“You doubt me?”
At that he laughed, looking at his shoes as his hands slid into his pockets again. “Not even a little bit.”
We were silent again as we walked toward the rooms at the back end of the hotel. Ours was down at the very end, the small pool directly in front of our door. I was pulling our key from my pocket when Emery stopped me, the feather-light touch of his hand finding my elbow.
“Would it make you feel better to make a plan for the trip?” he asked, golden eyes taking on a green hue from the blue reflection of the pool light.
I smiled. “Honestly? A little. Even if it’s just a rough plan of which cities we’ll hit along the way and when we’ll get there… especially since I need to find a place to live and a job.”
Emery nodded, and he was looking at me that same strange way, like I was something between a shooting star and a freak show. “Okay. We’ll make a plan tonight, then.”
“Okay,” I replied, and then I stifled a laugh, reaching up to thumb a smear of sauce off the side of his neck and showing it to him. “You’re a mess right now.”
“Always have been. But you know… I think I know a way to get us both cleaned up quickly…”
A mischievous grin was painted on that gorgeous face of his as his hands wrapped around my wrists. He slowly started walking backward, tugging me with him, and I just looked at him, confused.
Until I realized he was steering us toward the pool.
“Ohhhh, no,” I argued, trying to pull away from his grasp. “Don’t even think about it. I’m not the one covered in sauce.”
Emery launched at me, wrapping his arms all the way around me and crushing me to his chest as he picked my feet up and walked even faster. “You are now!”
The sauce that had previously been only on him smeared on my clothes and skin, too, no matter how I tried to wiggle away. I shrieked, laughing and protesting with my tiny fists hammering on his chest, but it was no use. With just enough warning to hold my breath, we tipped over the sidewalk and into the cold water, his arms still wrapped around me until we both went under.
The cold of it was a shock to my system, and it took a second to actually get my body to inhale once I emerged again, eyes and mouth wide. My glasses had come off in the tumble and I slapped at the water frantically until they were in my hands and back on my face, the heat from my face making them steam up a little.
Emery just laughed.
“H-h-hate you,” I chattered, but I couldn’t fight off the smile. “You’re d-d-dead.”
“Yeah? You’re going to do the killing?”
I nodded, which only made him laugh harder, so I splashed him.
It was so cold I couldn’t think. I needed to get out, not only to find warmth but to dry my leg, which wasn’t exactly built for water sports. But my feet wouldn’t carry me toward the ladder to get out, because at the exact moment I went to move, I noticed Emery’s tight, wet t-shirt.
It was just a heather gray t-shirt with a simple logo in the top right corner, but now, it was clinging to his chest, hugging his arms, outlining the defined ridges of his abdomen beneath it. His normally messy hair was wet and dripping, one strand of it falling in a slant over his left eye as he moved toward me. Those eyes were locked on mine, the smile he’d worn before fading more and more with every inch he closed between us.
“Cold?” he asked.
I swallowed, which was enough of an answer I supposed, because he didn’t stop until our chests were touching. His arms wrapped around me again, pulling me into the heat of him, and I just stared at the wet fabric stuck to the middle of his chest, breath as shallow as a rain puddle.
“Cooper.”
He rasped my name, the sound of it vibrating his chest still pressed against mine. My arms were crossed tight over my stomach, which meant they were brushing his abs, and I felt his breaths coming strong and steady, like the fact that we were wet and touching didn’t bother him in the slightest.
My eyes followed the crease lines marking his soaked shirt up to his neck, his set jaw, until I met his gaze.
Emery looked so dangerous in that moment, like a warning sign on a barbed wire fence. Keep out, his eyes warned, but my hands grazed the hard muscles of his abdomen under the water, anyway. I was drawn to that wire, my skin not yet shredded from the barbs, from thinking I could climb over, the lesson not yet learned.
“You were jealous last night, weren’t you?” he asked, voice low and rough. “Of Emily.”
