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At the door to my bedroom, she pauses for a second before going in.
When I get there, she nearly plows me over on her way out again. Reflexively, I wrap my arms around her to help steady both of us before we crash to the floor.
I fully expect her to back up the second she finds her feet but as I loosen my grip, she throws her arms around me squeezing my ribs. “I’m so sorry,” she says nuzzling her cheek against my bare chest.
I trace a line over her brow pushing the loose locks of hair back and behind her ear. “What on Earth do you have to be sorry for?”
“Come on,” she says backing up and putting my arm over her shoulders helping support me on our way to the living room. “You shouldn’t be standing on that.”
I don’t need the help but I’m not about to refuse it either. Any excuse to be close to Riley, I’ll gladly take.
“Can I get you anything?” she asks after dropping me on the couch and helping prop my leg on the pillow on the coffee table in front of me.
God damn it, I don’t deserve this. Her. She should be out with her friends having a good time. Not taking care of a lame old man.
“I’m fine. Thank you for checking in on me but don’t feel like you have to take care of my pathetic ass.”
“Of course I do. It’s my fault you’re in this mess.” She shucks her smock and throws it over the arm of the couch. Again, she wears only a thin camisole I can almost see through when the light hits her just right.
I swallow the lump in my throat and adjust myself putting my other foot up on the coffee table to give my pants a little slack to hide the lump growing in my lap.
“I’m the idiot who pushed himself too far. I could have stopped but I didn’t.”
Riley sits beside me on the couch. Leaning forward she adjusts my ice pack. It had gone askew with all the commotion. “Why didn’t you?”
Besides wanting to show that jerk, Spencer I’m not the old man I so obviously am? “I didn’t want to hold you back.”
“I could barely keep up with them. In no way were you holding me back.”
“Not like that. I mean… sort of like that but mostly keeping you from hanging out with your friends.”
Riley bursts out laughing. “Those were notmyfriends. No matter how much they pretend to be or how much my sister wants them to be.”
I cock my head in question.
“My sister worries about me getting lonely cooped up in my apartment baking myself into a diabetic coma. She insisted, when I got my job and moved away from her, she come and help me make some friends. But she didn’t considermewhen she found them. And they can’t or won’t take the hint when I don’t answer or return their messages.”
“Then… You didn’t want to go hiking?”
“Hell, no.”
I recall the phone call with Riley the night I called for help with the gumbo. How upset she was to have to say goodbye. Not only because she’d wanted to talk to me but because she dreaded going on that night hike with her sister.
“Then why did you?” I ask.
“Because you seemed to really want to go and I didn’t want to disappoint you.”
“Or your sister?”
“I have a problem.” A nervous laugh escapes her nose.
I put my arm around her and pull her to my side. She lays her head on my bare chest. Her soft cheek and wisps of hair on my skin warm me to the core. I want to enjoy it. Holding her. Breathing her in. But the past still eats at me. Just because she doesn’t like to hike, doesn’t mean I’m not holding her back in other ways and won’t end up losing her like I lost my wife.
“What’s wrong?” she asks.
“Hmm?”
“You sighed pretty heavily there. Is your knee aching?” She sits up. “Do you need—?”
