It’s confirmed as I trail behind him back to the coop, and his limp is far more pronounced than I’ve seen it in a while.
How long has he been hurting like this? How long has he been hiding the pain?
“So, how is this going to work exactly?” Ezra asks when we get back to the coop. He sets down the ladder and presses on his hip again. To anyone else, it might look like nothing, but I know him. I know his body. I know he’s uncomfortable.
“Um ...” I say, pulling my gaze from where he’s gripping his hip to the spot where Tootsie keeps escaping from. “I don’t know exactly. Patch it?”
He waves toward the ladder that’s propped up against the coop. “Have at it then.”
I don’t know why, but his words make me angry. Usually I’d be all about a guy not trying to step in and take control because I’m a woman, but I know Ezra is saying it because he’s hurting. He just won’t admit it.
“I don’t do heights.” I have no problem with them, but he doesn’t know that. “After you.”
He works his jaw back and forth, and all it does is piss me off more.
“What’s wrong, Ezra? Are you scared of heights too?”
He gnashes his teeth together even more tightly, and I can’t help it—I keep pushing.
“Or is it that you’re hurting and you don’t want to admit it?”
“Yes!” he explodes. “Yes. My fucking hip is killing me. Is that what you want to hear?”
“Yes,” I say, crossing my arms over my chest. “Why can’t you just admit it?”
He laughs scathingly. “You can’t be serious.”
“Oh, I’m very serious. So you have hip pain? Who cares. It doesn’t define you.”
He scoffs as he begins to pace back and forth, his steps uneven the whole time. “It does, though, Sunny. It fucking defines me more than you know.”
“I know it makes things hard, but, Ezra, it’s okay that you can’t do everything you used to be able to do.”
“It’s not okay!” he yells, his eyes more like a forest green than their usual Granny Smith apple. “I’m fucking weak, Summer.Weak.Don’t you get that?”
In that moment I see it. Ezra isn’t mad that he’s in pain. He’s mad because he thinks that somehow his injury makes him less of a person.He’s mad because it’s entirely out of his control. Angry because he doesn’t feel whole.
“Ezra ...” I grab him on yet another endless lap. He stills, and I have to physically turn him so he’s facing me.
When he is, I can’t believe I didn’t see it before. It’s all right there in his gaze, in his trembling bottom lip.
He believes he’s broken.
I slide my hand over his cheek, and he presses into the touch, exhaling heavily. It kills me to see him like this, to think he’s not good enough because of an injury that he had no real involvement in. I knew he blamed himself for what happened, but I didn’t realize his hate for himself was so deep.
“You are not your injury. You are not your sore hip. You are not your pain. You’re enough, Ezra. For me, you’re enough. Just the way you are. You don’t have to hide your hurt, especially not from me. I’m not going to judge you. I want to know you.Allof you.”
There’s no way he doesn’t remember when he said those three words to me. It was just two nights ago when I let him fuck me bare.
He thanked me for giving all of myself to him, and now I want the same in return.
I want all of him, even his perceived flaws.
His shoulders sag, and I catch him as he falls forward, his face buried in my neck. I circle my arms around him, holding on to him.
I could love you.
The words slam into me, and their weight barrels right behind them. They’re so heavy that I stagger.
