He glanced at me again, smiling and ducking his head. “I guess there’s some good, huh?”
“There is,” I told him fondly, laying my head on his shoulder again. It was strange to find comfort in someone else’s presence in a way I hadn’t done in a long time. Yet with him, it came all too easily, as though it were something I had been doing my whole life rather than just the past month.
“And that’s kind of okay, ain’t it?”
“More than kind of.”
“I think… I wanna stay here a little longer.”
“That’s fine by me.”
CADE
With a groan,I hobbled toward what I hoped was a full dinner buffet. The physical therapy was getting better, but it was also getting worse. I wasn’t walking around feeling like a stiff board as much as I had before; that much was true. The cost, however, was that after one of my physical therapy sessions, I was left limping and aching. They had offered me pain relievers, but that only took the edge off rather than making anything better.
Still, I was noticing a difference, so that meant the therapy was doing something. It also had the benefit of making it easier for me to be a little more…flexible when it came to sex. Not that I was going to tell the guys in the medical ward that; they didn’t need to know I was having some of the best sex of my life. Not that they would have cared, Lord knew Walker and I weren’t the first people to sleep together at the resort.
First things first, though, I needed to get to my room and take a shower. The thunk of my leg was lighter than usual, but that was because despite it being the only part of me that couldn’t feel pain, the part of my real leg that was left certainly could, and it was feeling it. I leaned against the wall before letting myself into my room with a sigh of relief, noticing Walker wasn’t around. Hewas probably enjoying a nice meal, but that also meant he was probably talking to Logan.
It was a friendship that was…hard to understand. Sure, it wasn’t like Logan had crossed a line…not with Walker anyway, though he’d certainly done a good job of tapping his toe on it. Still, after his apology, a hesitant friendship grew. Well, hesitant on Logan’s part, probably because he knew he’d fucked up and needed to tread carefully.
I didn’t really know what was going on in Walker’s head. He wasn’t the most social of people, and he wasn’t the most patient anymore either. Yet with Logan, he was showing a begrudging understanding that confused me. Still, Walker wasn’t a kid, and he wasn’t an idiot either. He knew how to draw boundaries, and he knew how to take care of himself if Logan got the bright idea to be more than just annoying.
Emerging from my shower, I hobbled over and took my leg off so I could dry everything properly, and glanced at my phone. I had another missed call from my mom, and with a guilty wince, I swiped the notification away. This was the longest I had been silent, and although she hadn’t left a voicemail, I knew if she had, it would have been filled with concern for my well-being.
Sighing, I opened my phone, hovering over her name before sucking it up and hitting the call button. Perhaps I’d get lucky and she wouldn’t answer. I knew she and my dad were going to have questions, but I wasn’t sure if I was ready to give any answers. There was so much going on in my life, and I didn’t really want to keep them out of it, but…some things were hard to explain.
“Hi, honey,” came her familiar, somewhat tired voice, but I could hear the smile in her voice…and the relief. “I was startin’ to wonder if you were alright.”
“I’m fine,” I told her.
“Don’t go lyin’ now,” came my father’s rough booming voice. “If ya were, ya wouldn’t be in the crazy house.”
“Don’t call it that,” my mother chided, but sighed when she heard me chuckling. “You’ll just encourage him, you know that?”
“He doesn’t need encouragement, Ma,” I told her with a smile. As guilty as I was for having taken so long to talk to them, I was happy to hear their voices again. As hard as it was to pretend to be a normal person when I was back home, there was nothing quite like hearing the sounds of home, even when I was miles away. “He’ll do it anyway.”
“Maybe he’d get some sense if you and that brother of yours would stop givin’ him the attention he wants,” she said, but anyone who knew her wouldn’t be fooled for a moment. As aggravated as she could get with all of us, I doubted she would have traded any of us.
“If he hasn’t got any sense by now, he’s not gonna get it,” I told her.
“Don’t go helpin’ her ride my ass now,” he said crossly.
“I sure don’t need any help with that,” she said, and I knew she was glaring at him from the kitchen table.
“Tell me about it,” my father muttered, but I was even less sold on his annoyance than I was on my mother’s.
“Shush, you,” she said, and then her tone brightened again. “So, honey, please tell me you forgot about us because somethin’ good is happening on your end.”
Damn, she had leaped immediately to something good, and that left me in an awkward position that was going to be hard to wriggle out of. Not that it was surprising, my mother, despite the hard life she and my father had lived, always tried to find the best in things. That was especially true when it came to my brother and me, and she was eternally hoping for something good to come our way, even when I repeatedly proved that good things in this life were hard to find.
“Uhhh,” I began and realized that not only was I in an awkward position, I was officially doing a terrible job at not being obvious about it. “Sorta?”
“Sort of?” she wondered, and there was a slapping sound I suspected was her hand against the kitchen table. “Now, ain’t that the sort of thing I want to hear when we talk?”
“I didn’t say therewas,” I added hastily, but it was too late. I had thrown her a line, and she was going to reel it in with all her power.
“Now don’t go down playing things for me,” she chided.
