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The answer shouldn’t have eluded me for as long as it had.
“Rowen?” I glanced at him. “This has something to do with Rowen, doesn’t it?”
Jesse had such a terrible poker face he would have been better off never trying to fool anyone. The look he gave me now took that to a different level. “We’ll talk about this later, Black.” His voice was firm as he wheeled me to the reception counter. “When we’re not surrounded by two dozen people hanging on to every word Garth Black is saying.”
I glanced at the crowds waiting for tables. “Between you and me, Jess, I don’t think it’s exactly my words they’re hung up on right now.” As we passed an older couple looking at me, I waved, but they didn’t notice. They were too busy staring at my legs to see my hand.
I’d never walked into this restaurant, or anywhere in this town, without holding my head high, despite the gossip that came with the Black name. This might have been my first experience wheeling through the nicest restaurant in town, but I wouldn’t start lowering my eyes and hunching my shoulders now. I’d have been a liar if I said it wasn’t hard though. On my first official outing as Garth Black the Paralyzed, no one was letting me off easy. Every eye turned my way and felt like they were boring holes through me, whittling deeper and deeper until they came out the other side.
“I’ll take it from here, Jess. Thanks for the lift.” I lowered my hands to the wheels.
Jesse, picking up on my cue instantly, took his hands off the wheelchair grips and moved through the restaurant beside me. “Our table’s back here by the window.” Jesse lifted his chin toward the back of the restaurant where I could just make out the back of Rowen’s head.
I glanced around the large room brimming with tables and chairs. It felt like more of an obstacle course or a maze. Jesse must have inspected the restaurant with my eyes, because after a moment, he exhaled.
“Garth, I’m sorry. I didn’t even think about it when the hostess sat us back there.” He shook his head. “I’ll see about getting a table closer.”
I grabbed his wrist before he could turn and leave. “It’s fine.” I wheeled toward what looked to be the widest path. “I just wanted to give the girls another minute to catch up on their gossip before we showed up. Besides, these places are required to be handicapped accessible now.” I bumped into the back of a chair. Thankfully, it was an empty one. “Just spot me if it looks like I’m going to take out a small child or something.”
Jesse followed me, clearly taking his task seriously. When he caught sight of a heel of bread in my path, he moved in front of me and kicked it aside. He did the same when he noticed a baby’s soft block in our path too. Although instead of kicking it, he picked it up, wiped it off on his shirt, and placed it in the baby’s pudgy little arms with a smile. The baby flapped its arms and legs, cooing at Jesse while the mom thanked him in her own way. Rowen would have gotten all territorial if she’d noticed the way the woman’s gaze drifted to Jesse’s backside and lingered for far too long for someone at a table with whom I guessed was her family.
“So that ring you’re lucky didn’t fall out of your back pocket when you were cartwheeling over that bull . . .” Jesse glanced at me from the corner of his eye.
After I’d been stripped at the hospital before getting tied into a hospital “dress,” Jesse was the one the staff had handed my clothes and other personal effects to. I supposed it was better he’d gotten them than Josie, but I knew better than to hope he wouldn’t bring up that ring. I’d been waiting for him to broach the topic since he’d slid those folded-up jeans into the hospital dresser drawer with a raised brow aimed in my direction.
“How much longer are you planning on keeping it in your pocket?”
I kept moving with my eyes forward. “Pretty much as long as I’m in this damn thing.”
“Why did you buy it in the first place if you weren’t planning on doing anything with it then?” he asked.
“Because I was planning on asking Josie to marry me.”
“And that’s changed?”
I shook my head and tightened my jaw. “No, that hasn’t changed, but I have.”
Jesse’s face creased for a moment before he shook his head. “Yeah, I don’t get that pattern of thinking, but knock yourself out.”
My jaw kept tightening. “Nobody asked you, big guy, so why don’t we just drop the whole ring topic before Josie’s ears start twitching?”
Jesse shrugged what I guessed was his agreement before, from across the restaurant, a group of guys waved at him, motioning him over. When he answered with an apologetic wave, indicating Rowen only a few tables away, the guys cracked some imaginary whips before getting back to their beers. I knew a few of them, but not one had waved or made eye contact with me. I guessed that had more to do with me being at the eye-level of a first-grader instead of a grown man.
“Adoration.” I lifted a brow at him. “How does it feel?”
Jesse chuckled one note, pushing an empty chair aside to make extra room for me. “You’d know better than I would, Garth Black, professional bull rider.”
I made sure he noticed me take in the room. The tables of people were looking at me in similar ways and lengths as the people in the waiting area had. “This isn’t adoration, Jess. This is a personified train wreck rolling right in front of their eyes.”
Jesse shook his head at me as we passed the last few tables before ours. I felt as if I’d endured some kind of harrowing journey of a lifetime, and all I’d done was maneuver my way through a busy restaurant.
That was when I noticed Colt. He was a couple tables over, sitting with his family. His whole family. A couple of his brothers stared at me with smirks, nudging each other and whispering something that had to have been quite hysterical from the way their laughs echoed around the restaurant. Colt shoved at them both, trying to shush them, but that only made them laugh harder. I was so busy glaring at them that I ran smack into the back of a chair. A chair someone was actually occupying. The woman in it let out a loud oomph! before whipping her head around to see what had happened.
“Sorry, ma’am,” I said instantly, rolling away from her chair. When she twisted around in her seat, I noticed the fresh dark purple stain on her blouse and the tipped over wine glass in front of her. “Ah, shit. God, I’m sorry.”
When her lips pursed together, they looked in danger of sticking that way, and I noticed the slew of children staggered around the table, gaping at me as though I were going to hell because I’d just taken the Lord’s name in vain.
From the Mason table, more laughter rolled through the restaurant. I felt my face wanting to redden, my body wanting to disappear into the floorboards, as the woman and what felt like the whole restaurant either glared, stared, or laughed at me. That was when Josie appeared, crouchin
