by Lexi Blake
Noelle looked up at her, but there was no triumph in her eyes. She was crying. “I’m sorry I wasn’t what you needed me to be.”
Lila groaned and started to lean over.
Armie stepped between them. “Don’t you say another word to her.”
Noelle made her way to the hall.
“What is that supposed to mean?” It was very obvious he’d misunderstood what was going on. This was sometimes how therapy went, and it was absolutely how parental figures and teens went at times.
“It means I can’t believe you talked to her that way.”
“I know I was harsh, but we’re on a deadline, Armie, and gentle prodding isn’t working,” she explained. “There’s something going on with her and she won’t talk about it. Something is holding her back, and I need to get her to acknowledge it so we can get her on her feet before she loses this window.”
“That window closed the day she lost use of her legs,” he insisted. “I am not going to have you make things harder on her.”
Why wasn’t he listening? He could be so logical but about this he was a freaking rock she battered her head against. “That’s what I am trying to tell you. I don’t think she has to lose it all, but she’s afraid.”
His hands found his hips and he loomed over her. “Yes, she’s afraid of you. She thinks you’re trying to get rid of her, and after hearing the way you talked to her, I have to question every damn thing I know about you.”
How to explain this to him? “Physical therapy can be a difficult process. Have you ever known someone who went through it? You said your partner got shot once. Did you ever go to one of his therapy sessions?”
He shook his head. “It’s different. He was a cop. He could handle it.”
“Noelle can handle it, too. Do you know what I would have done to anyone but a family member who refused to do the work? I would have told them they could find me when they got serious about healing and I would have walked away.”
“Well, I wish like hell you would have done that here because the one thing she doesn’t need is more negativity.”
“No, she needs to believe she can do this, and you are not helping her. You are holding her back by coddling her.” The minute the words were out of her mouth she knew they were a mistake. “Armie, I know you’re trying . . .”
He cut her off. “No, please tell me what you think. I’m not a good enough father? How the hell would you know? You never had a father. You can’t possibly know how to raise a child because you never had a parent.”
Wow. She took a deep breath because the cruelty of those words had kicked her in the gut. She’d talked about her childhood because she loved him and wanted him to know everything about her. Not so he could throw it back in her face, weaponizing the words to win a battle she hadn’t even thought to fight.
She had to keep it together or she would end up crying, and she wasn’t going to do that. She was going to keep this professional. “My lack of parental love has nothing to do with my medical knowledge. All of the studies show if I don’t get her on her feet soon, she’ll never walk. I do not understand why you want to keep her in that chair except that you’re afraid and you feel guilty and you’re indulging her. You got to do that when she was young because you were the dad. I bet your wife was the disciplinarian. Well, she’s gone and sometimes you have to be tough. Noelle is smart and strong, but she’s also sheltered.”
“How can you say she’s sheltered? Do you know what she’s been through?”
“I know she’s willing to sit in that chair instead of trying to walk. I know she’s willing to give up all her dreams because it seems easier than doing the work. Honestly, even if she was going to spend the rest of her life in that chair, she can go to college. People do it all the time. She can have a life. She can be strong and independent.”
Armie’s eyes widened. “You do want to get rid of her.”
“Are you kidding me? Because I want to help her have a life I’m some villain plotting to exile my rival? What world are you living in?”
“Obviously not the same one you’re in,” he shot back. “Here we don’t harass people we love. We don’t break them.”
“She’s already broken, Armie. We’re all broken. Every single one of us. How we put ourselves back together and move on is the measure of our souls. Don’t take this fight from her. This is her life. Do you think I haven’t seen this? My mother said she would get clean. She said she would start tomorrow and tomorrow never came, and that’s how she spent most of her life, letting it waste away.”
He shook his head. “Do not compare my daughter to your drug-addicted mother.”
“Why not? She’s addicted to that chair. Do you know how many people who have no choice would kill to be in her place? To be able to do the work, to feel the pain so they might have a chance to walk again? Tell her. Tell her to be brave. Tell her to try. Tell her to make you proud by being the warrior you raised her to be. Don’t let one moment define the rest of her life.”
Well, she’d definitely left doctor mode behind, but she wasn’t going to cry. She could feel the tears right there, but she couldn’t make this fight about her. It was about Noelle.
“It already did, and I’m not going to put her through this.” Armie stepped back. “I’m taking my daughter home now. I hope she’s welcome back in this facility because I do understand she needs maintenance therapy, but I don’t want you in charge of her sessions anymore. She needs to go back to Tanya.”
He wasn’t going to listen to her? Maybe she needed to step back and come at this from another angle. They were both emotional at this point. They needed to calm down, get a glass of wine, and logically discuss this. “Of course she’s welcome.”
He stared at her for a moment. “She’s my daughter, Lila.”
“I know that. Why do you think I’m fighting so hard?” She reached for him. This was their first real fight and it had been a doozy.
He closed his eyes as her hands found his arms. “I have to do what’s right for her.”
“I know that, too.” They would talk and he would see that was all she was trying to do.
