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“A touch of blue balls, but other than that, I’m feeling fine.”
“Must be the morphine,” Owen said, shaking his head.
But Lindsey knew Chad hadn’t had any morphine. Not since she’d met him.
When Joan and James returned about an hour later, the three trapped together in the hospital room had long since finished their sandwiches—Lindsey had forced herself to eat Josie’s sub, even though she was now uncomfortably full—and were avoiding talking about Josie, Chad’s injuries, Lindsey’s still undetermined baby daddy, and the state of Owen’s now defunct band by making inane small talk.
“I think I can sleep now,” Chad said.
“It’s good for you,” his mom said, fluffing his pillow and rubbing his shoulder, then his face, his forehead. “I had a nice little nap back at the hotel and feel almost human again.”
“By little she means ten minutes,” James said. “I had to pretend to be sleeping to keep her from coming back up here to bother you.”
“She is quite a bother,” Chad said, but he grinned lovingly at his mother.
“Where’s Josie?” Mom asked. “I thought for sure she’d be here by now.”
Chad licked his lips and shot his brother a look of warning. “She had to leave early. Something important came up.”
“What could possibly be more important than you?” Mom asked.
Exactly, Lindsey thought.
“The world does not revolve around me, Mom.”
“Of course, it does,” she said without missing a beat.
“You’re going to drive him insane,” James predicted.
“I’d do anything for either of my boys. Anything,” Joan said.
“Can you get me out of this dump?” Chad asked.
Lindsey doubted it was a good idea for him to leave the hospital early, but if that was what he wanted, she was sure Joan could figure out a way to make it happen.
“You know,” Joan said, focusing her attention on Lindsey. “I think maybe you came around at exactly the right time. I’m going to need some help taking care of Chad until he gets back on his feet.”
“Foot,” Chad said.
Joan rolled her eyes. “He’s always been a handful.”
“Owen is worse.” Chad pointed at his brother.
Owen nodded. “He’s right. I am.”
“I’ll help in any way I can,” Lindsey said.
“I don’t want anyone taking care of me,” Chad said. “Ever.”
“Just until you’re back on your feet,” Joan said, patting his shoulder.
“Foot,” he corrected again, this time a bit more tersely. “I don’t need your help.”
“If you can’t accept our help, then you’re staying in the hospital,” Joan said with finality.
Chad sighed. “Fine. Lindsey can give me baths, but that’s the only help I’ll accept.”
Lindsey licked her lips, flushing at the thought of seeing Chad naked. She was going to make a terrible nurse. But she did want to help. And not only with his baths.
“She’s good at taking care of people,” Owen said. “I’ve been so spoiled since she moved in with me, I won’t know what to do with myself when she finds a place of her own.”
So, he’d noticed that she tried to make his life easier? She smiled. Maybe she had a chance with Owen after all.
“Good thing I’ll be there to keep you company,” Chad said.
“You’re moving in with me?” Owen asked. “But I thought—”
“Hey, I’m not the kind of loser who lives with his parents until he’s forty,” Chad said. “I’m the kind who lives with his brother for life.”
“For life?” Owen squeaked.
Joan squeezed Chad’s shoulder. “Chad, I’m not sure that’s the best place for you. There are all those stairs.”
“We can make a place for him in the downstairs den,” Lindsey said, and then realizing she’d overstepped her bounds, she backpedaled. “I mean, if that’s okay with Owen.”
“The den is tiny,” Owen said. “I’m not sure a bed will fit in there.”
“A twin bed will.” She’d already measured it, thinking the den might be their son’s future bedroom before she’d known that Owen wasn’t his father.
“But we have so much more space, Chad,” Joan said. “It makes more sense—”
“Nothing in my life makes sense right now,” Chad said. “I only know I’d feel more at home at Owen’s place. I did do most of the work fixing it up while he was off playing rock star with his friends.”
“Not most of the work,” Owen protested, but then he chuckled. “Okay, you did do most of the work, but not all of it.”
“You did install that toilet paper holder in the powder room,” Chad said.
“The crooked one?” Lindsey asked. It wasn’t crooked, but teasing Owen was always fun.
“It’s not crooked.” But his grin was.
Lindsey decided that living with both Mitchell brothers—the sweet one and the savory one—would be an adventure worth experiencing.
“We’d better get home,” she said to Owen. “We have a lot to prepare for Chad’s arrival.”
“Aren’t you still active duty?” Dad asked.
“I never turned in my reenlistment papers, so as of the fifteenth, I’ll be a civilian.”
“A veteran,” Owen said, slapping Chad’s shoulder and beaming with pride.
“Could you reenlist?” Mom asked. “I mean, if you wanted to?”
“Sure. But they’d probably stick me behind a desk.” Chad shook his head. “No thanks.”
“I wish someone would stick me behind a desk,” Lindsey said. “I could use a job.” Any job.
“You have a job,” Chad said. “Taking care of me.”
She’d happily do that for free. “That’s not a job, it’s a privilege.”
Chad rolled his eyes. “You won’t be saying that for long.”
Just for as long as he needed her. Which she hoped was a long time.
Chapter Six
His mother was hovering again. Chad loved the woman dearly, but he wasn’t a child, and she seemed to think his injuries made him as helpless as a babe. Maybe he should be grateful for the small yet repeated annoyance of her trying to do everything for him. It served to light a fire under his ass to get out of that fucking bed and on with his life—even if he had no idea what that life would look like even a month down the road. He didn’t have time to vex about an uncertain future when his present felt so ambiguous.
“Are you sure you wouldn’t feel better if you told me how you wound up injured?” Mom asked for the fiftieth time in five days. She leaned over him and fluffed his pillow for the fiftieth time in five minutes.
For whatever reason, she wanted all the gory details of how he’d ended up a worthless cripple, but he didn’t want to think about the incident, much less talk about it. During his deployment, he’d become an expert at blocking dark thoughts, frightening thoughts, distressing thoughts, because a clear head allowed him to complete his missions. But he was also finding that talent—that blessing—to compartmentalize and focus worked well for him in not thinking about the explosion, about the fear of what he’d thought was certain death, about the pain of being crushed. That skill allowed him to push aside the horror of being trapped, the helplessness of watching one of his own bleed out just beyond his reach, the heaviness of Jawa—the bomb-sniffing wonder—draped over his chest when the dog had crawled over to protect him and had delivered a parting lick to his Chad’s face before taking his final breath. He could even avoid thinking about the confusion about how he’d been cut free—since he’d been blissfully unconscious for that part—and even the rawness of Josie’s rejection. He could shut it all away except when he slept or when some unthinking person who supposedly cared about him tried to flush it all to the surface by asking him about it. His dad and Owen had taken his first refusal to share his ordeal to heart and hadn’t asked again, but his mother, God bless her, wouldn’t let it rest. A
nd that was why he still hadn’t told her why Josie was too busy to visit. He didn’t want to think about it. About any of it.
“I’m sure I still don’t want to talk,” he said. “Is it time for PT yet?”
“You just got back.”
