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Four days later, I couldn’t remember why I had begged the doctor in Portland to cut back my pain meds. I ached all the time, and grouchy had become my middle name.
Max eyed me from the kitchen but didn’t speak to me, which was probably smart, since I’d bitten his head off when he asked me if I wanted breakfast. Apparently, I didn’t do pain well.
“Sorry,” I called out to him, hoping he’d know what I was apologizing for, since I didn’t have more in me right then.
“Yep,” he answered fast. “My sister will be here soon to start PT. Are you sure I can’t offer you some eggs?”
My stomach clenched at the thought. “Absolutely not.”
The toast I had managed to keep down, despite how awful I felt, was all that I would be attempting any time soon.
He nodded. “She’ll probably have my mother with her.”
I darted to my feet, which was easier said than done. My shoulder was actually coming along a lot easier than the flesh wound over my hip. I’d never understand the why of it, and the doctor hadn’t seemed to have a lot of answers about that either. I limped toward the bedroom and made quick work of putting on some makeup and fixing my hair. I could live with his sisterthinking I’d never seen the inside of a salon. His mother? No, not so much.
Even though we were friends and not dating, so it shouldn’t really matter. It just kind of did. Not to mention it really was starting to feel like we were just friends. He’d made absolutely no moves to act like he wanted sex since we’d arrived.
Of course, before yesterday, I’d been pretty out of it and apparently looking like the horror I’d seen in the mirror before I started applying makeup.
“Is it going to run down your face when you are doing your exercises?”
I jumped, not expecting to find Max in the doorway.
“I hope it’s smudge proof.” I hadn’t bought the cosmetics myself. Someone else purchased the items, and I’d simply made do with what they’d provided. Truth was, they weren’t really my colors, but beggars couldn’t be choosers. I was lucky someone thought of cosmetics at all.
He came over and stood behind me so that I could see him in the mirror. “I don’t think anyone would judge you for being not put together right now. You’re gorgeous. So beautiful that you really don’t need makeup.”
I lifted an eyebrow. “Is that so?”
“You sound like you don’t believe me.” He leaned his cheek against mine. “I realize you have very little self-confidence, which continues to blow me away because there is so much that is out of this world amazing about you, Hope, but I would think you would at least know that.”
He smelled fantastic, and for a second, I closed my eyes and breathed him in. “Sometimes you say the sweetest things.” I opened my lids. “And sometimes you drive me crazy about eating eggs. I can’t meet your mother looking like you dragged me out of a river.”
Max swatted my rear end gently, and we grinned at each other. “They’re really good eggs. You’re going to hurt after this. PT fucking hurts.”
That I already knew. But I couldn’t help but let his words roll through me for a short second. Not long but enough to nearly bring me to my knees. I was going to hurt after this. Yes, he’d meant today and the workout. What if it had more meaning and he didn’t even know it? I was going to hurt after this.
Somehow, I already knew that. When Max was done with me, I was going to hurt. A lot.
His mother threwher arms around me, and I stopped breathing. Hayley Broadley was a hugger. “I am so happy to meet you, Hope. I am so glad you came here to heal, and I am so happy that you brought my boy home.”
“Ah…” I wasn’t sure what to say. I’d never been embraced quite this way before, not instantly upon meeting me.
“Mother.” Susan, Max’s sister, sighed. “I’m sure that can’t be comfortable, given her shoulder injury. Let her go.”
Hayley jumped back, and Max put his arm around her. “It’s okay, Mom. Go easy on the hugging with Hope. She isn’t used to the Broadley brand of hugging strangers the first time we meet them.”
His mother patted him on the arm. “That is how you make sure you’ve never met a stranger. You simply don’t allow them to stay that way.”
Susan rolled her eyes, but there was mirth in them. “You should see how that goes when a stranger happens to wander into our little grocery store here in town. God forbid we don’t know their whole life story by the time they leave, have their cellphone numbers, and a date to see them when next they’re in town.”
“I… That sounds sort of awesome, actually.”
Max shook his head. “Don’t encourage my mother, Hope.”
He was not a hugger, per se, and he didn’t make friends with everyone he knew. Maybe there was a time he’d been like that and he wasn’t anymore. I didn’t know, but it was another piece in the Max puzzle I’d have to try to piece together at some point.
“Come.” Susan took my hand. “Let’s get you sorted out. Maybe do some light stretches. It’ll hurt, unfortunately, but it will give my mother a chance to give Max the Broadley inquisition about why it took his girlfriend getting shot for him to come home.”