His eyes opened and she realized this wasn’t going to go the way she thought it would.
“I think you should go to your sister’s. I think we need some time apart. I should concentrate on Noelle.”
She took a step back, his words not making sense to her. It was a fight. They weren’t supposed to break up over an argument. “You’re kicking me out because Noelle and I had a disagreement?”
“You were saying terrible things to her. I can’t allow you to do that.”
She could barely breathe. “Did you think we would always get along?”
“Noelle gets along with everyone.”
“Yes, and that’s a problem. Can’t you see that? Can’t you see it’s not normal for her to never fight with anyone? She’s afraid to fight even for herself.”
He held a hand up. “I’m not going to listen to this crap. She’s a nice young lady. And she doesn’t have to fight for herself because I’m here to fight for her.”
“But you’re not.” Anger started to thrum through her. He’d been an illusion. If he wilted because they’d had one damn fight, they would never have worked. She was difficult. She knew that, but she’d thought he was the one man in the world who might stand beside her. “You’re not fighting for her at all. You’re sheltering her, and you’ll do it until she can’t have a life, and the crazy thing is, you won’t, either.”
A single brow rose over his eyes. “Oh, because I won’t let her put up with your abuse, I can’t have a life?”
“You’re stuck in that moment, too. You can’t forgive yourself for not being in that car with her.” She knew he wouldn’t listen to her, but she couldn’t stop talking. She loved him. She probably wouldn’t love anyone else the way she loved him, but she also
knew when a man was done with her. “It wasn’t your fault, but this part is. You are her father. You have to protect her. Even from herself. I’ll send someone by to get my stuff. Not that there’s much of it.”
“You could apologize.” He took a deep breath and seemed to come to some resolution. “You could apologize to Noelle and then maybe we could work something out.”
And the next time she made a wrong move? Would she spend the rest of her life apologizing? “The trouble is I don’t think I was wrong and I never will. Not about this. Good-bye, Armie.”
She walked out, turning to the hallway that led to the parking lot. She could barely see for the tears in her eyes. She’d held them off until now.
Noelle was sitting there. She was a mess, her mascara dripping across her cheeks. “Lila, I’m . . . I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to do that to you and Dad.”
This really wasn’t her fault. She sank down to the bench beside Noelle’s wheelchair because she didn’t want to loom over her. What she had to say needed to be said eye-to-eye. “I know, sweetie. I want you to think about this. You are enough. You are enough to get up and fight through and walk. You are the only one making yourself small. If you need me, you know where to find me.”
Armie stood in the doorway.
She got to her feet and walked away, feeling his eyes on her the whole way.
When she got to her car, she forced the tears back and drove toward the only place she had left to go.
chapter fifteen
“Hey, I brought you some tea.” Lisa stepped into the small apartment over Guidry’s that would serve as her temporary home.
“Thank you.” She’d held it together for hours, something she’d learned after years of working in trauma. Her own trauma could wait. Although when she thought about it, maybe she’d learned it in childhood.
Peanut looked up from his place beside her. The dog seemed to know something terrible had happened and he’d stayed close to her.
Lisa sat at the end of the bed, a worried look on her face. “I wish you would come to the house and stay there. I want to take care of you.”
Being taken care of was what had gotten her here in the first place. She’d fallen into the softest, sweetest of all traps, the one that seemed like heaven. But this afternoon that trap had sprung, and she’d been broken by it. She’d managed to crawl away, but she feared she’d left a big old chunk of herself back in that house where she’d briefly been happy. “I’m fine. It didn’t work out. We moved way too fast.”
That was what she was telling everyone who asked. It had been a mistake to move in together.
What would Armie say? Would he put it around town that she’d abused his daughter? Would he trash her reputation to get her to leave? She would have said no, but then, she hadn’t realized how far he would go to protect Noelle and himself. He’d found a place after trauma where he was comfortable and life seemed okay, and she was threatening that.
“No, you didn’t. What happened?” Lisa’s shrewd eyes pinned her. “I won’t go away until you tell me. You know how tenacious I can be. It’s all you’ll hear for the next few weeks. ‘What’s wrong, Lila? How can I help, Lila?’” She touched her chest and gave her a shocked expression. “‘Oh my, did I do something wrong, Lila?’ Now that is a manipulation because I know damn well I didn’t do anything wrong, but it’s going to annoy you so I’ll go there.”
This was what sisters did. They poked and prodded and didn’t care about personal boundaries when they meant well. This was what she’d tried to do with Noelle because she knew it was what any of her siblings would have done for her.
Armie was wrong. She might not have had two loving parents, but she’d had Will and Laurel and Lisa. They’d loved and supported each other. They’d taught each other what it meant to be a family.
“We had a fight. He broke up with me.” She petted Peanut, taking comfort from his closeness.
Lisa gasped. “What did you do?”
“Why do you think I did anything at all?”
“Because I’ve known you my whole life. You can be a bitch.”
She could, but this time she’d been a bitch for all the right reasons. “I pushed Noelle at PT. I tried to get her up and walking and I said some nasty things about it being easy to stay in that chair. I think I was close to getting her mad enough that she would have done it just to throw it back in my face.”
