotten a call about an hour later checking on me, but I hadn’t answered it.
I’d withdrawn from all of my classes hours later via email and a phone conversation with administration. Then I’d gone to sign my un-enrollment papers when all of my peers were in class.
Like a coward.
This was supposed to be a safe floor. They all knew my fears on this floor—so that had to be as bad as it got, because otherwise they wouldn’t have sent me in here.
And upon closer examination of the man a little more up and personal, I realized that it really was localized to one area of his body—his head.
So, I sat down in the seat that was conveniently beside the bed and turned on the TV.
The first thing that came on was Sports Center, and I immediately changed it.
I hated sports—or more importantly, sports hated me.
I was a klutz, pure and simple.
I couldn’t catch a baseball to save my life. I’d tried playing volleyball in junior high school, only to catch a ball straight to the face when I found I couldn’t move my hands fast enough. The real icing on the cake of you-suck-at-sports was the time I tried to pole vault in track and wound up sitting on my metal-spiked track shoes—before the meet even started.
That’d been the last straw. I wasn’t cut out for sports. Hell, I didn’t even like watching sports.
They sucked, to be honest.
I’d once tried to go to a professional baseball game—the Lumberjacks—but only ended up studying the bearded hotties.
Speaking of beards, my eyes were inadvertently drawn to the beard of the man lying in bed.
It was distinct. The man had a trimmed beard along his cheeks, but on his chin, the beard was long and pointy—like those Viking skull shirts I saw running around so much lately. However, what made it distinctly different from all the other beards out there was the fact that it was slightly curly, and there was a thin white line running down the very left side of his beard—almost like a highlight.
But, that ‘highlight’ started at the very edge of the man’s skin, so it was more than likely not a highlight seeing as the man had been in a coma for going on four days now.
“How’s he doing?”
I looked up to see the doctor—one I didn’t recognize right off the bat—whisk his way in with a nurse on his tail. This one was actually a woman I knew, and one that I would’ve graduated with had I finished school. Her name was Tatiana, and she was a very outspoken woman. I could tell that she wanted to say a million and one things about the doctor’s abrupt entrance but chose not to in deference to liking her job.
“Patient is still on one hundred percent oxygen,” Tatiana said. “His brain swelling hasn’t gone down at all. In fact, we’ve emptied more fluids out of his drain today than we did yesterday.”
I zoned out as I looked at the man.
He looked so big and intimidating. It was hard to believe that a man as large and strong looking as he was needed a machine to breathe for him. Though I could hear it, and see it, it was still rather shocking to hear.
His chest rose and fell rhythmically. Up, down. Up, down.
“Mom’s on her way down as we speak.”
I snorted.
If that were my kid, I would’ve been down four days ago when it happened, but hey, that’s just me.
The doctor looked over at me and winked.
I raised my brow at Tatiana.
She shrugged and continued.
I, on the other hand, looked at the man. He didn’t look like he had an eccentric mother.
In fact, if I were being honest, I’d say it looked like he was raised by wolves.
Or apes. He was very Tarzan like.
“She should be here within the next two days. They’re having to travel from California, and apparently
she refuses to take a plane.”
I looked at the ceiling.
“I was also told that this woman’s famous and that we should try not to let our jaws hit the floor when she walks in the room.”
My brow rose.
“Who is it?”
That was both the doctor and I asking it at the same time.
“Apparently,” she said. “It’s Rose Rivera.”
And that was when my jaw hit the floor.
“She’s famous because she’s in porn!” I told them both, flabbergasted.
The doctor looked at me.
“How do you know she’s in porn?”
I shrugged, suddenly blushing profusely. “Doesn’t everyone?”
They both shook their head.
“Well, this isn’t awkward…”
They both left moments later, and I turned my gaze back to the man in the bed.
“I can’t believe your mother is in porn,” I told him. “You poor, poor soul.”
He didn’t reply.
“You obviously got your curly black hair from her, though,” I told him. “She’s gorgeous. You probably would be, too, if you didn’t have all that gauze covering half your face.”
He still didn’t reply.
I kind of wished he would.
As the entire morning wore on into afternoon, and I dozed away at his bedside, I sort of hoped that the mother would never show.
Chapter 6
The beach is going to get whatever body I give it, and that’s that.
-T-shirt
Henley
And she didn’t. Not for a whole two weeks.
Two weeks in which I learned about the man that I was getting to know way more than I ever thought I would.
Or at least he got to know me.
I had actually spoken to his sister three times when she’d called on the room phone, and I’d even come in on my normal days off and spent time with him.
Why I couldn’t tell you.
Maybe it was just a sense of duty.
Maybe it was because something about him called to me.
Maybe it was because I felt sorry for him.
But by the time I walked onto the ICU floor Friday, two weeks later, I wasn’t expecting to find anyone at Rhys Rivera’s bedside.
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