Wow. It had been a while since things had exploded between us to the extent whereAshgot rough. A jolt of excitement buzzed through me, and it took all the willpower in the world to ignore it. I groaned softly and banged my head on his chest, and his gentle fingers running through my hair were anything butsoothing.
With herculean effort, I sighed and pulled away. “We’d better get out before we use all thewater.”
Ash grinned and shut the shower off. Inexplicably, the sudden silence surprised me, and I stared at him. However much of an ass I’d been recently, it wasn’t unusual for him to smile, but it seemed different somehow—heseemed different. Lighter, like the burden of waiting for me to take responsibility for my own bullshit had finally lifted. I looked down at our clasped hands. Mine bore his mark—the wordamatoetched into my skin, as if I could ever forget—but save a plastic bracelet Cosmo had made him at day care, he had nothing to remind him how much we all loved him. He’d argue that he didn’t need it, but how many times had I looked at that tattoo and known it was the only thing keeping meswimming?
Too many, but I had no big ideas how to fix Ash’s bare handsrightnow.
We got out of the shower and dried off, only to realize we’d neglected to bring any dry clothes into the bathroom, which meant a mad towel-clad dash across the hall, not that Jed and Max seemed to bearound.
“Jed’s not so good today,” Ash said when we were dressed. “He was asleepforages.”
“He was up pretty early, tobefair.”
Ash chewed on his lip. “He was in a lotofpain.”
There wasn’t much I could say to that; Jed’s illness and injuries weren’t going anywhere. I sighed and pulled Ash close one last time before we left the sanctuary of the bedroom. “I’ll check in with him if he’s in the mood, okay? But there won’t be much I can do that he hasn’t thought ofhimself.”
And my prediction was depressingly accurate. Ash and I found Max and Jed having some kind of standoff in the living room, and it was clear Jed was in some serious discomfort. I sat with him while Max and Ash went to make dinner. The sight of them together stirred something in me that I couldn’t describe, but I pushed the déjà vu aside and focused on Jed, despite his obvious desire for me to fuck offalready.
“You don’t have to nurseme,Pete.”
“I know.” I took my chances and grasped his wrist to count his pulse. “But Glenn will kill me if he finds out that I didn’t get up in your grill and checkyouover.”
Jed snorted but let me look him over anyway. He was humoring me, I could tell, but it didn’t matter. My initial prediction was correct—Jed was in pain, and there was nothing I could do tohelphim.
“What medication do you normally use?Vicodin?”
“Yeah.”
“Did you take somealready?”
“Nope.”
I shot him a sideways glance. “Why not? Do they makeyousick?”
Nausea was a common side effect of hard-core pain relief, but Jed shook hishead. “Nope.”
A few seconds ticked by. Max’s melodic laugh filtered down from the kitchen, echoed by Ash’s shy chuckle. And then it clicked.Ash. And for the life of me, I didn’t know if Jed’s valiant caution was necessary. After my accident, I’d been sent home from the hospital with a bag full of Oxy, but Danni had hidden them at Ash’s request, and I’d never asked him to find them. How would Ash react to being around someone stoned on narcotics? Shamefully, after all this time, I hadnoidea.
But I did know he’d flip his shit at the idea of Jed suffering on his behalf. “You want me to go and pick up a script for you? Because Ash will deal if you need them. He’s stronger than he gives himselfcreditfor.”
“Maxsaidthat.”
“Didhe?”
“Uh-huh.” Jed shifted and stretched his bad leg out in front of him. “But I never told him I was holding out for Ash’s sake either, so how you clowns think you can read my mind, Idon’tknow.”
There was no malice in Jed’s words, only the tired kind of humor that came from someone who had been in pain a hell of a long time. Was Jed using the debate as a distraction? If he was, I didn’t blame him. “I’m just making an assumption,” I said. “Same as you did when you cleared the place out of Vicodin before we got here. If I’m wrong… fuck it, I apologize, but it’s whatever now, right? There must be something I can do tohelpyou.”
It took a little more pushing, but eventually Jed let me past walls the depressive in me would’ve been proud of and showed me how to manipulate the damaged muscles in his leg to relieve some of the tension there. I’d have bet my apartment that his belly was cramping up too, but there was nothing I could doaboutthat.
I’d been working on Jed a while when Max came in with some tea. He flashed me a wink. “Thankyou.”
I shrugged and returned my attention to Jed, who for all intents and purposes appeared asleep, but I knew he wasn’t, and I also knew he wouldn’t take kindly to me muttering overhishead.
Max retreated to the kitchen. I heard Ash laugh again, and my bones warmed another notch as the life I’d been missing slowly came back to me, one day at a time. I remembered my promise to ask Jed for help, and when I looked down to see his eyes open again, it kind of fell out of me before I’d thought of a way to word it halfwayintelligently.
Jed stilled my hands on him and used my arms as leverage to sit up. His face was pale and drawn, but I could tell he had an answer for me. Perhaps he had all along. “I know a guy who specializes in the kind of therapy I think you’d respond to. He’s in Illinois at the moment, but his place is a ways out of Chicago, so you’d have totravel.”
