Page 33

“No sex,” Dr. Douche says, looking between Julien and me.

Thankfully the MRI showed no serious damage and the hip was still in place.

Julien sits on the exam bed covered in ice packs while Caleb scans his chart. I rushed Julien to the ER, apologizing profusely the whole way. I knew we shouldn’t have been doing this for so many reasons, the first being he can’t freaking move his hips without pain.

Hips are an important part of sex.

Julien was silent during the drive and through all the tests, slowly breathing in and out. The antiseptic smell of the hospital and cold exam room, not to mention the plain blue walls, take me back to last year.

Nobody likes hospitals, but after I almost died, I never wanted to set foot in one again. Now I’ve been twice in the span of two months.

I suck it up, though, because Julien is hurt because of me. I can’t tell if he’s mad at me or himself, or angry with the whole situation. He can’t be angrier than I am at myself for letting it get that far .

You’d think, as a thirty-one-year-old woman, I’d be able to control my impulses.

Not when it comes to Julien.

I all but forced him to come live with me, for fuck’s sake. Did I even ask him? No, I didn’t. I drove him to my house and didn’t let him leave. Jesus, I’m a control freak. And I’m definitely the one who initiated the contact. Even though I knew better.

And that orgasm . . .

“No sex,” I repeat back when Caleb stays silent, waiting for confirmation from both of us. Julien nods once. I know I just agreed, but I was kind of hoping Julien would put up a fight. Is it me? Was all of this a turn off?

Caleb leaves us with care instructions and then we’re heading back to the car, Julien grunting his disapproval at having to use a wheelchair. We had an epic staring battle that I won, which is why I’m hauling his ass back to our apartment.

My apartment.

This man has said maybe six words in four hours. One of them was “Levi.” I took that to mean I should leave him to go get my son. But I wasn’t going to abandon Julien, so I called Maggie who informed me they were already planning to turn grandkid day into a sleepover.

I’d been on the verge of talking to Maggie about my predicament, needing some motherly advice. The words were on the tip of my tongue, but then Julien uttered another word—“fuck”—and I had to go.

The apartment is pitch-black when we get back. When I turn on the lights, all I can do is fixate on the couch, imagining Julien’s hands sliding over me, his eager mouth, his rough beard, every sensation tingling through my body.

When I take a chance and sneak a glance at him from the corner of my eye, he’s also staring at the couch, a frown on his face. He’s been so shut down, and I don’t know what it means. This feels very much like when I first met him, and that stings more than it should.

“Do you want help getting to your room?” I ask, cautious with my tone and my words.

He surprises me by nodding once. He’s wearing the brace prototype I made for him and seems to be moving a bit easier. I can’t take a lot of his weight as he drapes a heavy arm around my shoulders, but I do what I can.

It occurs to me that using crutches instead would have made things easier for him.

The narrow hallway forces us to walk so close our legs brush and our sides press together. Even though the hallway is short, it feels a mile long as we slowly make our way to his door. I ease it open and step in. It’s meticulously neat, like I knew it would be.

You’d hardly know anyone lives here.

“Do you want to change into pajamas?” I ask, helping him sit on the bed. He shakes his head and manoeuvres so he’s lying down. He must find something interesting on the ceiling and is still not speaking. I have no idea what’s going on in his head.

“I’ll be right back,” I say before darting out of the room .

I slump against the white wall of the hallway, taking comfort in the fingerpainting Levi did in daycare. My emotions are too close to the surface. If he has regrets, I don’t think my heart can take it.

I was serious when I said I was scared he would hurt me. He’s so quiet, leaving me to let my mind run amuck and spiral into worst-case scenarios.

What should I do? What does he want? What the hell do I want? I take a moment to breathe and collect myself before getting Julien a glass of water, his meds, and one of the disgusting protein shakes he likes.

He hasn’t eaten in a while, so I want him to have what he needs without having to get out of bed.

Once I bring it all back, he tracks my movements as I set everything up on his bedside table. I arrange it all in perfect rows, labels all facing the right way.

When I can’t stall any longer, I straighten and rub my sweaty palms on my pants.

“Okay, uh, just yell if you need anything,” I say, feeling so awkward. He’s staring intently like he wants to say something. When he doesn’t, I whisper a quiet “good night” and turn to leave.

“Leah,” his hoarse voice calls. I stop, not turning around.

“Look at me,” he says.

Those three words.

Aren’t those words part of the reason we’re here right now? He says them so differently than before—not as a demand or out of lust, but almost pleading. I turn, feeling dizzy .

If he can stay silent then so can I. I wait for him to say something, anything.

His eyes flutter closed. “I’m sorry,” he whispers.

I was not expecting that. “Why the hell are you sorry? I’m the one that ...” My voice trails off and I gesture to the living room, my meaning clear.

He shakes his head, eyes still closed. “You shouldn’t have to take care of me.”

“I shouldn’t have put you in this position.”

“I wanted you.” He still doesn’t look my way, but his eyes shut tighter.

Wanted. Past tense.

“Well,” I say, clearing my throat of the thick emotion burning my eyes, “it’s for the best.”

His eyes snap open, narrowing as he takes in my features. I have no idea what I look like, but I assume it’s haggard and unkempt, eyes swollen. I don’t have the energy to keep whatever emotion he’s seeing off my face.

“Come here,” he orders.

“What?” Why does he never say what I think he’s going to say? And why is he always bossing me around?

He doesn’t repeat himself, waiting for me to make up my mind. I take the few steps to cross the room and stand beside the bed. His hand trembles as it reaches for mine, tugging until I sit beside him.

“Stay,” he whispers, eyes closing again as the meds kick in. He’s drifting off into a drugged sleep, so I can’t be sure if he means what he’s saying. “Stay,” he says again, and then he’s out cold .

