Dex got it. He felt scared, too, but everything told Dex this was the right decision.
Tam wouldn’t want to be in a rehab facility. She would want to be home, with them.
Her home.
He also knew Neil didn’t want to contemplate the quietly looming certainty most of Tamsin’s care providers had increasingly talked about, that this was the best she’d ever be again in her life.
As far as Neil was concerned, it wasn’t a matter of if she’d wake up, but when.
Dex didn’t have the heart to go there with Neil. Not to mention he barely had the emotional strength he needed to get himself through every day, much less prop Neil up sometimes.
It was better not to talk about it. At some point, Neil would be ready to talk. When he was, Dex would be there, ready to listen, and together they could try to deal with grieving and learning to focus on what was instead of what they wanted to be.
Neil still wore her day collar around his own neck, even though he’d given Dex her engagement ring once Dex had come home.
Dex didn’t begrudge him that. If it brought Neil some comfort, he was welcomed to it. He knew Tamsin wouldn’t mind Neil wearing it.
Today, Tamsin was dressed in a soft jersey-knit sundress Dex had brought for her, one of her favorite “loafing” dresses, as she’d always called it.
Something comfortable.
Her eyes were open as they got her changed, but she didn’t really respond to them. She turned her head a couple of times, but not because of what they said or did.
She was stuck in her own world.
Dex hoped she wasn’t scared or lonely there. That she could, at the very least, sense how much they loved her and wanted her with them.
Her custom wheelchair was actually more like a stroller and tilted to allow them to help prevent pressure sores. Martina helped the men transfer her and get her secured with the harness.
Dex wanted to grab the handles and run out of there with her, still not quite able to believe she was coming home with them.
Finally, they had her wheelchair on the van’s lift, rolled inside, and were getting it secured to the tie-downs in the van.
Martina was out of earshot when Dex mumbled into Neil’s ear, “At least we can tie Tam down like this.”
Neil froze, then burst out laughing.
Tam’s head turned, eyes open, but more looking through them than at them.
Dex leaned in. “Tam? Baby?” He knelt down to look directly into her eyes. As always when they had a response like that, they paused, waiting, trying to elicit a repeat.
Finally, after ten minutes, Neil sighed. “Let’s get her home. Maybe that will help.”
* * * *
Neil knew he shouldn’t get his hopes up every time she so much as blinked when one of them said something, but that had sure seemed like a response.
At least with Tamsin home, and a dedicated caretaker looking after her twenty-four-seven, it would give them a chance to really work with her.
Neil and Dex would also finally have privacy to talk to her in a way they couldn’t with lots of nurses and staff always around.
That drive home was the longest of Neil’s life. Dex made him drive, something Neil loved and hated him for at the same time.
Finally, they pulled into their driveway and Neil was able to relax. It was only twenty minutes later, once they had Tamsin inside, in the living room, that Neil could believe she was actually there.
Home.
He collapsed onto the sofa and watched Dex softly talking to her.
When Martina gently touched Neil’s shoulder, he looked up and saw she was holding a box of tissues for him.
That’s when he realized he was crying.
“Thanks.” He took one, then another.
She sat next to him. “It’s okay. This is a normal reaction. You’ve both been through a lot. She’s been through a lot. Now you have a chance to finally breathe.”
Later that night, Neil walked out to the kitchen to get a drink of water and found Dex sound asleep in the hospital bed with Tamsin, her body tucked against his side.
In a way he’d seen them together countless times before, on the couch, or even in her bed when they’d left the door open while playing, or after.
Angela, their night nurse, smiled and walked over to talk to him.
“He asked if it was okay if he did that, and I said of course. I think he was asleep before his head hit the pillow.”
Neil nodded. “I know how he feels.”
Except, right now, Neil wasn’t exactly sure how he felt. Grateful that Tamsin was home—absolutely.
Envious that Dex was curled up with her like that? In a way Neil had frequently curled up with her to watch TV?
Maybe just a little.
Jealous that he couldn’t be curled up in Dex’s arms?
He’d be lying if he denied it. Didn’t mean he was proud of feeling that way, but sometimes he wished their world was slightly different.
Except that kind of thinking only invited additional heartache he didn’t need.
Just like trying to pretend that they’d get their old Tamsin back would only lead him to heartbreak.
He loved her, as she was, right now. He always would.
Even as they did everything they could to take care of her, the endless list of possible ways they could lose her never stopped scrolling through Neil’s brain.
Pneumonia…flu…UTI…sepsis from a pressure sore…cancer…
Or any other number of conditions, both “normal” and common to people who were disabled and not mobile.
A couple of hours later, Neil was lying awake in bed when he heard Dex’s bedroom door close. Before he could think about it, he got up and, after pulling on shorts and a T-shirt, walked out to the living room.
Angela was watching TV and offered him a smile and a nod.
Tamsin lay alone in bed, on her side, eyes closed.
Neil walked around to the other side, lowered the side rail, and curled up next to Tamsin, holding her in his arms.
That’s where he cried himself to sleep.
* * * *
Neil felt disoriented when he awakened, but immediately realized he was still in bed with Tamsin.