Lisa sighed. “Like you did when I was flunking physics. I remember that well. You and Will thoroughly pissed me off enough that nothing was going to stop me from passing that class and showing you two up. You know Laurel did the same thing and you simply helped her. She got a C and you were happy with that. I got an A-minus and all you did was pat me on the back and tell me you knew I could do it.”
She’d been only a few years older than her younger siblings, but she’d been the one to make sure they did their homework and ate dinner. “Laurel was never good at math and science. It didn’t come naturally to her. She had other talents. You were being lazy and floating by on your innate intelligence. If you had flunked that class, the school would have wanted a parent-teacher conference. We didn’t have a parent to send.”
Those years had been so rough, always walking a tightrope. She couldn’t do it again. She couldn’t simply apologize for something she wasn’t sorry for and go back to him. It was inevitable that she and Noelle would clash from time to time and she would go through this all over again. She would walk a tightrope, the same one she had in childhood— be perfect or she would lose it all.
“Huh, I never thought of it that way. As a teen it just felt unfair,” Lisa said.
“Yeah, well, I’m sure Noelle would agree with you. Armie certainly does. He asked me to leave because if I stayed he wouldn’t be putting Noelle first. The funny thing is, I’m trying to do the same thing.” She’d known they would fight about it and she’d done it anyway.
“He doesn’t want her to do the physical therapy?”
“He believes what the old doctor told him. He doesn’t want a second opinion because he doesn’t want to give Noelle false hope. I personally think it’s better than no hope at all. At least if she thought there might be a chance, she would try to figure out how to be more independent. Armie’s rigged the whole house so she doesn’t have to struggle. That’s great, but the world won’t be like that. It isn’t like that for anyone. He’s done a great job of making her comfortable, but he won’t teach her life skills. I’ve been trying to teach her how to help around the house. She tells me she can’t do it. Do they honestly believe people in wheelchairs can’t cook or do laundry? Because that’s ridiculous. Even if she never gets out of that chair, she can be independent. She can go to college and study whatever she wants. She can have a full life where she does amazing things, but she can’t if she won’t believe in herself.”
“You need to talk to him,” Lisa urged.
“I tried that. He said the only way he’ll consider talking to me is if I make an apology to Noelle. I assume he’ll also want me to stop pushing on getting her to walk.” There were other things she feared. “Maybe it’s for the best. Not for Noelle, but for me. I don’t think we would have worked out in the long run because I don’t think he’ll ever take the chance on having another child, and I don’t know that I can live without trying to have one.”
Lisa’s eyes went wide. “He doesn’t want more kids? I mean, I do get it that he’s been through it once, but he told you flat out he won’t have kids?”
“He said he needed to think about it. Maybe if I’d met him at another time. It’s not wrong or bad for him to be done with having kids. It certainly doesn’t make him a bad person, just a wrong match.” Or perhaps they were simply far too different to ever have worked. She was so tired. “I think he enjoyed the idea of having a woman in his life, but the reality turned out to be not so great. I was convenient for a while and then I wasn’t
, and I was out.”
“I don’t think that was it. I saw you two together. He was happier than I’ve ever seen him.”
“Well, I wasn’t worth fighting for,” she said wistfully. “Do you think he’ll tell everyone I tried to hurt Noelle?”
“What? Why would he do that?”
“Because if the clinic fails, I’ll leave town,” she explained. “I’ll have to. I have to have a job. The clinic doesn’t make much money. Not much at all, really, but I have to have a way to pay Mabel and keep the lights on. I’m starting to get a good flow of regular patients, but Armie could stop that with a couple of words. I’m the outsider.”
Lisa’s eyes went steely. “If he bad-mouths my sister, he’ll have to deal with me.”
She didn’t want to get her sister in trouble. Lisa fit in here. She loved it here. Lila was starting to feel at home in Papillon, but she couldn’t fight if Armie decided he didn’t want her here. It could harm her sister’s business. “I don’t know. Maybe I should try to find someone to take my place. The last thing I need is Guidry’s to lose business because I’m your sister. If I leave, they might forget.”
The door came open and Remy stalked in. “You’re not going anywhere, Lila. You belong right here, and I assure you nothing Armie says can hurt this business. Dixie and I are the only games in town, and she doesn’t have a bar. I assure you, when it comes down to pleasing the sheriff or pleasing me, they’ll think about the fact that I won’t serve any person who tries to drive one of my family members out of town.”
Lila stood up and Peanut jumped to the floor, taking his place beside her. “You were listening in?”
Remy had the good grace to flush slightly. “Well, Zep was already doing it, and I didn’t think he should know more than I did.”
Zep’s head popped around the corner. “Sorry. I saw that Doc there was upset and I wanted to know if I should punch someone.”
She sighed. “First off, I’m an NP. Secondly, no. If you punch someone and you injure that finger again, I’m not sewing it back on twice. If you like your pinkie finger, stay out of fights for the next eight weeks or so.”
