“That,” I say, “is the greatest thing I’ve tasted since I got here. Don’t tell Jason. He’s got me on a nutrition plan and half a bag of sugar is not on the plan.”
“Your secrets are always safe with me, Officer Weaver. You can tell me anything.”
The brisket is everything I remembered, tender and falling apart. Benji eats too. I’ve noticed he’s been doing more of that lately. At first, he wouldn’t eat but a bite or two whenever he’d bring me food, then one day he started sitting down with me to share the meal. I catch him looking at my arms again, and his eyes travel from my bicep to my shoulder to my neck.
“What is it?” I ask. “Is something wrong? Do I have barbeque sauce on my face?”
He grins at me. “No, nothing’s wrong.” His eyes drop to my mouth for half a second before he looks away.
My grip tightens around the mason jar.
Chapter 24: Benji
I can’t take my eyes off him.
After we finish eating, he wheels himself to the bed and parks the chair alongside it. I watch him do it, the turn and the careful positioning. In Tallahassee he was always in the bed. Seeing him move through a room changes how he looks to me. He’s not a patient waiting for help. He’s a man navigating his own space.
“Hey,” he says, glancing over his shoulder at me. “Do you mind grabbing me a clean shirt from the closet? I’ve been sitting in the sun and this one is done.”
I open the closet. He doesn’t have much. A few T-shirts, a pair of jeans, some athletic shorts. I find a soft blue one and pull it off the hanger and turn back around.
Mickey is sitting in the wheelchair with his shirt off. He’s pulled the sweaty gray T-shirt over his head and it’s balled up in his hand. He’s sitting there bare-chested in his chair and my brain just stops.
Damn.
His chest is broad and full. I’ve never seen it. The hospital gown hid everything and now everything is right there in front of me. He’s been pressing his entire bodyweight up from a wheelchair multiple times a day. His shoulders are round and thick with new muscle, his arms bigger than they were in Tallahassee, the biceps and triceps defined.
His stomach is flat and tight from the core work, and there’s a trail of blonde hair from his navel that disappearsinto the waistband of his shorts. I stare at that happy trail for exactly one second too long. Then I look away and then I look right back because I can’t help it.
There’s a bandage on his left side, low, near his hip. White gauze taped against his skin. The wound. My throat tightens and I look back at his face.
“You’re staring.” Mickey gives me a quizzical look.
“I’m absolutely staring and I’m not going to apologize for it.”
I walk toward him and stand there for a second. I take the dirty shirt out of his hand, ball it up, and toss it toward the bed. Then I take a step backward with the clean blue shirt in my right hand, held behind my hip.
Mickey holds out his hand. “Shirt?”
I take another step back, grinning at him.
“Benji.” His hand is still out. “What are you doing? Give me the shirt.”
Mickey’s never seen this version of me. The version that flirts like breathing. I’ve never let Mickey see it because he was in a hospital bed. I wasn’t going to be a man who made a paralyzed cop feel like prey.
But he’s not in a bed anymore.
He’s sitting in a wheelchair in evening sunlight with his muscular chest out, and the rules just changed.
“I thought I was having dinner with a view tonight,” I say. I wave my free hand at his chest. “And this? This chest is my view. The food was the appetizer. You’re the main course.I’m absolutely not handing you this shirt to cover all that muscle up with.”
I take another step back. I’m almost at the wall now, the shirt dangling from my fingers like a flag I’m not surrendering.
His eyebrows go up. He looks down at his bare chest, then back at me, and grins. He’s just been challenged and his competitive instincts run deeper than a spinal cord injury.
“Oh, I see,” he says. “You’re trying to bully a man in a wheelchair.”
“Oh, and you’re playing the wheelchair card now?” My back hits the wall. I hold the shirt higher, waving it once like a matador. “If you want it, come and get me.”