He carefully climbed out, Angela helping him turn Tamsin onto her other side and propping her in position with special foam pillows. The cable box showed it was nearly five in the morning, but honestly, that had been the longest stretch of sleep he’d had since this whole nightmare began.
Making his way back to his own room, he curled his body around a pillow and desperately prayed to go back to sleep with her scent clinging to his T-shirt like a long-lost dream.
Chapter Twelve
The next several days seemed to pass too fast. Having Tamsin home meant Neil could finally sleep without worrying about her safety.
If she was being cared for.
Without worry some predator might slip through and molest or rape her.
Sunday, he wasn’t looking forward to going back to work the next day, but even he knew he couldn’t delay the inevitable. Tamsin was now only a twenty-minute drive from work, and he could come straight home to be with her.
He trusted their nursing staff.
Plus, for now, Dex would also be home.
Once they finished dinner and their night nurse, Karyn, supervised them giving Tamsin her evening nutrition and hydration, Neil grabbed his work laptop and settled in on the couch to play catch-up. That was the only bad thing about taking several days off, Neil knew he’d need to stay on top of communications or he might have a huge-ass logjam when he returned to work tomorrow.
He was barely registering Dex’s voice as he sat next to Tamsin’s bed and talked to her. Karyn had settled in with her Kindle, her phone’s timer set for thirty minutes, when she’d check Tamsin’s vitals and reposition her.
The TV was turned on but not a distraction. Neil busied himself answering e-mails when he realized Dex had stood and walked to the kitchen,
where Neil heard him rummaging around in cabinets.
The clink of bottles meant he was in the liquor cabinet.
The sound of ice cubes dropping into a glass.
Dex didn’t return for nearly fifteen minutes. When he did, he stood next to Tamsin’s bed instead of sitting.
In his hand, a glass with ice and an amber liquid.
Neil pretended to be working, but his full focus now lay on Dex.
That had been something he’d kept an eye on over the past several weeks, making sure Dex wasn’t secretly self-medicating with alcohol. He never had in the past, but everything that had been dumped on them would drive stronger men than either one of them to drink.
Tonight, however, Neil sensed something…broken about the man. Where getting Tamsin home had re-energized Neil and filled him with hope, Dex had subtly changed.
Neil couldn’t put his finger on it.
Dex headed outside to the lanai with the glass. When Neil looked, Dex had shoved his shorts off, dropped his T-shirt onto the pile of clothes, and jumped into the pool bare-ass. He was now doing laps.
Maybe that was the best thing for him, to burn off some pain and rebuild his physical strength at the same time. He’d spent plenty of hours in the pool, once he’d been cleared to, for physical therapy and exercise.
Dex also used it to help burn off his grief and anger, much in the way Neil punished himself mentally by lying awake at night and running through all his failings.
Neil returned to the sofa and resumed working. When the timer went off, Karyn checked Tamsin’s vitals and repositioned her.
Now Tamsin lay facing the couch. Right now, her eyes were closed, even though they’d been open earlier. He’d forced himself not to think in terms of involuntary movements and reflexive responses, and instead tried to think in terms of how she was keeping her eyes open more during the evenings.
He’d take any sign, even the tiniest one, of improvement.
He had to.
It was that, or hate himself for his choices.
She had to get better, at least somewhat.
Had to.
He’d even own the selfishness that he wanted his baby brat back, if nothing else just to curl up with her on the couch and watch TV together. Even if she could never again play the way they used to, not even for Dex’s sake, but his own.
To prove that he’d made the right call.
That he’d done the right thing.
That he hadn’t let her down.
That he hadn’t broken his promise to her to protect her.
Any little sign meant he hadn’t utterly fucked up in his own selfish need to not let her go and in the process harmed the one person in the world he would always put before himself, because he loved her.
About an hour later, Neil had finished with his e-mail when Dex returned from the lanai. He’d apparently dried off with a towel out there and sat, long enough his hair had dried.
The glass was empty, most of the ice also melted. He took the glass into the kitchen and Neil heard him dump the ice in the sink and then put the glass in the dishwasher.
Dex returned to the living room to stand by Tamsin’s bed, staring down at her.
“We hadn’t even set the wedding date yet,” he hoarsely said. Neil wasn’t sure who Dex was talking to, at first, because he was looking down at Tamsin, his gaze fixed on her face.
Karyn finally answered him. “I’m so sorry, Dexter.” She must have sensed his mood, because she stood and walked over to his side. “You did the right thing to bring her home. You two have the resources to take care of her. She’s very lucky.”
“Not lucky enough, apparently. Her whole damn life she had to swim upstream. Father left her mother hung out to dry. Mother died while Tam was in college.” His harsh laugh sounded bitter, dry. “Bless her heart, she couldn’t keep four good tires on her car for more than a month or two at a time without hitting a curb or running over something. Neil and I were always on her case to be more careful. Now she’s never going to drive again. She’s never going to get to play music, or teach.”
Neil shoved back his rage and stood, walking up behind him. He wanted to bitch-slap Dex, and would have if Karyn hadn’t been standing right there. He wasn’t sure if Dex was drunk or mired in self-pity, or being a massive, raging asshole.
