So th
ere I was, 25 and virginal, and apparently so obvious in my status my new boss could tell. It wasn’t that professional of him to bring it up, though. But there wasn’t anything traditionally professional about this arrangement, the two of us living together, remote and isolated. I supposed the growing curiosity I felt about his personal life wasn’t all that professional, either. I’d have to keep that in mind.
But it didn’t stop my thoughts from wandering as I slowly drifted to sleep. Surly wreck that he was, I couldn’t help but wonder what made him smile? Had I imagined the few moments of heat in his eyes? When he’d told me he didn’t want to be friends, or when he’d said he didn’t want to offend my virginal ears. Why did I get the sense Ian knew a whole lot about things I didn’t, carnal pleasures I only imagined late at night?
The last image in my mind as I finally drifted off? The stubble along his jaw and his full lips drawn into a tantalizing half-smile.
4
Ian
Heart pounding, I opened my eyes, gasping for breath. Sweaty, in the dark, I felt the burning mast crushing me down, the futile struggle for freedom. Palms to the sheets, I forced myself to close my eyes again and breathe, just breathe. Another night, another nightmare.
When would they end? It had been 15 years since the accident. I knew PTSD was a documented condition. People who’d gone through traumatic events often re-lived them when faced with trigger events, or in their dreams. But shouldn’t there be an expiration date? Could one night when you were a kid honestly alter the whole rest of your life?
The answer from a physical standpoint was obviously yes. I’d never run a road race again. But mentally, shouldn’t there come a time when that night no longer haunted me? At 14, my stupid friends and I had stolen a boat and gone for a nautical version of a joy ride. A storm had hit. Chaos had ensued. They’d all walked away. I hadn’t. When did I get to put a fork in it and be done already?
With a curse of frustration, I turned to my bedside table to take a sip from a water glass. Morning light peeked around the edges of the drawn shades on my windows. A bird twittered beyond the pane. I clicked on my phone to check the time: seven a.m. Damn it, it looked like I was awake early in the morning.
I blamed Annie. What had she called it, resetting my internal clock or some such nonsense? Whatever label she put on it, it looked like she was having an effect on me. She’d only been living with me for six days—five if you didn’t count the Sunday she’d gone back to her house. Yet there I was, awake and alert at a suspiciously early hour of the day.
Grumbling, I checked my phone and saw a message.
* * *
Liam: call me.
* * *
I set my phone back down again. He was going to become my brother-in-law that summer. I should feel happy about it. He was one of my oldest friends, someone I trusted completely, and he’d gone and fallen in love with my sister. I couldn’t imagine her with a better man than Liam the hero. He’d been on the boat that night, diving in to rescue Chase after he’d tumbled off.
Mostly, though, what I thought about was what a fucking drag it was going to be to go to that wedding. They were going to tie the knot back in Naugatuck and they’d asked me to be the best man. I couldn’t imagine how many prying eyes I’d have to deal with, coupled with all the “How are you?”s as they looked down on me, literally and figuratively. One time at a function my mother had hosted, I’d overheard one guest lament to another, “And he’d been so promising.” As if I’d died.
An aroma wafted into my room, so mouth-watering and delicious that it made me sit up. Bacon. And coffee. Oh yes.
Annie must be up and about. As I swung myself into my chair, I could hear her bustling about in the kitchen. What sort of unattractive get-up would she be sporting today? Baggy sweater down to her knees paired with ripped sweatpants? She’d had that on yesterday. Then there was the men’s long underwear shirt she’d worn the other day overlaid with a hideous argyle cardigan sweater.
“I made it myself!” she’d declared, as if proud of her work. “Popcorn stitch!” She’d pointed to the bulbous, irregular lumps in the pattern.
I’d never met anyone so hot who had less of a friggin’ clue. Most women with her body would flaunt the shit out of it, knowing the power they could wield with a slight flash of cleavage, the glimpse of bare thigh. Most men became blithering idiots around women with an ass as fine as Annie’s, all round and curvy in exactly the most juicy way.
She seemed to have no idea. She wasn’t cultivating some sort of quirky aesthetic, either, with off-beat, cutesy clothes. No, it seemed more like she’d grabbed whatever she could find off of some old man’s laundry line and made off with it.
As I wheeled my way into the kitchen, I nearly laughed over the shade of orange she wore. Her sweater looked like a rotted pumpkin, all droopy and dark orange.
