“I wasn’t the one who ordered it. I was just the one who was the one closest to the door and answered it, so stop blaming me for the chair.” Even though I could tell Jesse was irritated, he wasn’t raising his voice. He was like the Zen master of keeping his cool. “And no matter what happens, you’re going to need a chair to get around in for a while. You don’t want to spend day in and day out in that bed, do you?” He paused, waiting for me to answer, but I wouldn’t answer his rhetorical question with a rhetorical answer. “Being able to move around the house and get outside for some fresh air seems only about a thousand times better than being trapped inside this ten-by-ten-foot room.”
“Speak for yourself,” I muttered. “You won’t have to put up with people gawking at you while you breathe into a tube to make some wheels turn. There hasn’t been anything this gossip-worthy since crazy old Pete Whittaker held a nail gun to his temple and pulled the trigger.”
I exhaled sharply, picturing what I’d look like scooting along in that spaceship of a wheelchair. I’d never seen anyone use a chair like that in person, but I’d caught glimpses of some documentary about a scientist who used one when I’d been in the waiting room at the mechanic’s. That kind of chair might work for genius scientists, but how was a bull-rider-slash-rancher supposed to carry on working in something like that?
“But on the bright side, I could rent out a space at the county fair every year and charge to give rides and spins in the freak-show chair. The kids ought to love that, right?”
Jesse had long ago gotten used to my smartass approach to life and how when I was presented with two ways to address a problem, I usually went with the more controversial, but even his patience with me looked to be waning. It was either that or the dark shadows under his eyes were due to lack of sleep. “You obviously want to fight the chair topic, so I’m going to send in the person who took the time and energy to get it for you.”
He didn’t say anything else before marching out the door and down the hall. Beside me, Steve shifted again. If he’d been a fan before he’d arrived, he wouldn’t be after leaving. That was the way it would happen though, I guessed. One by one, each of my fans would fall away, either forgetting my name when it wasn’t on their screens or in their papers anymore or being repelled by my current state and the extra-surly attitude that accompanied it.
Reality after reality kept assaulting me. As if waking up paralyzed weren’t enough, I was figuring out just what that meant, one harsh realization at a time.
Steve let out a relieved sigh when we heard sharp, rushed steps growing closer. How those steps were a relief to him was beyond me because whenever I heard them, I knew I was in trouble. Those steps and the way the heel of her boot echoed down the hall meant she was barreling for me.
When she tore through the doorway, I knew she’d probably been helping her dad with the ever-malfunctioning tractor. Grease was streaked down her cheeks and plaid shirt. Where some girls shied away from anything that might put dirt under their nails, Josie dove right in. It was one of the many traits I found so damn attractive in her.
“What seems to be the problem?” Her voice cut through the room as her arms folded over her chest.
“Um . . . I’m not really sure, ma’am,” Steve said with an apologetic look.
“Thank you, Mr. Winters, but I wasn’t directing that question toward you. I was asking him.” Josie’s eyes cut in my direction as she lifted a brow and waited for me to say something. When I stayed quiet, mostly because she could still take my breath away just by walking into a room all riled up and stained by tractor oil, she lifted her other brow too. “What seems to be the problem, Garth?”
I saw through her tough act though. I could tell she was closer to tears than she was to throwing a fit. It broke my heart seeing her like that. It broke it again when I couldn’t go to her, pull her close, and whisper in her ear that everything would be okay.
“That thing, Joze. That’s the problem.” I lifted my chin in the general direction of the chair, but I wouldn’t look at it again. I couldn’t.
“How is having a way of moving around a problem?” She moved closer.
I could tell she wanted to grab my hand or give me a hug, but she held back, probably because our last few conversations hadn’t been all that kind. My plan was working—she was slowly pulling away—so why did I feel as though I was dying inside instead of flipping internal cartwheels . . . the only kind of cartwheels I’d be capable of from here on out?
“Because a
person shouldn’t have to breathe into a tube to move, Joze. Because I can’t afford that thing, and I don’t want to take out a thirty-year loan to do so. Because I don’t want to be stared at and pointed at and laughed at when I roll by. I don’t want to be a joke. I don’t want to be like my . . .” The word rose up my throat and froze in my mouth. I hadn’t consciously thought about Clay since I’d woken up in the hospital, but based on that near-slip, I guessed my subconscious had been plenty focused on him. Probably because I was crippled, laid up, and in even worse shape than he’d been after getting the short end of the bull riding stick.
Josie’s face softened instantly before she rushed the rest of the way to me. “You’re not a joke, baby. You never have been, and no matter what, you never will be.” Her head shook feverishly as she sat on the edge of my bed and slipped her hand into mind. “And if anybody even thinks about laughing at you, it will be promptly and sharply followed by my fist driving into their jaw.”
For the first time, a natural smile pulled at my lips. I didn’t have to force or fake it, and it felt so damn good I sighed without meaning to. “It would almost be worth making someone laugh just to witness that.”
She smiled at me and slid a bit closer until her back was propped up against my side. I couldn’t feel her, but knowing that I could still support her in some way, small though it might have been, was a comfort. “Then I better start practicing my right hook.”
“From what I recall, it’s never gotten out of practice.”
She laughed with me, being transported back to a time in our lives when life hadn’t been so complicated. “Yeah, you were the whole reason why that right hook never got out of practice, weren’t you?”
“That’s a crime I don’t mind being guilty of.” I felt a crooked smile slide into place, and instantly, that little glint in her eyes fired to life. One was tied to the other, and when combined, my crooked smile and her glint led to the same thing . . . except they couldn’t now. Or, if my dick stayed as uncooperative as the rest of my body, ever.
That smile fell from my face as suddenly as it had appeared.
“What’s the matter with the wheelchair, baby?” she asked softly, brushing my hair off my forehead. That was a touch I could feel, and it was so gentle and warm and comforting that my eyelids dropped closed. “It’s a tool to make your life easier, not a life sentence.”
My eyes stayed closed as I replied, “It is a life sentence.”
I heard her exhale, but she kept stroking my hair. “We don’t know that yet. It’s only been a few days. Maybe if I took you in for another X-ray or an MRI, we could get a more definitive answer—”
I shook my head. “I can’t move. It doesn’t get any more definitive than that.”
Another exhale, this one longer. “Mind telling me where the Garth Black who didn’t know how or when or even the meaning of the word ‘quit’ went? Where did he go? Because I need him to get through this with me. I don’t need this substitute who’s already waving the white flag before we’ve even gotten started.”