He didn’t care.
He didn’t give a shit about Dex’s feelings at that moment, friend or not.
Instead, he grabbed the back of Dex’s T-shirt, between his shoulder blades, balled it up in his fist, and pointed him toward the living room doorway leading to the hall.
Neil would take this to his bedroom, at the far end of the house. Karyn wouldn’t be able to hear them over the sound of the TV.
“Good night, Karyn,” Neil told her. “We’ll see you in the morning.”
Shoving Dex ahead of him, Neil used the T-shirt like a leash. The other man tried to fight him but Neil didn’t budge. And with five inches in height on Dex, he had the tactical advantage.
When he reached his bedroom doorway, he shoved Dex, hard, sending him flying into the room where he landed facedown on the bed while Neil turned and closed the bedroom door, locking it.
Instinctively, Neil reached to unfasten his belt and strip it from the loops and immediately fought back a crushing wave of agonizing grief.
Fuck it.
Dex wasn’t the only one in emotional pain right now, and it was time to remind him of that fact.
Neil stripped his belt off, held the buckle, and took a few turns around his right hand with it, the tail hanging down.
“Ten. Now.”
Dex wanted to act like a brat? Neil would treat him like one, exactly how he used to treat Tamsin if she got out of line with him.
Except in Tam’s case, she’d frequently bratted deliberately to provoke the reaction, and they’d both known it, mutually enjoying the aftermath. Except for cases like ruining a tire, where, bless her heart, she’d just been…Tam being Tam.
Dex had flipped over onto his back, propped up on his elbows. “What?”
Neil fell on him in a flash, straddling him, pinning him to the bed with his body, his left hand around the front of Dex’s throat. “Ten. Now.”
“I’m not—”
“You’re being a goddamned fucking brat. You want to live in my house? Then you’re going to follow my fucking rules. When we are around Tam, we act like she is awake and can hear every fucking word we say. I told you that. That is an ironclad rule, and I cannot have the nurses not following that. We have to set an example. You owe me ten.”
He smelled the faint whispers of liquor on Dex’s breath but knew the man likely wasn’t drunk at that point, probably only slightly buzzed.
Reminder—dump all the alcohol.
Dex blinked those gorgeous chocolate brown eyes at him and for a moment Neil was tempted to see what would happen if he leaned in and kissed him.
Wasn’t like either of them were getting any other kind of action since—
Focus, you asshole!
“I’m not your sub,” Dex hoarsely said.
Except…now that Neil was paying better attention, he knew that wasn’t a phone he felt pressing against his ass through the front of Dex’s shorts and the seat of his own slacks.
Playing dirty, Neil ground his ass more firmly against Dex’s hips and knew he didn’t imagine the needy moan that escaped the man.
“My house, my rules. That was the deal. You want to safeword? Fine, but you can look for a new place to live. You’re either on Team Tamsin, or you’re not. Period. There might be two Doms in this house, but this Dom’s name’s on the damn deed. So you either drop your shorts and give me ten out of your ass, or we can go online and rent you a moving truck for tomorrow. Pick one, Princess.”
He released Dex’s throat and sat back—also allowing Neil to shift position a little for a better read on the situation under him.
Yep. Definitely one really hard cock in Dex’s shorts. Considering he already kn
ew what Dex’s cock looked like, he knew it was a nice one.
Sure, he’d fantasized about it more than once during his own wank sessions…before. He’d be an idiot not to.
He didn’t speak, waiting, forcing Dex to make the next move.
It took Dex a long time to respond. Just when Neil was pretty sure Dex was going to tell him to go fuck himself, he licked his lips.
“Ten.”
Neil leaned in. “Ten what?”
Another silent battle of the wills commenced, Dex blinking first over a minute later.
“Ten, Sir,” he whispered.
Neil couldn’t help it. He leaned in and kissed him, hard, his left hand reaching up to fist the man’s hair.
Dex grabbed him, apparently torn between wanting to push him off and pull him tighter against him.
Pulling won. With Dex clinging to Neil as if he were the only safety left to him, Neil felt Dex’s lips part, the man’s tongue flicking tentatively against his.
“Good,” Neil whispered. He released Dex, rising just enough he could flip the man over and turn around to face his ass. From where he’d landed, Dex’s legs were already hanging off the edge of the bed.
Not gently, he shoved Dex’s shorts down far enough to bare his ass, pleased to find him commando.
Neil drew his arm back. “Count.” Smack.
He looked behind him to see Dex’s fists had balled the covers. “One, Sir.”
Relief filled Neil, so thick and heavy he almost couldn’t breathe. No, of course he didn’t want Dex to move out, but Tamsin was his first priority and always would be.
He took another stroke, and another, Dex counting until all ten were given.
Neil dropped the belt onto the floor, turned, and folded his body over Dex’s, making sure the man could feel Neil’s bulge pressed against his reddened ass.
“We need each other now more than ever. We can’t do this alone.” He finally forced the words out. “I’ll be happy to give you more, if you want it,” he whispered. “I don’t mean the belt, either.”
He pressed a kiss to the nape of Dex’s neck.
After a moment, Dex nodded. “Please.”
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