My fingertips twitched to reach up for my hair, but they were still pinned between us. I couldn’t hide from him in that moment. I wasn’t sure I ever really could before.
“A little,” I breathed.
Emery swallowed, and then the eyes he’d had fixed on mine fell slowly to my lips, and my stomach fell quickly to the bottom of the pool.
“Don’t be.”
The inches between us turned to centimeters, his gaze still on my lips, and all I could do was inhale a breath and close my eyes. The water, so icy cold before, was hot and still around us, the mere proximity of him serving as a heater. Time seemed to stick, the second hand caught in a glitch, unable to move forward until the next move was made. And I waited — though I wasn’t sure what for. A kiss? A new breath? A promise?
But none of them came, just a pained sigh as Emery’s forehead leaned against mine, and I felt the air leave his lips and touch my own, though nothing else did.
“Come on,” he said after a moment, pulling back until it was only his hand that grasped mine. My eyes fluttered open, lids heavy, heart like an anvil in my chest. “Hot showers, cold beers, and new plans. In that order.”
Emery smiled, though it seemed strained to me, and then he turned, guiding me out of the pool in what felt like slow motion.
We were both shivering when we stepped inside, Kalo bounding up to the both of us immediately and licking at the water dripping from our clothes. Emery told me to take the first shower and all I could do was nod, still in a daze. When the bathroom door was a barrier between us, I pressed my back to it, letting my head drop to the wood, and took one long, deep breath.
As if oxygen could save me.
Water poured out of different compartments of my prosthetic leg when I took it off, and I dumped it into the bath tub, laying the various parts out flat on the counter. I stared at the scattered pieces as I filled the tub with hot water, all the while cursing under my breath. Now that the adrenaline had faded, I realized getting thrown into the pool with my leg still on wasn’t exactly the best thing to happen to me. Insurance helped me pay for my leg back when the accident happened, but as I grew, I had to pay for my own upgrades — and getting one that was waterproof wasn’t at the top of my list.
It would be fine, I knew that because I’d been caught in the rain more than a time or two on my bike. It just needed to air out and I would have to change my liner and socks. Still, I had to take the foot shell completely apart, which meant I’d have to walk out of the bathroom on one leg.
In front of Emery.
Nerves assaulted me the entire time I bathed, mind racing with how he would react when he saw it. Would he cringe or pretend he didn’t see it? Which would be worse?
I sighed, towel still wrapped around me as I studied the leg on the bathroom counter after my bath. I had a feeling he already knew about it, if not before John’s comments at Earl’s, then definitely after. But was I ready to show him?
I guessed it didn’t matter now.
Creaking the door open just a crack, I peered out at Emery, who was sitting on a towel on the floor at the foot of his bed, writing in his journal.
“Hey, can you hand me my bag?”
He looked up at me, eyes catching on my towel before he snapped into action, grabbing my bag off my bed and handing it through to me, making sure to turn so I could open the door wider and slip the bag through.
“Thanks,” I said when I had it, closing the door again. “I’ll be right out.”
“Take your ti
me.”
My hands were shaking again as I dressed, pulling on the one and only pair of gym shorts I’d packed. They were short, the edges of them hugging my thighs. The fabric was tight around my right thigh and loose around the left, and I eyed my imbalance in the full-length mirror, stomach rolling at the thought of Emery seeing me like this. No one had really seen me without my leg on, other than my parents, who didn’t notice, and Lily, who didn’t care.
But I didn’t have a choice, so I threw my bag over one shoulder and tucked the parts of my leg under my other arm, ready to lay it out to dry on the desk in our room. Then, with an unsteady breath and my head held as high as I could manage, I opened the bathroom door again, standing in the frame of it as Emery’s eyes landed on me.
It was impossible to ever get used to the way he looked at me, especially when those two lines formed between his brows. Every time his eyes pinned me, I swore I never wanted to move again.
