Page 7 of Love Me Back (Diamond Creek #2)

Jessie

“Can I get you anything else?”

The waitress stared at me, waiting for an answer. I wanted to say yes, you can get me a tall, gorgeous cowboy who still wanted me. But that wasn’t on the menu here at the diner.

“No, thank you. Just the check.” I smiled back at her as she set the paper down on the table.

“I’ve got that.” Addison Powell snatched the check from the table before I could pick it up and sat down in the booth across from me.

“What are you doing?”

“I need your help,” she said as she grabbed a fry I left on the plate and tossed it into her mouth.

“With what?” I asked, watching her scarf down my leftover fries. “Have you not eaten?”

“Not since this morning. We’ve been working all day getting things ready for Gray to come home from the hospital.”

“How is he?” I asked, looking at my phone. I was going for aloof concern, but I wasn’t sure she was buying it.

“He needs you.”

My eyes snapped to hers. “What do you mean?”

“Gray sent you away because he didn’t want you to know how hurt he was.” My eyes went wide, and Addie’s face filled with sympathy. “He’s in a wheelchair, Jessie. He can’t feel his legs.”

“Oh my God,” I whispered.

“He didn’t want you to know.”

“Why?”

Addie leaned forward on the table. “Why? Jess, my brother is desperately in love with you, and now he feels like he is half a man.”

“Did he say that?”

“Of course not.”

My shoulders dropped, and I slumped back against the seat. Addie was talking out of her ass. Grayson was too strong, too confident, too sure of himself to think he was half a man just because he couldn’t walk. It was the most ridiculous thing I’d ever heard.

“Addie, you can’t put words in his mouth. He asked me to leave because he didn’t want me there.”

“That’s true,” she agreed, nodding her head as she looked at the table. “But the reason he didn’t want you there had nothing to do with him not wanting you.”

I stared at Grayson’s sister. I liked Addie. She didn’t leave the ranch any more than the others did, unless she had class. But the few times we’d run into each other in town, I’d really enjoyed talking with her. I was even starting to count her as a friend.

The old ladies at the clubhouse had become my friends. I wasn’t sure about them when Ellie first introduced me. I didn’t always make a great first impression.

“What did you need help with?” A change of subject was always a quick way to avoid difficult conversations.

Addie exhaled slowly as she watched my face. The intense stare she sent my way was unnerving. I began to fidget while waiting for her to speak.

“Grayson needs someone to help him adjust to his new reality.”

My breath stuttered as I asked, “Is it... permanent?”

“We don’t know. The doctor said it could take a few weeks for the swelling to go down.”

“And until it does, he won’t know the full extent of the damage,” I finished for her.

“Ryder mentioned to Tyson that you studied physical therapy in college.” She waited for me to confirm what Ryder had said.

“Not exactly, but yes, it is something I could help with. But he would have to agree. If he isn’t willing to have me there, I can’t help.”

“He is. Come to the house around five. We’ll have dinner ready.”

With that, she jumped up before I could ask any questions, taking my check with her. As I stared at the girl who slipped out the front door without a backward glance, I wondered whether I should just go over there or if I should ask Ellie about it first.

I knew if I asked Ellie, or any of the old ladies, they would tell me to go. They all got excited every time Grayson showed up in my vicinity. They didn’t understand why I brushed off his obvious interest in me.

If they knew about my family, not only would they tell me to stay away from Grayson, but the whole Powell family, the MC, and Diamond Creek entirely. And I liked it here. But they wouldn’t want to take the risk that my uncle might show up and cause trouble.

So, I didn’t call Ellie, or Beck, or Haizley. Instead, I watched the clock until it was time to drive out to the ranch. I was confident once Grayson saw me, he would once again ask me to leave.

And I would.

I refused to stay where I wasn’t wanted.

Pulling into the ranch drive at exactly five, I stared at the front door and remembered the first time I had been here. Ellie had dragged me along when she and Ryder brought Danny and Dante here to stay in one of the cabins at the ranch.

They’d only stayed the night before leaving for Oklahoma. Now they were back and staying on the ranch again, semi-permanently.

I’d stomped on his foot that night after he fibbed to the girls about needing me to come to the baby barn with him because he’d hurt his foot. Guilt washed over me as I thought about how he wouldn’t feel it if I stomped on his foot now.

Addie told me he had lost the use of his legs. That meant something had happened during his fall that injured his spine. The question was, how much damage had been done?

And was it permanent?

My hand trembled as I reached for the door handle. My foot hit the ground as the door swung open. I lifted myself from the seat, my eyes held on the front door, waiting for it to swing open and him to yell at me to go home.

I didn’t understand this feeling of dread. The man had been lazily pursuing me for months. But what I saw in his eyes at the hospital when he told me to leave screamed disinterest.

