“Are you…” Monster cuts off with another grunt, eyes squeezing tightly. My chest aches at the thought of how much pain he must be in. “Are you okay?” he manages.
I give a small, startled laugh. “Me?”
“The… cell,” he pants. I understand his meaning without him having to say it; watching a torture session in the cell, even if I wasn’t the subject, was freshly retraumatizing. But I’ve endured enough trauma in my life that I’ve learned to roll with the punches.
“I’m fine.Pleasestop trying to move,” I beg. “Cain worked you over worse than he ever did me.”
“Diabolical… motherfucker.”
I click a button on the table by the hospital bed, calling the doctors into the room.
Tobias shuts his laptop and stands from his seat, joining me beside Monster.
“You’re thoroughly fucked up,” Tobias comments. “It’ll take you a good month to be back in working order, minimum.”
Monster grunts. “I don’t have a month to spare—”
“It’s not a negotiation,” I snap. “If you mess around with your health now, you’ll pay the price ten times over later. I understand you were born a man, which means you’re prone to being an idiot with a death wish, butpleasetry to refrain.”
There’s a pregnant pause in the room as Monster and Tobias both stare at me, and the reality of what I’ve just said sets in. Monster’s lying in the hospital bed because I ran my mouth, and I just did it again. I really must be suicidal—
Monster releases a raspy laugh. “Alright, Flower. But I need some fucking pain meds.”
Right on cue, one of the doctors walks in, accompanied by a nurse. I take a step back as the two men begin fussing over Monster, checking his wounds and administering pain medication into his I.V. They must be giving him the good stuff, because Monster begins to relax, and the signs of strain on his face melt away.
“Flower,” he mutters once the medics are gone. “Go back to the apartment. I don’t want you to see me like this.”
“To date, this is the most humanity I’ve seen from you,” I retort. “And I’m not going anywhere.”
At that, his eyes snap to alertness. He pins me with a searching look. “Why?”
Because you’re in that bed because of me,forme. Because I don’t know how to feel about you, but I don’t think I hate you anymore. Because there’s… something between us, whatever that might be.
I don’t say anything aloud, but Monster must read the thoughts on my face, because he nods slightly and almost smiles. “Alright,” he murmurs. “Okay, Flower. You can stay.”
The next weeks are hard. Greyson stays in the hospital for three more days before the doctors release him, with the condition that he constantly has a nurse in the apartment, watching over him. He tells them to go fuck themselves and instead elects to have one of his unit members in the apartment at all times.
Most often, it’s Tobias, though he’s occasionally replaced by Bryan—a tan giant who frightens me—and Elijah, a tatted up ex-military guy who cracks so many shitty jokes, Monster threatens to kill him.
Max only comes around once to check in on Monster. Monster tells Max to fuck off, and Max leaves shortly afterward.
After two weeks of having someone pretty much living at the apartment to look after Monster, he’s given permission to start working himself back into physical activity. That’s when Max returns, but only for physical therapy. There’s palpable tension between him and Monster, which makes their interactionsextremelyuncomfortable.
Fortunately, Max is damn good at what he does, and after a week of working with Monster, Greyson begins walking around on his own, without crutches. Apparently, Cain avoided everything majorand debilitating when he stabbed Greyson in the thigh, so his wound should heal up faster than mine did.
His back is another story. The stitches come out, leaving behind angry red scar tissue. I know the wounds still pain Monster because he continues sleeping on his front, though he occasionally rolls over in his sleep.
On the third week of Greyson’s recovery, he startles awake in the middle of the night, while I’m sitting up beside him, reading. Luci is purring away on my legs, his head resting on my thighs, but the black cat wakes up at the same time that Grey does. Luci leaps to his feet, fur standing on end, and frantically glances around for an intruder to attack.
“It’s alright,” I tell Luci, petting him. He slowly begins to relax, but turns to give Greyson a glare that’s half-questioning, half-accusing. It’s almost like he’s saying,what the fuck?
While Luci is still by no means a fan of men—or humans in general—he has begun to soften toward Monster. I think I inadvertently programmed Luci to be an emotional support cat, so there are times when I come out of the shower to find him curled up in a ball right beside Greyson, as if protecting the giant of a man. He still doesn’t let Monster touch him unless I’m around, and even then, he hisses.
“Bad dream?” I ask Greyson, setting down my book.
He exhales a long breath and nods. “Yeah.”
I feel a slightly sad smile stretch my lips. “I get them, too.”
