Page 17 of Ruined

“I think… I think I sprained my ankle.” Tears stream down my face at the confession, and the throbbing pain in my foot grows the more I think about it.

Logan finishes cleaning my hands and scoots the chair a little further away, then he pats his lap. “Which ankle?”

I lift my leg onto his lap, and he gently removes my sock and puts his big, warm hands on my skin.

“Does this hurt?” He squeezes his thumb and forefinger over the sides of my foot, and I hiss, nodding.

“It hurts,” I whimper, staring at the place he’s touching, taking in the blue tint of my skin where my ankle’s bigger than it used to be. I shiver, both from the pain and the confusing arousal surging through my aching body.

“You’re swelling up.” He angles my foot this way and that—gently, but his rough fingertips scrape against my sensitive skin. “The good news is I don’t think it’s broken, but you definitely sprained it.”

“Okay.” I whisper the word out, struggling against the heat gathering in my lower belly. When he slides his fingertips higher up my leg, pressing and prodding there, my breath hitches, and to my horror, I realize I’m hard.

Oh no. Panicked, I flick my gaze down to my crotch. Thankfully I’m wearing jeans instead of sweatpants or something, but it’s still noticeable where the fabric creases.

The hairs on the back of my neck stand on end as my arousal fights against the pain, the shame, and the utter panic at the prospect of Logan finding out what’s happening. He’s only taking care of me and patching up my wounds. Getting hard in front of him is inappropriate in all contexts, but in this one most of all.

To my relief, he stands up and gets something out of the freezer. A bag of peas. I almost laugh at the cliché. Sitting back down with the peas and a towel in his hand, he lifts my leg carefully onto his lap again, wraps the peas in the towel, and presses the package to my aching ankle.

“There.” He looks at me with a small smile. “Is that better?”

I nod, cheeks flushing. I’ve forgotten how to speak, all the blood rushing downward and any semblance of rational thought fleeing my head. The peas are cold, but his lap and his hands are so warm. My toes brush the soft fabric of his shirt by his belly, and the heel of my foot is so close to his, um… Oh God. As soon as the realization floods my brain, it’s hard to focus on anything at all.

“How’s your knee?” He holds my leg so gently, pressing the peas softly against my skin. They’re starting to melt.

“B-better,” I reply, though it still pulses with pain.

He sighs, voice tightening. “I’m sorry about the other day.”

I feel like crying again, but I’ve had enough of crying. Instead, I ask him the question I’ve been wondering most of all. “Why didn’t you tell me you were back?”

“I didn’t know how.” A crease forms between his thick brows. “I didn’t even know if you were still in town.”

“Where else would I be?” I try to sound angry, but my voice comes out as a simple question instead—genuine curiosity.

“College, for example.”

“Well…” I bite my lip. “I was going this term. But I dropped out.”

His frown deepens. “Why?”

“It just… didn’t feel right.” I didn’t go because I realized I was only doing what you’d want me to do, to make you proud. But I don’t tell him that. Instead, I say, “I graduated high school just a few months ago. I don’t know what I want to do yet.”

He sends me a confused look. “Wouldn’t last year have been your senior year?”

I shake my head, wishing he wasn’t so perceptive. “I repeated a year.”

“Why?”

“What do you think?” Tears burn behind my eyes once again, and I can’t meet his gaze as he searches my face, trying to find answers I can’t voice aloud.

His expression turns pained as he contemplates what I’m saying but not saying, what it means, and what it doesn’t mean. The absence of words only heightens the distance between us.

This was a mistake. I should never have come here. I should have ignored him. I shouldn’t have shown up at his doorstep, and I shouldn’t have let him patch me up. I shouldn’t be letting him hold my injured ankle in his lap. If I’d ignored him, I wouldn’t have to confess how much his absence has affected me, and to what degree I’ve not only missed him, but idolized him, longed for him, yearned for him…

“I’m sorry, Oliver.” His voice is different this time than the last time I heard him say these exact words. Heavier, full of regret. “It wasn’t your fault.”

“You were my dad,” I whisper. “And then you weren’t anymore. It was like you’d died. Only worse, because you were choosing to stay away from me. I thought…” How can I even explain how much pain it caused me? How many sleepless nights, how many tears, how much it destroyed me that he just left, between one day and the next. I take a hitching breath. It hurts to keep going, but I have to. “I thought I’d done something wrong. That it wasn’t real, what we had. That you didn’t care about me at all.”