The moment she pulled to a stop in my drive, I got out and started heading toward the door. I got up there and drew a blank when I saw the screen door open.
“Who’s here?”
“Me.”
I looked up to find a woman that I’d never seen before.
“Who are you?”
“That’s my sister,” Henley explained.
“Why’s your sister in my house?” I asked curiously, reaching for the door handle.
I didn’t get it, Henley did.
“Go sit down,” she ordered.
“You really shouldn’t be out of the hospital yet,” the woman sighed. “You look like you’re about to pass out.”
“My sister, Alana, is a nurse, and I asked her to come over here and make sure you didn’t hurt yourself worse by leaving when you’ve just woken up.”
“Which was really fucking stupid, might I add,” Alana piped in.
I grimaced but didn’t object to her being in my house anymore.
“How’d you get in?”
My eyes went to Henley in time to see her blush once again.
“Uhh.” She bit her lip. “They entrusted me with your, erm, belongings. And, thankfully, your alarm wasn’t set.”
I started to chuckle and immediately regretted it.
“Fuck,” I cried softly, closing my eyes as a wave of pain rolled over me.
“You should call a home health agency,” Alana suggested. “They’ll come out, make sure you’re up to par, and you won’t have to spend any time in a hospital.”
“That’s a lot of money,” I told her.
Alana snorted. “You’re richer than God. Don’t think I didn’t notice that you got a twenty-two-million-dollar contract last season.”
I grimaced.
“I donate everything but about two million dollars every time I sign.” Thank you very much.
“Wow,” Henley gasped. “That’s pretty nice of you.”
I didn’t argue.
Though, it wasn’t because I was nice, but because morally I didn’t feel right having money when the first half of my life I’d lived with money I hadn’t earned via my father being a huge drug dealer and crime boss in Chicago.
After my father died, however, was a different story.
I’d never once felt the ache of losing like I did for those two years when it was just me and my sister on the streets.
To stay alive, I’d joined a gang, and had almost gotten everyone I’d ever loved killed.
My sister had nearly been raped multiple times, and it’d been only my status in that gang, as well as my willingness to kill anything and everything that came near me, that had saved her.
Then I’d met Barrett Lovejoy, my high school baseball coach.
He’d seen something in me that nobody else, not even my own mother and father, had seen.
He’d taken me under his wing, he’d helped me find my passion, and he’d educated me.
Then, as if that wasn’t enough, he’d done the same with my sister.
“Okay, so no home health agency,” Alana said. “Then you need a full-time nurse, and I’m sorry, but that ain’t me, babe.”
I snorted.
“As if I’d want you.”
Henley started to giggle.
Alana turned her glare on her, then the glare slid off and a place of contemplation replaced it.
“You know, Henley,” Alana said. “Weren’t you just saying that you were going to look for another job?”
My brain was a little slow to catch on, but once it did, I could see the merit of it.
Henley wanted a different job—one that took her away from her asshole boss and the men that groped her. She’d been looking for something different, she’d told me, for quite some time.
And she’d put a lot of effort into keeping me alive—though she didn’t know it yet.
I smiled.
“I’ll pay you twice what you make now, and pay for your health insurance, for the next eight months.”
“Why eight months?” Alana asked curiously.
“I’m just guessing, but I figure it’ll take me three to four to get back on my feet fully, and she can take me to doctor appointments, rehab, whatever needs done,” I explained, my eyes trained on Henley. “And the other four will cover her until she can find another job that offers it.”
Henley started to laugh. “Not to say no here, but I don’t even have insurance as it is. So that won’t be a hardship.”
I grinned. “Then you’ll be my nurse?”
Even grinning made my head hurt.
I should stop.
“No.”
My eyes went to her. “Why not?”
She shrugged. “Because you’re not a sure thing.”
I would’ve laughed if I didn’t have first-hand knowledge of the fact that it’d make my skull feel like it was splitting open.
“Oh, I’m a sure thing,” I teased lightly.
“It really does work,” Alana said. “I can tell you what needs to be done, and you can take care of him. Oh, and you can watch my kid, too.”
“Negative,” I said. “Kids don’t like me, and how am I going to heal with a baby around?”
Chapter 11
Pants? You mean leg prisons?
-T-shirt
Rhys
A week and a half later
“Fuck me,” I groaned and rolled over, wondering what had happened to wake me up.
I’d been sleeping soundly, and by the light coming through the curtain, it wasn’t time to get up yet.
Get up being a very loose word.
I was still on mandatory time off, per my doctor’s—Henley’s friend Bradley’s—orders.
After my headache only continuing to get worse, Henley and Alana had ganged up on me and forced me to allow a doctor to come over and take a look at me—which happened to be a friend of Henley’s. His name was Bradley, and he was a neurosurgeon—and also one of the doctors that had taken care of me during my stay in the ICU.