I slammed the door shut and shook my head. My feelings for the tall cowboy didn’t matter. Neither did his feelings, or lack thereof, for me; I was here to do a job. Help an injured man regain the use of his legs or help him adjust to life without them.

Taking a deep breath, I straightened my shoulders and held my head high as I walked gently up the stairs. I told myself not to think about how he got up them and why a ramp hadn’t already been built.

I didn’t knock, knowing they wouldn’t hear it over the mumbled arguing I heard from the other side of the door.

“Fine, who did you hire?” he asked in defeat as I stepped over the threshold. Everyone in the room turned to look at me. His sister Addie and his brother Carson smiled. Hudson looked at me with suspicion, but Emerson looked bored. As if he would rather be anywhere but here.

When my eyes landed on Grayson, pain lanced through my heart at the sight of him in that chair. Every time I was near him, I felt things I never thought I would.

It wasn’t that I was cold and calculating like my uncle, but I didn’t live in the same world as people like Ellie.

I knew everything about her family. The pain and neglect she grew up with, as well as the deceit of her parents in their quest to rise to the top of New York’s social ladder.

Now they were climbing the ranks in prison.

But through all of that—losing her brother for over a decade, her parents trying to force her to marry someone she didn’t love, and even her rocky start with Ryder, who was the love of her life—she stayed true to her nature. Ellie was love and light and happiness.

I was suspicion, contempt, and loneliness. It was what I knew, what I was taught. But Grayson showed me emotions I didn’t believe I was capable of.

“What are you doing here?” he asked. He didn’t smile as he usually did when he saw me. His eyes were hard, mistrusting, and I wondered what had made him look at me that way. How had his accident severed the connection between us I had denied since the day we met on that mountain?

Unless my uncle lied.

It wasn’t unthinkable that he would lie to my face.

“Addie asked me to come.”

“Why?” He spun his chair so he faced me directly. “You went to MIT; they don’t have a medical program.”

“That’s not entirely true. They have a joint program with Harvard.

While most of what I learned has to do with the engineering aspects of paralysis, I also worked with med students learning physical therapy techniques that coincide with the use of wheelchairs, prosthetics, and biomedical engineered enhancements. ”

“You make people into robots?” Emerson asked.

I smiled. “Not exactly.”

He shrugged. “Eh, cyborgs. Same thing.”

I liked Emerson. The little I knew about him told me we had a lot in common. I, too, often said things people didn’t understand. Only where he was seen as unintelligent, I was seen as rude.

Neither were true.

“I’m sorry you came out here. But I don’t need you.” Grayson turned his chair and wheeled into the kitchen.

His words hurt. I couldn’t lie about that. But I had spent my lifetime not allowing others to know what I was feeling. My face was a mask of indifference as his siblings looked at me with sympathy.

“Excuse me,” Carson said.

“No. Let me talk to him.” I closed my eyes for a moment before securing my metaphorical armor. His dismissal wouldn’t affect me. I was here to do a job, and I would fucking do it.

Really, it was better that he had gotten over his obsession with me.

I could push aside my own feelings and be professional.

Sure, this wasn’t exactly what my degree was in, but I was smart enough that I knew I could help him keep his muscles strong while he waited for the swelling to go down.

It would be that much harder for him to get back on his feet if his muscles atrophied in the weeks we waited to find out if his injury was permanent.

I found Grayson pushed up to the table. Looking around the kitchen, I could see there wasn’t much he could do in there. He could barely reach the appliances from his chair, and for a man like him, it would be a blow to his ego to rely on others.

I understood that.

“Listen, I know it sucks being in that chair—”

“Do you? Do you know what it feels like not being able to move? Not being able to stand up and make a fucking cup of coffee? I can’t even take a fucking piss by myself, Jessie.”

I waited while he ranted at me. Okay, he was right.

I didn’t know exactly what he was feeling.

But part of my experience in school had been to spend time in multiple different wheelchairs.

We strapped ourselves in and learned what we could do and what we couldn’t.

Yes, I stood up at the end of the day and walked out.

But I could still offer some ideas on how to work around the chair.

“I don’t want you here.”

“Well, too fucking bad,” I said, my hands on my hips as I stared at him. “Your sister already paid me for the month. So, you’re stuck with me until then.”

“You could give it back. ”

“Nope. I don’t go back on my word.”

“You agreed to have dinner with me but never did.” His eyes bored into mine. He was right. I had agreed to have dinner with him when I asked if Melissa could stay on the ranch. She hadn’t wanted to stay at the clubhouse at first. He hadn’t pushed, so I hadn’t reminded him about it.

“I didn’t go back on my word. I said I would have dinner with you, but I didn’t say when. Seeing as how neither of us has died yet, there is still time.”