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Mike wokethe next morning and let himself come to consciousness without moving. His shoulder ached, which his doctors in the Marines and up in Coral Canyon told him was a good sign. The numbness was bad, and that usually only came when he did his physical therapy.
He opened his eyes and looked straight up, the summer sunlight already coming in through the blinded windows in this new bedroom of his. Uncle Gray had given him a cabin to himself, because he had it to spare. Momma and Daddy were staying in the generational house, which only had one bedroom. Mike could sleep on a couch, but he didn’t want to if he didn’t have to.
He groaned as he used his core muscles and good arm to get himself into a seated position on the edge of his bed. Hunter had brought him out here last night, and he’d said the bed was brand new and really nice, and he hadn’t lied. Mike would be sure to text his cousin and tell him he’d slept great.
“Great” might be an overstatement, but Mike wasn’t going to make Hunter’s life any harder than he had to. No matter what the mattress was, Mike would be up a couple of times in the night.
Carefully, he lifted his left hand high above his head and stretched over to his right side, feeling the pull all down the left side of his body. He rotated his neck in a figure-eight pattern, leading with his chin.
He needed to move to the right side, and wow, he didn’t want to. He gritted his teeth, and using his left hand, he lifted his right, pressing up against his elbow until he made it past the point when his socket pointed down.
Up here, he could hold his arm above his head. He timed his breathing, puffing out his breath as he held his arm straight up for as long as he could. He rarely moved his arm and shoulder this way, and he swore he could feel and hear tiny things popping and adjusting in his body.
He reached over with his left hand and grasped his right fingers, tugging gently to get the stretch going on this side. He once again inhaled, held his breath, and then huffed it out, over and over until he couldn’t take the pull any longer.
He couldn’t just drop his arm either, as his shoulder couldn’t slow the fall of it and it jarred too much when it reached its limit. He used his left hand to get his right back to his side, and then he got to his feet with one final exhale.
A heartbeat throbbed down his right shoulder and bicep, but he ignored it and moved to open the blinds so he could greet the day. “Doctor at ten this morning,” he said as he pulled the string to flip the blinds open.
He yelped as he found a face there, hands cupped around eyes as they peered in. The woman on the other side of the glass screamed and fell back too, and that was when Mike recognized Gerty.
He bent closer to check and make sure it was really her. It was, so he hastened to open the window. That was quite the feat with only one arm strong enough to really pull on something.
Thankfully, the Good Lord Above saw fit to allow the window to open with the first yank of his left hand. It had no screen, and he stood only a few feet from Gerty now. “Are you spying on me?”
She stared at his chest, and Mike realized in that moment that he wasn’t wearing a shirt. Embarrassment flooded him, especially at what she might see on his right shoulder. All the scars and lines and patchy skin.
He stared at her while she drank him in, and she wore another pair of jeans today, these paired with a bright pink tank top that once again showed off the muscles in her arms and shoulders. She didn’t have an overly large chest, but enough of a swell to make a man swallow a couple of times, and Mike pulled his gaze away from her body and back to her eyes.
Her gaze met his, her cheeks flushed. “Not spying. Looking.” She grinned next and held up a brown paper bag. “My daddy said you got your own cabin, but there are two empty ones here, and I didn’t know which one.”
He leaned his left shoulder into the window frame and grinned at her. “Why didn’t you ask your daddy which one?”
“Oh, he….” She shook her head and didn’t finish. “I have breakfast if you want it. I know you’re going to the doctor’s later, but I figured you had a little time this morning, same as me.”
He wanted to ask her a lot more about why she couldn’t ask her daddy which cabin Mike lived in, but he decided to do it when he had breakfast in his hand and a shirt covering his scars. “C’mon in,” he said. “I didn’t lock the door.”
4
Gerty had worked with a lot of cowboys. She’d seen some shirtless before, and they had muscles in their abs, chests, and shoulders.
She’d never seen muscles like Mike’s. “They must make them different in the military,” she muttered to herself as she opened his front door and entered his cabin. Her mood sweetened, but only slightly. Mike hadn’t made her answer anything hard yesterday, and Gerty had gotten out of talking to her parents too by claiming she was just so exhausted from traveling.
She hadn’t lied. She’d fallen asleep in Mike’s lap yesterday for crying out loud. She should’ve been exercising her horse and figuring out what to do with her life, and she’d literally taken a nap while the sun set.
When she’d woken up, she’d apologized profusely, but Mike said he didn’t care. He’d had to walk back to the farm in twilight and then dusk, and his momma had been waiting along the fence where Gerty had found Mike hours before.
Bree Hammond was a nice woman, but she could put on a fierce Mama Bear face, and Gerty had seen it last night. Mike had told her he was fine, and he’d defended Gerty in his low, quiet voice to the point that Bree had backed down.
Her daddy had too, both last night and this morning, though she owed that miracle to Uncle Matt. He’d come by right when Gerty was putting together the breakfast sandwiches and saying she had to leave to get to a client’s barn for a re-shoeing.
Again, not a lie. Just not the whole truth. The re-shoeing wasn’t until noon, and Gerty certainly didn’t need to leave before eight o’clock with four breakfast sandwiches made with all of Mike’s favorite things.
A sigh tugged against her ribcage, because Gerty had a lot of explaining to do, to a lot of people. She’d just set the bag of sandwiches on the counter when footsteps told her Mike was coming.
She turned and found him approaching with a dark gray T-shirt in his hand. His face shone like an overripe tomato, and he practically threw the shirt at her. “Can you help me?” He’d never used that voice with her before, and Gerty didn’t know what to make of it.
She fumbled the shirt, but managed to grip it with the very tips of her fingers so it didn’t fall to the floor. “Sure,” she said, her word as blunt and forceful as his. “I don’t really….” Her brain misfired again as she took in his bare torso.