He’d been very familiar with my disappearing act and had at first refused to treat me. But, Henley had helped convince him—and he’d reluctantly done it despite his more than obvious aggravation with me leaving.
According to him, I wasn’t allowed to let my heart rate to get up for at least another two weeks, and even then, I doubted he meant much more than a brisk walk.
My head still throbbed with each step I took, and I didn’t argue. Until the day came that I could function while walking, then I’d put up a fight.
My room lit up with a flash of lightning, and I winced, preparing for the loud boom of thunder.
It didn’t disappoint, and I felt the hard pound of the world around me deep in my chest.
Oh, and the throbbing in my head.
With nothing else to do but get up, I did. Reluctantly.
I stood up and looked out the window, wincing slightly when I saw the first piece of hail hit the ground.
Then another, and another.
I looked farther to my baby—a 1970 Chevelle SS—sitting at the curb instead of the garage where I usually parked it and cursed my friends once again.
Damn them for thinking that they needed to come over and check on me. If they hadn’t, I wouldn’t have parked at the curb instead of the garage where they’d blocked me out of.
A piece of hail the size of a golf ball hit the ground a foot away from my baby, and I made my decision.
Shuffling fast down the hall, I stopped at the alarm panel and keyed in the code to disarm the alarm and walk/ran straight out of the house, and down the driveway.
I held my hand up above my head in a vain attempt to keep any stray hail from hitting me—because that was the last thing I needed—and moved toward the car.
My heart slammed in my chest from the exertion. It was the most I’d put my body through in the weeks since I’d had my accident. Oh, and my head felt like someone was
hitting the inside with a fucking hammer.
But other than that, I was doing okay.
Until I got to the edge of the driveway, that was.
The rain started, and the hail started to pick up as well.
It was a brutal mix of the two, and a single piece of hail dinged the side of my mailbox, rolled off, and on top of my car.
I whined low in my chest, hoping that there wouldn’t be a dent.
“Are you fucking crazy?”
I didn’t turn at the sound of Henley’s voice.
I didn’t need to turn around to know she was pissed.
But she didn’t know the sentimental value this car had. She didn’t know that it was my grandfather’s. She didn’t know that it was the one thing on this Earth that had always been mine.
Instead of turning to confront her ire, I walked the rest of the way to my car, slid into the seat, and started her up.
Moments later I was reversing it away from the curb.
Moments after that, I was backing it straight into the garage—just in time, too.
Because the moment that I got out, and met Henley at the front of the car, the bottom dropped out of the sky.
Large pieces of hail hit the road with a sharp clack-clack.
I rounded the hood of my car and winced when I saw Henley’s angry eyes.
“The doctor told you, as well as my sister, not to get your heart rate up!” she yelled, pointing her finger at me.
I opened my mouth to tell her that I was okay, but that would be a lie.
My head hurt so bad that my eye was twitching, and she knew when that started to happen that I needed a pill—stat.
Otherwise, it’d get out of hand.
“Did I wake you up?” I questioned.
“You didn’t turn off the alarm. You only input half the code, and so when you opened the door, it started going off.” She paused. “Which I could hear through the common wall between the duplexes.”
“Oh, shit,” I murmured, then started to walk through the kitchen door.
Each step I took made my head pound even harder, so it surprised me when she forced me to stop outside the garage door.
“Let me go turn it off…”
I could see the wisdom in her suggestion.
“The alarm company is going to ask you for a code phrase. The phrase is Lumberjacks suck.”
She blinked at me, then nodded.
“Okay.”
Then she pushed through the door.
The sound hit my ears, and I tried hard not to react to the piercing in my skull. But I couldn’t do it any longer. I walked to the trashcan in my garage that I kept for beer cans and threw up.
The act of throwing up made my head hurt more, which only made me throw up more.
It was a vicious cycle and one that I knew I wouldn’t be able to repeat.
I also knew, without a doubt, that I wouldn’t be doing any more extra exertion again.
I now knew better.
***
Henley
“Stupid, obstinate, pig-headed man,” I grumbled.
“I can hear you, you know,” the man that was currently on my shit list said.
“I know damn well you can hear me,” I countered. “The difference is that I don’t care if you can hear me.”
He sighed. “I thought that it was a ruse to get me to stay in bed.”
I rolled my eyes heavenward.
“It wasn’t,” I snapped.
He sighed. “Are you going to be mad at me all day?”
I shrugged. “Maybe.”
He rolled his eyes. “I’m hungry.”
“What do you want?”
I didn’t even have to ask that. He always wanted the same thing. Egg white omelet and fresh fruit on the side. He didn’t even put cheese on the omelet. Just gross egg whites.
And, since I was accommodating, I always gave him what he wanted, even when it grossed me out.
“I think I’ll have some bacon.”
My phone fell from my hand.
“Oh, God,” I whispered. “I’ve broken you, haven’t I?”