Pushing my glasses up the bridge of my nose, I watched as his gaze flowed down my body, catching for just a moment on the bare leg that still existed before flicking to the one that was absent. I opened my mouth to say something but he was already on his feet, taking my bag from my shoulder and the parts of my leg from my other hand. He dropped my bag near the foot of my bed and laid out all the pieces of my prosthesis on the desk, and I just stood frozen in the door frame, watching him.
“Here,” he said when he finished, moving to my side. He grabbed my left arm and hooked it around his shoulder, bending to my height and helping me to my bed.
“I can do it on my own,” I whispered, but we were already across the room.
“I don’t doubt that.”
Emery made sure I was settled on the bed, my good foot on the floor while my stump hung down, the cut just below the knee. His eyes roamed over both of my legs as he pulled up the desk chair, laying the towel he’d had on it since he was still wet before sitting down and rolling closer to me.
He wasn’t grimacing, or studying it like it was a science project, or looking at me with pity. He just seemed to be taking in the lower half of me for the first time, his eyes tracing my thigh, my shin, my ankle, before finally landing on my scar, on the most vulnerable part of my entire body.
“You already knew, didn’t you?” I asked after a moment.
He found my gaze, nodding slowly. “I suspected, but I figured you would tell me when you were ready.”
“I’m never ready to tell anyone about it,” I said quickly. “But… I didn’t really have a choice tonight.” I eyed my leg drying out on the desk.
“Fuck, I’m so sorry, I didn’t even think about it when I threw us in the pool.”
“It’s fine. It’ll dry.”
Emery swallowed, eyes searching mine. “John was right, you know. You are beautiful. With or without your prosthetic.”
Everything about the situation made me want to crawl right out of my skin. I didn’t want him to see me like this, or tell me I was beautiful when all I felt was broken. I tucked my wet hair behind my ear, eyes on the carpet between us. “You should go shower.”
“I will,” he said, voice low. “Can you tell me what happened? Is that… would that upset you?”
A shudder rushed through me and I shivered with the force of it. Emery reached out, his hands finding the outer edges of each of my knees, and he rubbed the skin there. I watched his thumb rub the normal, toned muscle of my right leg and the thin, damaged muscle of my left. The warmth from his skin made me shiver again, and when my eyes found his, my stomach flipped at the heat I found there, too.
“It’s hard,” I whispered, and my eyes watered, though I tried to fight against the tears.
Emery just squeezed my thighs a little tighter, the pad of his thumb tracing the skin in smooth circles, eyes resting on mine as he waited.
I took a deep breath, folding my hands on my lap and staring down at them as I spun my ring. “It was my twelfth birthday. My parents forgot. Again,” I added, and my heart stung with the familiar ache of being forgotten, a feeling I knew too well. “It was the first year I didn’t care to remind them.”
I was still watching my hands, but I felt Emery staring at me, felt his gaze on me. I pushed out another breath and kept going.
“My dad didn’t come home from work that evening, and my mom thought he was cheating again. So, she threw me in the car to go look for him. I begged her to stay home, but she insisted, and she had been drinking. I knew better than to argue with them when they were drinking.
“I was reading my book in the back seat, A Wrinkle in Time, so I don’t really know what happened. All I remember is my mom cursing, and then the car jerked, over and over again. It felt like we were hitting the biggest speed bumps to ever exist. Then we flipped, I don’t know how many times, and I blacked out. When I came to, there was smoke everywhere, and I looked down and there was just… blood. So much blood.”
Tears flooded my eyes again, and I tried not to blink, not to let them fall, inhaling another shaky breath.
“My left leg was pinned by the door, it had been crushed in, and the car had landed on that side. So, I was just… stuck. I didn’t notice the pain until my mom started screaming. Then it all hit me — the blood, the smoke, the pain — and I blacked out again.”
I shrugged, a mixture of emotion and complete numbness washing over me, each of them fighting for dominance.
