She’d told him not to take tonight’s shift because she’d known he needed more rest before going back to work. She’d warned him about spreading himself too thin. Even now that he was staring burnout in the face, he was still in denial. “I’ll take care of everything.”
“My bills are not your responsibility,” he said, dark eyes boring into hers.
“But you are,” she insisted, answering him cutting look for cutting look before turning back to the doctor who had watched the exchange with interest. “How long?”
“Optimistically?” he said. “Three weeks. But that’s following all the protocol—using the RICE method consistently, no cheating. Also wearing a brace.”
Nick cursed under his breath, his head low. She could see the flush crawling across his neck as his agitation refused to rest.
“What’s the RICE method?” Sassy asked.
Nick answered from low in his throat, “Rest. Ice. Compression. Elevation.”
Sassy nodded. She laid her hand across the tense line of his shoulders.
“With the right amount of physical therapy, range of motion should return the strength of your wrist gradually. Proper care will let you return to your regular activities sooner, but this too will be gradual.”
“He’s in pain,” Sassy said. The rolling cloud of discontent practically boiled off him, reminding her again of the pain and trauma she’d watched him go through years ago. Emotional pain, physical pain…the lines blurred when they were significant. Nick had lived through enough to last a lifetime. “Is there something you can give him for it?”
“I don’t want a narcotic,” Nick said firmly.
“No narcotics,” Sassy echoed. His mother’s addiction had been rooted in opioids. In the wake of her husband’s death, Margot had fallen and broken her clavicle. Her doctor had prescribed narcotics to aid with her recovery. Long after her collarbone had healed, Margot had continued to treat her emotional pain with oxycodone, going so far as to buy the pills from a street dealer when her prescriber stopped refilling the order.
Nick had never had issues with prescription drugs, but after watching his mother fall down that rabbit hole, he’d been careful not to go down the same route.
“Ibuprofen might take the edge off,” the doctor suggested. “But for the next twenty-four to forty-eight hours, you’ll experience the worst symptoms. I can give you a muscle relaxer to help you manage them.”
“A sedative?” Nick asked dully. “Is that really necessary?”
The doctor weighed Nick’s grimace, which had again taken hold of his features. “Like I said, a strict regimen of care and prevention will get you back to work sooner. The muscle relaxer won’t help in the long run, but it will decrease the pain and maybe some of the swelling in the short term.”
Nick closed his eyes. Sassy rubbed his shoulder, wishing she could reverse everything for him—the pain, the sprain, the fact that he was overworked, the load he carried on his shoulders every day… “We can throw them out after tomorrow,” she told him. “Hell, I’ll flush them down the toilet if it makes you feel better. You’re staying with me anyway.”
Finally, his eyes lifted to hers again, searching. “I am?”
She would’ve balled up her fist and punched him in the shoulder like old times if she wasn’t afraid of hurting him more. “Of course you are.”
“What about Riot?” he asked.
“I’m more than capable of handling you both.”
Impossibly, his mirth shone through the pain. The smile that split his mouth and the light in his eyes was genuine.
Her reaction was visceral. Seismic. The softness of his eyes, the shifting lines around his mouth…they were so familiar. And yet, the fluttering in her belly and the increase in her pulse were not. Something inside her splintered and broke, opening floodgates she hadn’t known were there in the first place. Need and want clashed. Awareness drew the skin at the base of her spine up tight. Goose bumps pebbled across her skin while the fluttering in her belly sank lower, turned liquid and warm. Devastating.
She’d known…damn it, she’dalwaysknown that Nick was a fine-ass man. She’d never been thirsty for him.
Until now.
She felt lightheaded, so she broke off eye contact and sipped at the air, reasserting herself as the doctor went on with his instructions.
This was wrong. Never…not once in the twenty years she’d known him had she caught feelings for Nick. Why now, when he needed her to take care of him and Riot and everything else? When he’d needed her in the past, she’d planted her feet and dug in. Now she felt like she was teetering on the end of a baseball bat.
She clutched her knees, digging her nails into the material of her skirt.Get yourself together, Haseya, or get out of this man’s way, because he does notneedthis right now and you love him far too much to make his burdens heavier.
Chapter 8
“Is this a minivan?” Nick asked after he buckled himself into the passenger seat and Sassy took her place at the wheel.
