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“You have a card?” he asked, sounding surprised. Which was weird because it wasn’t like it wasn’t common knowledge that I believed plant medicine—whether it be pot or mushrooms or ayahuasca—could and should not only be legal, but used more widely for common physical or mental health issues.
“Until it is fully legal here, yeah. Alright, here we go,” I said, scooping up a bit of the cream, and starting to slather it onto Rowe’s skin.
“Christ,” he hissed.
“A little warm?” I asked.
“A little?” he snorted.
“Move a little,” I suggested, moving around the table to look at his face. As I did, Rowe pressed his weight onto his soles and started to stand.
“No shit,” he said, gaze shooting to me, his brows pinched in disbelief.
“Told you I know what I’m doing,” I said, giving him a little smile. “The downfall is, it will likely only last an hour or so. And you can only put it on three or four times a day.”
“Babe, that is three or more hours of no pain that I don’t have now,” he said, eyes looking raw, vulnerable. Because a part of him was convinced there would be nothing that could help the pain.
Hell, I felt tears stinging at my eyes for him.
“The best time to put it on will be after your shower. Which is probably when you need it most. It will absorb better. So, shower, salve, and brace. I will come over in the mornings to help you with that. And don’t start to object. I don’t mind. It is ten minutes out of my day.”
“I appreciate it, Billie,” he said, his gaze going to mine, soft, relieved.
“After my morning classes, I can stop by again sometime around lunch to do a second treatment. After that, I have several clients usually, so I could pop over around dinner.”
“That’s too much.”
“It’s not,” I insisted. “You just have to promise me something.”
“What’s that?”
“That you’re going to go to your physical therapy sessions. At least once a week. You can always stop by here on your way back for some more salve or tea too.”
“I don’t know how to thank you for all of this. Especially since—“
“You don’t need to thank me,” I cut him off. Partly because I felt that way. And partly because I didn’t want him to finish that sentence, because I wasn’t sure I was good enough at hiding my feelings if we started talking about that. And for the first time in my life, I wasn’t comfortable feeling vulnerable.
He did that to me.
He made me scared to be myself.
I wasn’t sure how I could even begin to process that.
Or fully forgive him for it.
“Come on, you need to choke down some of that tea.”
But I figured forcing some pretty nasty herbal remedies down his throat would make me feel at least a teensy bit better about the whole situation.
CHAPTER SIX
Rowe
“You know what is good pain relief?” Dezi asked from the driver’s seat of the SUV. How he ended up being my driver to physical therapy was beyond me. He was usually passed out at ten in the morning from whatever events kept him awake the whole night before. “An orgasm,” he declared when I didn’t respond. Mostly because I knew exactly what he was going to say.
With Dezi, the answer was pretty much always fucking, food, fighting, or booze. And not necessarily in that order.
The problem was, an orgasm wasn’t going to help me. Because the vast majority of the time, I still had very little sensation in my ass, thighs, and groin.
I usually woke up with a bit of it, but as the day went on and the strain on my back got worse, the less and less I felt.
Billie’s remedies kept me going.
I kinda felt like a dick for doubting her.
I mean, I wasn’t actually sure the tea was doing anything. I kept choking it down regardless. And I tried to tell myself it was because I told Malc I was trying to recover. But a part of me knew it was because anytime I ran out, it was another excuse to see Billie.
The cream, on the other hand, was absolutely helping. My only complaint was that I couldn’t reapply it whenever it wore off. But I’d been told that if I used it more than was instructed, I could end up with burns from it, and then not be able to use it for several days until my skin calmed down. That, well, that wasn’t an option. Because after using the cream was the only time of the day when the pain wasn’t damn near blinding.
In that hour or so after an application, I managed to be able to function mostly like a normal human being. I could get my own food. I could do some light straightening up around my room. I could get some laundry done. I could go out and see the guys so they stopped thinking I was practically bedridden.