“I woke up in the hospital, and by that time, they’d already amputated my leg. My mom walked away completely fine. She was too drunk to even tense up, so other than some bruises and cuts from the seat belt and airbag, she was fine.” Two tears slipped from my eyes at the same time, rolling down over my cheeks and hitting my thumb in unison. “She was fine, except she was angry at me, because she knew the hospital bill would be outrageous.”
“Jesus Christ,” Emery breathed, and his hands moved to grab mine. He held them tightly as I closed my eyes, more tears seeping through.
I shook my head. “It’s weird how much of it I don’t remember. Tammy, my friend from back home, says I repressed it all. But I don’t really recall much of the physical therapy, or getting used to my leg. I know it was hard, I know I hated it, but one day it was just… easier. And every day that passed, it became more and more normal. When I started doing yoga, that’s when I really found peace with it. With everything, really.”
“You do yoga without your leg on?”
I nodded. “I wanted to build strength and balance. Sometimes I do it with my leg on, just to test it, but I like doing it without it more. It’s nice to remind myself that I can still be strong, even if I am missing a limb.”
Emery was silent for a moment, then he dipped his head down a little lower until my gaze met his. He was completely surrounding me now — his knees on either side of mine, elbows resting easily on my thighs, hands covering mine, eyes piercing through my ghosts. “You are strong, Cooper,” he whispered. I looked away, but he moved until he was blocking my view again. “You are. And the fact that something like this happened to you and you’re still here, living, smiling and spreading light… it’s incredible.” He paused, swallowing. “I couldn’t do that.”
“You’d be surprised.”
“No,” he cut me off. “I’m serious. I know myself, and I would have given up years ago.” He watched me for a moment. “I hope you never do.”
I closed my eyes, his words settling around me. “I’m a little tired, could we maybe make plans in the morning?”
“Of course,” Emery said softly, backing out of my space. He released my hands and I immediately wrapped them around myself. “I’m going to jump in the shower. Want me to shut off the lights?”
I shook my head. “I’ll wait until you’re out.”
“Okay, I’ll be fast.”
With that, Emery jumped up, digging through his bag for his toiletries before dipping inside the bathroom. I let out a long, loud breath once he was gone, the memories of the crash still fresh in my mind as I fell back against th
e cool, rough, Native American print comforter. Kalo moved closer to me, whimpering a bit as she nudged me with her nose. She could always tell when I was sad, and I just rubbed the fur on her paw, reassuring her I was fine.
I was tempted to read another passage from Emery’s journal, knowing it was still sprawled out on the floor from where he’d been writing, but after talking about the accident, I was too tired to even lean up again. Instead, I wiggled until my head was on the pillows, tucking my legs under the sheets.
Kalo curled up beside me, and though I said I would wait, exhaustion pulled me under while the shower was still running. I faintly remember hearing the water cut off, and then the door opening. A few seconds later, the lights were off, and then I must have started dreaming, because I swore I felt a hand brush my hair back from my face.
I cracked one eyelid open, but Emery was already in his own bed, scribbling in his journal by the light from his phone. And I fell back asleep to the sound of the page turning.
“Okay. So, we have Colorado Springs and the Grand Canyon,” I said around a mouthful of banana muffin, washing it down with iced coffee as I continued planning our route the next morning. “What else?”
The sun had barely risen, but Emery and I had been up for an hour, eating breakfast from the hotel lobby and figuring out our next moves. Emery seemed to have woken up in a good mood again, which I was thankful for, since I needed his patience and cooperation to figure everything out.
“I want to drive up the Pacific Coast Highway,” Emery said. He was playing fetch with Kalo, though she rarely brought the toy back, usually flopping down in the same spot and chewing on it, instead.
“Okay, let me see…” My tongue stuck out of the corner of my mouth as I studied the map on my phone, making notes in the notebook Emery had bought from the lobby when we grabbed breakfast. “Done.”
“Don’t you need to make plans for where to stay and stuff, too? For Seattle?”
I nodded. “I do. Next hotel we stop at, we should make sure it’s one with a business center. I can just spend a day putting in apartment applications and job searching.”
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