He opened one eye and stared at me. “It’s Sunday. I eat bacon on Sundays.”
“You didn’t last Sunday.” he countered.
“I also didn’t have bacon the Sunday before that. This Sunday, I do,” he countered.
I rolled my eyes.
“Whatever.”
Then, without further ado, I finished his breakfast.
I also got a little wild and scrambled him some eggs with the yolks in them.
He ate it all without complaint, which made me even more curious.
“Why do you eat like that?”
I couldn’t help the curious question. I mean, logically I knew the answer of why he ate like he did. He was a professional baseball player, after all.
However, he didn’t have to always eat like that…but he did.
Even a few hours after leaving the hospital, and waking up from a freakin’ coma, he’d asked for whole wheat toast.
I mean, my God, man! You hadn’t had real food in weeks, yet you ask for whole wheat fuckin’ toast?
Nuh-uh. If I woke up from a coma that I’d been in for two weeks like he had, I’d have been requesting powdered donuts, chocolate, chicken fried steak, rolls, and possibly a pizza.
I’d have had them add the pineapples to at least make it somewhat healthy.
But there sure wouldn’t be any whole wheat toast in my future. Whether I was waking up from a coma or not.
I just wasn’t a healthy eater…so sue me.
“Because from sixteen years old until I was twenty, I had to suffer through eating the shittiest food that there is in existence because it was cheap. The moment I was able to afford to eat healthy…I did,” he answered.
I blinked at him in surprise.
In all honesty, I expected just about any other answer in the world…but not that one.
He couldn’t eat healthy when he was younger? How was that even possible?
But I could tell he really didn’t want to talk about it at all, mostly because he turned his back on me and headed for the living room where his recliner was.
When he found the chair and sat the leg prop up, closing his eyes moments later, I knew the subject was closed.
Honestly, that was the most personal answer I’d gotten out of him this entire time we’d been together.
I mean, he knew my entire life story.
Me, on the other hand? I knew nothing about him other than what I’d been able to find on the internet.
He was twenty-nine, six-foot-three, two hundred and twenty pounds, and had a shit ton of tattoos that everyone speculated over, but didn’t actually know anything about.
His mother was a porn star—yeah, that was still shocking to me. I mean, who could say that they had a porn star as a mother?
He was likely one of the best third basemen in the history of baseball—and he had a better batting average than ninety percent of the baseball league.—Or so I’d read on the Internet.
The one and only thing I could say that I knew about him, other than what he’d just shared with me, was Renata.
He had a sister—and the only reason I knew that little tidbit was because his sister had been the one to call while he’d been in the hospital. Well, technically I guess I knew that she was deaf, too.
But that was it.
I didn’t know his favorite color. I didn’t know why he slept with his feet facing the headboard—that one had thrown me the first night I’d checked on him and found feet where I’d assumed his head would be. I didn’t know his passcode for his alarm, either.
Every morning after that first two nights I’d stayed with him, he had had to disarm the alarm and allow me to come in. He wouldn’t even put me in as a temporary user.
Sighing in frustration at how little I knew the man—despite him employing me for the last ten days—I
went to work frying up bacon.
Then served the obstinate man in his chair before going into his laundry room and taking care of the week’s worth of laundry he had accumulating.
The entire rest of the day, however, I wondered if I was in over my head when it came to Rhys Rivera.
But I didn’t have to wonder very long.
I knew it six weeks later.
Chapter 12
I’m somewhere between a donut and a juice cleanse.
-Henley to Rhys
Henley
Six weeks, three days, one hour, and thirty-seven minutes later
I was in lust with my employer.
There were no ifs, ands, or buts about it.
He was also annoying the shit out of me right that very moment.
“You were released just barely five minutes ago.” I paused. “And not to run, but to walk. You had a traumatic brain injury, Rhys.”
Rhys looked at me over his left arm, which was straightened out in front of him while he drove himself to the baseball field.
And not the professional one. The kid one that the young teenagers played on during baseball season.
Apparently, it was on the ‘South Side’ as he dubbed it, and rarely used.
It also, I realized about five minutes later, had no upkeep whatsoever when the field wasn’t in use.
The grass was up to my knees, and the only thing I could see was weeds. There were no defined lines where the bases were. There were also no bases.
Did that stop Rhys from stepping up to the plate? No.
“Drag that thing right there,” he pointed to a Tetris-game-like-type piece that had netting stretched over bars. “It’s for you to stand behind.”
I shrugged and drug it to where he’d indicated, then waited for my next order.
I didn’t bother to tell him that he shouldn’t be hitting baseballs. He’d only ignore me.
Honestly, I wasn’t really sure why I’d agreed to be his personal assistant/nurse. He was well on his way to recovery at this point, and the only thing that I could possibly help him with was little things that a housekeeper could do.
“Toss me one. As hard as you can throw it,” he ordered.
I did, and it fell about three feet shy of the plate where he was standing.
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