“Look at you, up so early!” she chirped as she stood by the stove. “Was it the smell of bacon that got you out of bed?”
“I couldn’t contain my excitement over seeing what you’d wear today.”
“Do you want to borrow my jumper?” She gave me a sassy look. “It would interrupt your typical color scheme, though. You always go with the whole black-on-black thing.”
“What do you mean?” I looked down and saw, sure enough, I had on black and dark gray, but there wasn’t anything wrong with that. I was a typical guy when it came to clothes, not so interested. And it wasn’t as if I made it out to parties much, seeing and being seen. Clothes were for function only.
“It’s your vampire look.” As she took out plates, forks and knives, she blithely informed me I had the fashion sense of a Goth. “Do you sleep in a coffin?” she teased as she set out two glasses, then filled them with orange juice.
I gave her a dark look. I’d show her where I slept. She could join me.
But, as usual, she didn’t follow my train of thought. “You know, I was thinking, we need to get you out of that thing and using a walker.” She gestured toward the wheelchair. “The more time you spend sitting, the more that’s all you’ll be able to do.”
“Can you please shut up until I’ve had some coffee?” I’d never exactly held my tongue around Annie, but after even just six days of cohabitation I was finding myself speaking quite freely.
We sat together in silence at the kitchen table, both of us eating bacon and toast. Bloody delicious. I’d wake up early if I could eat home-cooked bacon every morning. I wasn’t telling Annie that, though. It would give her ideas, and the last thing that woman needed was more fuel to feed her constantly upbeat fire.
She gazed out the window as she ate. Her eyes looked dark blue today. Sometimes they looked lighter, especially when she was angry or frustrated with me, which happened quite a bit. Other times they’d flash electric blue, bright and fierce. Today, though, she looked mellow and somewhat contemplative, her eyes a deep cobalt. Her cheeks were flushed, though she was simply sitting at rest, as if she had her own internal fire burning within.
“What?” She turned to me, taking a sip of coffee.
“Excuse me?”
“You’re staring. Do I have something on my face?” She wiped herself with a napkin.
“No, it’s nothing.” Never had I met a woman less aware of her own beauty. Had she never had a boyfriend? Never had someone worship her, make her feel like a goddess?
“You’ve got some on yours.” She reached over with her napkin and gave my cheek a swipe.
“That’s enough of that.” I caught her wrist and held it for a heartbeat. She met my gaze, her lips slightly parted. I could feel the connection between us, pulsing and ready. Since she’d been under my roof, I’d been successful at keeping my distance, and she’d maintained her peppy, all-business demeanor, but it was always there between us, a live current of attraction, threatening to electrify at any moment.
Now wasn’t the time. I dropped her wrist.
“Well.” She stood up, brushing nonexistent crumbs off her hideous jumper. “I
’m going to head into town and pick up a few things for dinner tonight. And then I’m tucking into the garden. You should come outside and help me. Fresh air would do you good.”
I harrumphed and wheeled on out, grump that I was. But it was amazing how long a day could be when you woke up at seven a.m. By the time noon rolled around, when I was typically just starting to crack open my eyes, I’d been awake for five whole hours. I’d already spent two in my home gym punishing myself through a grueling workout, sweat dripping out of every pore as I pushed myself to the absolute physical limit. There was nothing wrong with the muscles in my upper body and I tore into them as if I were exacting vengeance, building them up with all the power my legs lacked.
I didn’t go easy on my legs, either. I gutted myself, pain rippling through me as I pushed to work my scarred calves, my hamstrings tight with thick, burned skin. That morning I even forced myself to walk, slowly on a treadmill, for the longest ten minutes recorded in human history.
By two in the afternoon, I’d showered, caught up on news I didn’t particularly care about, and wasted time on social media, so I finally ventured out into the main quarters of the house. Annie wasn’t inside, but I caught sight of her out the window. What was the woman trying to do, skewer herself on a rosebush? February in Scotland and she was out tangoing with a shrub twice her size. She looked like she was about to lose an eye.
“What the hell is going on out there?” I muttered, pulling on a jacket. I headed outside, making my way over the uneven stone path as best I could in my chair. Honestly, it had been months since I’d used my walker. I hated the damn thing, hated even more that I knew she was right when she’d told me I should use it. My parents had paid therapist after physical therapist and they’d all said the same thing. But I’d like to see them wake up every morning with the same mangled body and maintain their “can-do” attitude. Sometimes, a body just couldn’t do.