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For a long minute, nothing but silence and shifting stares passed between us. In that minute, I must have witnessed a dozen different emotions filter through her eyes, her expression keeping pace. Watching her was nearing the point of becoming too painful to bear when she stepped out of the shower. Water streamed down her body, collecting in puddles at her feet. Drops of water were fanned into her lashes and fell down her face when she blinked.
“You really can’t understand why I’d still want to make love to you in whatever way we can figure out just because you got hurt?” Her eyes narrowed as they searched me for an answer. “Please tell me you’re kidding.”
I circled my finger around my face. “Not my kidding face.”
Her hands curled into fists before she crossed her arms. I couldn’t tell which she felt more, hurt or anger, but I guessed she felt some of both.
“I wanted to be with you before, I want to be with you now, and I’ll want to be with you forever because I love you.” She said each word so slowly, so purposefully, it was as if there was nothing she believed in more, as if there was nothing she was more passionate about. She didn’t seem to blink as she continued. “I. Love. You. Do you really think that came with the condition that so long as you were still walking, I’d love you? Or with the condition that if you turned into a prudish lunatic who hid in corners while I pretty much handed you a play-by-play of how I wanted you to do me, I’d stop loving you? Do you really think that anything could happen to you or change you or that I could find out about you that could just make all the love I have for you disappear? Is that really what you think?”
I was quiet, not knowing how to reply. Before she’d, in so many words, reminded me that her love came without conditions, yes, I really had doubted why she’d want to be with me if I was going to spend the next fifty years as a mostly helpless invalid, but now . . . now I didn’t know what to think.
I was still trying to sort through it all when she spoke again. “Then fuck you, Garth Black. Fuck you for confusing my love with the cheap, shallow kind you could find with just about any tramp begging you to sign her bra.”
Now I knew with certainty the moisture running down her cheeks wasn’t caused by the shower. How could I make it such a priority to make Josie happy yet be responsible for so many of her tears?
“You might as well have just chosen one of them because then you would be right—they would have bailed at the first mention of paralysis. They would have ditched you before finding out your dick might never work again, as you’re so obsessed with, or before having to bathe, feed, and diaper the man they loved for the rest of his life even came up. They would have fled so quickly you wouldn’t have known what happened. Yet here I’ve stayed beside you, with you, every step of the way. So maybe I really am a fool, if I’m the only one of us who expected me to be made of something better and stronger. Maybe I should have run, especially if that’s as much credit as you’ve given me this whole time. But I didn’t run. I didn’t run because I couldn’t.” She was almost sobbing, every third or fourth word breaking as tears streamed down her face. “I couldn’t run from you, because I love you so goddamn much it’s buried so far inside me I could never dig deep enough to pull it out. I love you so much that when I look at you, I don’t see a man in a wheelchair.” She shook her head, biting her lip so hard it made a deep indentation. “All I see is the man I want to spend the rest of my life with. All I see is the man I love.”
Her confession ended in a whisper so faint I didn’t hear the word “love.” Instead, I saw it tumble from her lips.
Scrubbing my face, I sighed. Where the hell did I go from here? How the hell did I respond to that? I knew she loved me like that and I knew I was a bastard who didn’t deserve that kind of love and I knew I loved her the same way, putting myself second to her and without condition. So how could I let her waste her life being confined to my small, lonely existence when she deserved so much more?
All of the answers eluded me. Big fucking surprise.
“Joze . . .”
“Don’t ‘Joze’ me!
” she snapped, her tone reaching all its former angry glory. “You don’t get to call me that or imply all that you do in that tone if you’ve been thinking all these months that I’d cut my losses and bail if the going got tough.” She blew out a sharp breath and threw her arm at the door. “You can leave now. I think you’re right. Us taking a shower together isn’t such a good idea.”
Turning her back to me, she stepped inside the shower and slid the shower curtain closed. She even made sure to seal the cracks on either end. I felt a pain in my chest come on so suddenly and so sharply I leaned forward. I felt like I was having a heart attack but one that wouldn’t end.
“Besides, I can take care of myself if you don’t want to use your imagination and take care of me anymore,” she added as steam billowed out from the top of the shower.
She wanted me to leave. I should have wanted to leave, but something about her turning her back and shutting me out because I’d hurt her made me move closer. I’d been trying on and off to push her away for days, and it had finally seemed to work, so why were my fingers curling around the edge of the shower curtain, about to pull it open? Why did the thought of never touching her hand again or seeing her or being near her feel infinitely more crippling than my damaged spine?
How could I feel such a war raging inside me, one side pulling me away while the other pulled me closer, and not be moments away from either splitting right down the middle or exploding all over the bathroom walls? How could I feel so much conflict raging inside me when I knew how I felt about her and how she felt about me?
The answer, I guessed, was that love wasn’t simple. It was complex and intricate and confusing and made a man question everything he’d ever held true. It made a person’s morals shift and be reexamined from a different perspective. Love wasn’t simple. It didn’t come naturally or instinctively or easily. It had to be earned and fought for and could drive a person to insanity just as quickly as it could drive them to greatness, but in the midst of all of that confusion, I knew one thing: I loved this woman. And she loved me.
No matter what came tomorrow or the next day or the day after that, I wasn’t going to waste that right now.
“I’m not done with you yet, Joze,” I said as I shoved open the shower curtain.
Her face erupted with surprise, but she recovered quickly. She wasn’t shampooing her hair or shaving her legs or doing much of anything other than letting sheets of hot, steaming water encompass her. “Well, too bad because I am most certainly done talking with you.” She shoved the curtain closed in my face.
My brows lifted as I inspected the shower curtain, contemplating my next move. I came up empty though, kind of like I seemed to be coming up empty a lot lately when I took the time to think about what to say or do next. Then a realization knocked me over the head and swung around to knock me one more time. I wasn’t the type who thought out every move or mapped out every step. I was the type who relied on instinct and gut feelings. I was the guy who jumped first and questioned later. I wasn’t the guy who drew up a detailed outline of choices and consequences before making a decision a week and a half later. No . . . I was the other guy. The one who leapt into the fucking shower before his girl could even crook her finger at him.
This time I didn’t bother with the curtain. I just gave a hard push to get my wheelchair over the small lip of the shower and rolled inside. “I’m done talking too, Joze. I’m way done with talking.”
I tried not to smile at her reaction to me bursting into the shower with my chair and pants and boots still on. From her expression, she would have been less shocked if a gorilla had leapt in with her.
“Then what do you want?” she asked a moment later.
I felt my smile move into place. Not the one others were used to seeing but the one only Josie had seen. The one that either preceded or followed a certain something. “I want you.” I shook my head to splash off the water running down my face from my hair. “Just you.”
She had to bite her cheek to keep her smile in check, but she grabbed the showerhead and angled it so it was spraying my face for a few seconds. When I sputtered and cursed, she laughed. “Yeah, well, you had your chance, and you choose a cold lonely corner of the bathroom.”
I didn’t stop looking at her, even with the water breaking across my face. I moved closer so she was almost within arm’s reach. “Do you see me in that corner right now?”
