“What now?” Cooper asked, concerned and earnest and offensively handsome, actually. With the sunlight catching his eyes, they seemed as though they were glowing from the inside.
It was too late now to hide how much pain I was in from him, and I needed help. Even knowing that, I hesitated.
“Glass of water, painkillers…?” he suggested.
“Can you lift my leg up and push it back toward my chest like you’re trying to hurt me?” I asked. The cold pain of my leg cramping where the muscle had knotted up was unbearable, and it was the only way I’d found to ease it. Normally I would’ve shoved it against a wall, or the head of my bed, or the bathtub—whatever was handy wherever I was—but from this position, I couldn’t.
Cooper was here. He was looking at me like he gave a damn that I was in pain and wanted to do something about it.
No one else had done that, aside from Avery.
Cooper raised an eyebrow, but obediently picked my foot up. He propped it against his shoulder and held my gaze. “Sure about this?”
“Positive,” I gritted out, voice tight with pain.
“On three,” Cooper said. “One, two?—”
He leaned forward with his whole weight, pushing my knee right up to my shoulder in one smooth, swift movement. I cried out and grabbed for him, tears welling up in my eyes again. My hand fisted in his overalls as the cramping stopped and one clean streak of pain shot up my leg and into my hip. A few heartbeats of breathing through it and the sudden pain faded back to a low ache.
I let go of Cooper’s overalls as though my bones had turned to liquid, melting into how good the stretch felt now that the initial agony was over.
“Okay?” Cooper asked.
I nodded, biting my lip again, afraid that anything I said would come out shaky and pathetic. Not that I could save myself fromlooking pathetic now, but I still had about a half-ounce of dignity left. I wasn’t planning on giving it up for nothing.
“Keep holding it?” he asked, putting his hand over the top of my bare foot. It felt even rougher against the sensitive skin and the warmth seeping from it made me realize how much my feet hurt, but I didn’t want him to take it away. I nodded, wriggling my toes against him, hoping he wouldn’t looktooclosely at my gross ballet dancer’s feet.
They’d healed up a little post-injury, but they still weren’t nice feet.
I took a deep, shuddering breath, keeping my eyes on my own toes so I wouldn’t have to meet Cooper’s gaze. He’d be looking at me with pity in his eyes, and I couldn’t handle that. I might have been pitiful, but I didn’t need anyone else to tell me so.
“Thank you,” I said when I thought I could trust my voice. It came out shakier than I would have liked, but not as bad as it could have been.
When I risked meeting Cooper’s eyes, he was smiling. That wasmuchbetter than pity. He had the most gorgeous smile, broad and lopsided. It made his eyes glitter.
“Want me to let go?” Cooper asked, nodding to my foot.
No.
I nodded. My thigh had stopped cramping, and I couldn’t exactly ask Cooper to kneel on the floor indefinitely. Even if I was enjoying what I now realized was the first non-medical, non-Avery human contact I’d had in six months.
Cooper set my leg down gently. Now that my entire focus wasn’t on how much pain I was in, I remembered again that he was probably here for a reason.
“Did you need Amelia? Because she’s downstairs.”
Doing the accounts. My stomach twinged at the thought. What if I couldn’t help? What if I just wasn’tgoodenough? What if I’d never really been good enough for anything and sleeping with the director had been the only reason my career had progressed like it had?
It wasn’t as though no one had ever said that behind my back. Maybe it wastrue.
“I know,” Cooper said, interrupting my spiral before it could really pick up steam. “She directed me up here. To you.”
“Because you were looking for me?”
Cooper raised a brow, the corner of his lips twitching.Duh.
“I’m under orders,” he said. “From my mom, to invite the exciting new stranger in town to dinner. And Benji, to invite his new favorite adult to dinner. Dad didn’t say anything but I think he’d probably like to meet you, too. He pretends he’s above town gossip, but he always knows everything first. So I’m here to beg you to come so I don’t disappoint everyone I love at once.”
I blinked at him, taking a second to process all of that.
