I turned over and beat my fist against my pillow before I laid down. It was going to be a long couple of months.
But if I played my cards right, maybe that could be my present.
Maybe having her in all the way we both deserved could be my prize for cooperating.
Chapter Eleven
Grace
“I’m not going out.”
“Mr. Lowell, it isn’t good to be cooped up like this,” I said.
“I gave you dinner. I gave you a trip to the grocery store. What more do you want?”
“I want you to go out and see that people aren’t going to judge you the way you think they will.”
?
??Trust me, they will. They are. I was lucky no one saw me at that store.”
“Mr. Lowell-”
“No,” he said.
It was like pulling teeth from a tiger. I convinced him one time to go to the store with me and he practically disguised himself from head to toe. A baseball cap. Sunglasses. A massive jacket and a blanket over his lap. He drew more attention to himself that way than anything else. For the love of everything, all we needed was milk and some cookies for dessert that night!
“What if I told you I would pay?”
“Is that supposed to make this better? The beautiful nurse paying to go out with the gimp?”
“You really have an odd way of paying compliments, you know that?” I asked. “I’ll be with you the entire time. Come on. I know the trailer for this movie caught your eye on the television a few days ago. Let me take you to see it.”
“Why is this so important to you?” he asked. “Like I said, in one phone call I can have a copy of the movie sent over and we can watch it here. Why the movie theater?”
“Because you need to see that you can be comfortable in that chair out there in a world you think is going to judge you for it,” I said.
“They’re already judging me for it.”
“They haven’t seen you in it, Hayden. They have no idea there’s anything supposedly to judge!”
I didn’t mean to say his name like that. I didn’t mean to sound so demanding and angry with him. But when his eyes connected with mine, I saw a flash of something dark. It should have scared me. It should have put me in my place. All it did, however, was make me press on.
“Let me take you to see this movie,” I said. “And if it goes downhill, then we can stay in this apartment of yours however long you’d like. For the rest of your recuperation, if you want.”
His eyes squinted, like he was sizing me up. They fluttered down my body and I felt like I was on display. I felt like that often with him. He had a way of penetrating through my outer layers and making me feel as if I was standing naked in front of him. Vulnerable. Destitute. Embarrassed.
“Please, Mr. Lowell.”
“Hayden,” he said.
“Hmm?”
“Call me ‘Hayden’ from now on.”
He turned and started wheeling himself down the hallway. I felt my heart sink to my toes as I watched him disappear. He rolled himself into his bedroom and I slumped onto the couch with my head in my hands. I had been so close. So close to taking another step with him that was absolutely imperative to his mental well-being. The consult for his hip surgery was in less than a week, and he was in no mental state of being opened up again on an operating table.
“Well?” Hayden asked.