I want to stay. Everything in my body begs me to stay.

I don’t.

“Fuck!”

I do not give into my desire to throw the brace across the room. My prototypes keep failing—I can’t figure out how to give Julien more flexibility.

He says the brace is good, but good is not perfect. I need it to be perfect. My boss has been in and out a few times today, checking in on my progress.

If I can get this updated stabilization right, it’ll be a huge breakthrough, and the potential funding to fully develop it would be massive, making all of us a lot of money. Not to mention the impact it would have in the industry.

I don’t particularly care about that right now because the fucking hinge won’t align in the new configuration. Julien is still wearing my first prototype. This is the third—the second one was a step backward, so this one has to be better.

Attacking my computer in an attempt to ease some of my frustration, I use my development program to try to fix the design flaw I keep running into. The same one brace designs all over the world have in common.

The more stability, the less mobility.

There has to be a way to marry the two to promote better healing. If I can find the right way to stabilise a joint with mobility? Game changer. The old braces will be good for injuries that require less flexibility, when movement is a hindrance to healing.

But for an injury like Julien’s? Movement is important.

I have to make this perfect.

Paige and I talked it over this morning on our run. As a massage therapist she has a good working knowledge of how the body works and responds, what it needs for proper healing. It was a nice break from her peppering me with questions about Julien or the race I have us signed up for. All she needs to know is it’s in June and it’s a half marathon.

We discussed a few modifications, which pushed my research forward. But when I went to implement them on the actual brace, it wasn’t computing.

“I’m missing something,” I say under my breath. My research assistants ignore me, knowing it’s not an invitation for discussion—I mumble to myself when I’m frustrated.

The whole way home all I can see is the engineering problem. Why does the new hinge I’ve developed keep failing? The answer is on the edges of my mind, just out of reach. It needs something I can’t quite figure out. Levi is babbling in the background, and I have to pull myself out of my thoughts.

He’s playing with a few of the baby toys I haven’t quite had the time to get rid of, but he still likes them. The cute little jitter bug buzzes and vibrates as Levi tugs on it and it returns to its position.

I almost slam on the brakes.

“Holy shit,” I whisper.

“Shit,” Levi repeats .

“Yeah, baby, shit is right.”

Without overthinking, I use my car’s voice control to call Paige. She picks up on the first ring.

“Hey, Lee, what’s up?”

“Can you come over and watch Levi?” I say, my brain running in two different directions.

“Sure, right now?”

“Yeah, I have to head back to the lab—I think I had a breakthrough.”

“That’s awesome! Adam and I will head over now and meet you there.”

I’m so giddy and anxious, feeling the surge of this new idea coming together. It’s going to work, I know it is. And just in time too. It’s been two weeks since Julien’s hospital visit, and it seems as though he’s on the mend.

His mobility has improved and he’s taking less pain medication. Mateo is thrilled with his progress and even says he can probably start skating again soon. I’m running out of time.

I barge into the apartment, letting Levi toddle in. He goes straight to Julien, who is bent over doing yoga in my living room.

Julien. Yoga.

Fuck me.

We haven’t talked about it once, nor have we put ourselves in the same position again. No late nights together, no dark rooms, no kissing.

No sex .

Has it stopped me from thinking about it? No, it’s gotten so much worse. I know what his body feels like on top of me, I know how his mouth moves. I know how good he is with one hand.

I know how capable he’ll be once he’s fully healed. And I’m scared shitless because I’m falling for this man.

Underneath all the desire and attraction, the irritation and frustration, seeing my son run over to Julien and jump on his back makes my stomach flip and my heart lodge in my throat.

He has quietly worked his way into our hearts, and I don’t think I could handle them breaking. But nothing I’ve done has made it possible to distance myself.

I’m screwed.

I clear my throat. “I’m heading back to the lab. I have an idea and want to work on it right away. Paige and Adam will be here soon,” I tell Julien.

Levi wiggles his way up Julien’s back, content to sit on his head. Julien releases himself from modified child’s pose, and Levi giggles as he sits up, the almost-two-year-old perched on his shoulders.

I can’t swallow.

His brows are already furrowed. “Why?”

“What do you mean why?”

“Why are they coming? I can look after Levi.” He honestly sounds hurt. But Levi is turning two in a few months and he’s a handful.

“I don’t want you to get hurt. You were in the hospital a few weeks ago.” It’s the closest I’ve come to bringing up that night. If he remembers asking me to stay, he hasn’t said anything .

I know I made the right choice by leaving, but it hasn’t kept me from wondering what it would be like to sleep beside someone like Julien.

Not someone like him. Him.

“I’m healing.” His voice is gruff. He doesn’t even wince when Levi pulls his hair.

“Healing, not healed.”

“Healed enough.” Those words are so loaded, his eyes darken, and I know we’re walking into dangerous territory again.

“Healed enough to rush Levi to the hospital if he falls and hits his head?” I place my hands on my hips, sticking to the matter at hand. He narrows his eyes and smugness courses through me.

I’ve got him there—he still can’t rush anywhere. He blows out a breath.

He doesn’t get to argue more because Paige and Adam let themselves in. There’s commotion and hugging, Adam twirling Levi around and Paige placing take-out containers on the kitchen counter.

Julien follows me as I make my way to the door after hugging and kissing Levi goodbye.

“Mateo said I can move back to my apartment, and Dr. Sharpe has cleared me.”

The information is a battering ram, slamming into me so hard I lose my breath. I swallow. I knew it was coming with him getting much more mobile. I’m out of time.

“Will you be here when I get back?” I ask, not turning to him .

He doesn’t answer and I don’t push it. I head back to the lab, my head spinning with excitement over the progress with my prototype, and my heart breaking with the idea of Julien leaving my life.