His pause drags out for what feels like a lifetime.
“Until PT clears you, the doc signs off, and a therapist says your head’s where it needs to be, you’re not coming back on my line.”
“Boss—”
“That’s final.”
So I’m sidelined and completely fucked.
It feels like a knife between my shoulders and by a guy who’s always had my back.
Humiliation ripples over my skin even as I’m fully aware that reacting this way only proves his point. “Understood,” I grit through my clamped jaw.
“I’m going to text you the name of a therapist. He worked with some of the crew after the Caldera Fire,” he offers, quieter now, the edge gone, concern threading through his words. “Either way, do the work on your body and your mind, Slate. The crew needs you to be healthy.” There’s a pause and I can sense he’s weighing his words. “You deserve to be free of your demons.”
I swallow and force a response. “Will do.”
Then I hang up before I tell him he’s wrong—some things don’t heal and this job isn’t just what I do, it’s what keeps me from thinking too hard about who I am when nobody needs saving. He knows more about my past than most, maybe that’s why this feels like a betrayal.
“Fuck!”
I hurl my phone at the couch. It bounces off the cushions and clatters to the hardwood.
Heat crawls beneath my skin as I shove both hands through my hair and pace the length of the empty house, ribs pulling tighter with every turn.
First Aspen pushes me away. Now this.
My skin feels too damn tight. I need to burn this off before it eats me alive.
Normally, I’d run until my lungs gave out, split wood, check fences, or swim in the river. Anything to keep my body busy and my head quiet.
But my ribs are screaming, my shoulder’s on fire, and every breath still bites from the walk back from the hospital.
I’ve got nowhere to put this feeling, which leaves me one option.
Maybe I can wash it away.
I head for the bathroom on autopilot—too pissed off to think, too wound up to sit still.
And then I step into Aspen’s room.
Big fucking mistake.
Red lace catches my eye.
Missed in her efforts to make me feel welcome, one tiny thong rests shy of the hamper.
That little scrap of fabric unravels me so completely I know I’m wholly fucked.
The image it paints is vivid. It’s wrong to look—wrong to bend and pick it up—but I do it anyway, letting the material glidethrough my fingers. It’s too easy to picture Aspen sliding them off her hips in this very room.
My cock thickens in my pants, and I ball them up in my fist.
After everything else, I’m too fucking weak. If this is all I get of her I’m keeping it.
All this time, she’s been hiding something so feminine, so sexy, just out of sight, barely covered under those oversized shirts she loves so much. It’s the fatal blow.
I stuff the red lace into my pocket.
