AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Her stiff shoulders sag as she lets out a huge exhalation. “Because I...” She turns and starts to pace. “Hell, this is hard,” Blaire moans.
“Will you at least have dinner with me?”
Stopping, she whirls to face me again, her gaze touching on every part of me before she silently nods.
Despite the evening not at all going like I hoped, I insist Blaire doesn’t help with the meal preparations and sits on the couch while I go about reheating things.
Twenty minutes later, we’re both sitting at my dining room table and savoring the beef tips with small red potatoes, stuffed mushrooms, and a corn pudding that I can’t get enough of after having found the recipe two years ago.
“I can't believe you made all this,” she comments before lifting another forkful of potato into her mouth.
“Is it really that hard to believe?” I press, stabbing at a mushroom. “What part of it? That a man can cook or that I can, considering I use crutches.”
Blaire’s green eyes widen, and I feel like shit for lashing out like that.
Dabbing at my mouth with a cloth napkin, I place it back in my lap. “I wasn't born like this,” I say softly, giving her a crooked grin. “Figured you should know.” I swallow hard. “Not that it will change your mind, but what I have isn’t a birth defect or anything that someone could catch.”
“Lee, I never thought you were contagious.” Those large eyes of hers roll as she frowns.
“I know you didn’t. But you’d be surprised at the wild things people believe.”
“Well, I know better.” Her teeth rake across her lower lip. “Will you tell me what happened?”
“Ten years ago, I was a twenty-nine-year-old average guy. I had a fiancée who I thought was perfect and a great job working in construction. We had just bought a house together when the safety harness I was wearing snapped while I was up doing roof work on a site, and I fell.”
Gasping, Blaire presses her hands over her mouth, her wide, unblinking green eyes fixed on me as she lets out a tiny moan.
“I got lucky that I wasn’t paralyzed and also lucky that I was unconscious for most of the first few days.”
“Overall, I’m a very fortunate man. The doctors, insurance agents, lawyers, rehab techs, they all told me that.” Laughing, I shake my head. “My entire life changed, and I was clueless the first few weeks. I really believed them that I was lucky.”
My lips twist and it’s hard to keep the old bitterness that wants to well up out of my voice. “That perfect fiancée left me while I was in rehab learning to walk again and it was then that Irealized that I would never be able to do a physically demanding job like construction again.”
“Lee, how could she leave you like that? What a heartless bitch!” Blaire snarls, the rage in her eyes on my behalf making my chest feel warm and tight.
“Remember what I told Savannah? About a right time in your life for things happening?”
She nods and I continue, “It’s good I got hurt before we were married. It showed me clearly the type of person she was. I don’t blame her for ending the engagement.”
“What the hell?” Blaire explodes. “Seriously, Lee, that was a dick move!”
Laughing, I shake my head. “No, it really wasn’t. She wasn’t nasty about it either. It’s a lot to ask of a woman to be with a man with physical limitations, especially when that’s not what she signed up for. She wanted to marry the physically fit and capable man I would never be again.”
Understanding gleams in Blaire’s eyes as she gives a reluctant nod.
“No, it’s the fact that she tried to say the house was entirely hers, sold my motorcycle and kept most of my things that, to use your words, was a dick move. That showed me the character of someone I wouldn’t want to spend my life with.”
“Lee, I’m so sorry,” Blaire says.
“It was ten years ago. I’ve put that all behind me a long time ago.” Chuckling, I grab for my glass of water and take a long sip. “I was very bitter for a while, but Stephen King helped me.”
Her brows scrunch down as she frowns at me. “The author?”
“Yeah, the author. I watched a lot of TV while trying to rebuild my life. Sitting on a couch feeling sorry for myself when I happened upon the movie The Shawshank Redemption. ‘Get busy living or get busy dying’. That resonated with me.”
Blaire is watching me, and I reach across the table for her hand, and she lets me.
“Suddenly, it seemed damn foolish to have survived that fall and gone through rehab to learn to walk again just to waste the rest of my life sitting on a couch. So I set out to start living again and I'm happy.”
