by Addison Jane
“Hey sexy lady,” Luca finally drawls, the confused look gone, replaced by that cocky, douchebag-ish smirk that made me want to kick him in the nuts the first day we met. Since then, he’s toned it down, and while I still get the jokes and lewd comments they are less creepy, and more like a private joke. “Why don’t you come over here?” He rubs his hand across the bed beside him, the action making me pull back and screw my nose up. “You can be my private nurse.”
“Tone it down, idiot. You’re gonna make her run for the hills,” Tanner warns from where she’s standing in the corner, her arms folded across her chest. Her dark hair is hanging over her face, her skin still stained with dirt and who knows what else from their mission. The tone of her voice is sharp and entirely unimpressed. She’s obviously not holding any punches because he’s hurt.
I’m still confused.
I just stand here, frowning, my lips pursed tightly together, unable to find any kind of words to explain how I’m feeling at this moment.
I don’t even really know how I’m feeling.
I’m used to Luca and his ridiculous comments, but suddenly, they feel different.
They feel dirty.
“You’re just jealous, Tanner,” Luca cackles, turning to look at her. He cringes when his face rubs against the not so soft hospital pillow, the painful look coming across his face making it feel like someone has my heart in their hand and they’re squeezing it.
It makes me shoot forward and rush to his bedside. “Stop moving,” I order, taking his hand in mine and squeezing it to gain his attention. “You need to rest.”
His eyes turn to me, lighting up. I instantly see the haze that covers them, the drugs blurring the lines inside his head, not allowing him to sink into that place where he can consider his words or his actions. They’re there to keep him pain-free, and while I am thankful for that at least, I don’t like the rest.
His hand reaches out for me, grasping the front of my shirt and pulling me forward. “Come snuggle with me, Everly.” His tongue struggles to get around the syllables of my name as I try to pull back. Even drugged up to the hilt, he’s still stronger than I am. “Come on, I could use some kind of relief.”
“Luca,” Jack shouts suddenly, standing to his feet. “Stop it! Now.”
My anger flares and I try to pull my shirt from his fingers, but as I’m distracted he tugs on my shirt, and I land on top of his chest. His arms instantly go around me as he cuddles me tightly like I’m a fucking teddy bear.
“Mmm, I like to cuddle you, Everly. And man, this booty…” One of his hands lands with a sharp sting on my ass, and I scream before his fingers dig in almost as painfully.
It’s only a few seconds before I feel his hands being ripped away, and my body being lifted into the air and carried to the end of the bed. I stare in shock as Tanner stands beside the bed, shaking her head as she holds on tightly to one of his hands while Jack stands opposite holding the other.
Blair is behind me, but I feel the rage rolling off him in waves. He takes a step forward. “This is why you need to cut the fucking drugs, Luca,” he spits, pointing at his friend who can only stare ahead in confusion, not realizing what just happened or what he’s done. There’s innocence in his eyes, and that’s all thanks to the doses of morphine he’s filling his body with, not allowing his common sense or ability to reason come through. “You could have hurt her, and you could have hurt yourself.”
With that, Blair storms out, the door to the room slamming closed with a resounding bang, making me jump. Tanner pushes Luca’s hand away. He looks up at her, and she shakes her head, an unexpected look of disappointment washing over her. “Sort it out,” she sighs, looking sad and almost defeated. “You act like a pig, you’re gonna end up face first in the mud.” With that she turns and heads for the door, calling out to Blair when she hits the hallway.
Luca’s eyes meet mine, I can tell that he has no idea what just happened. He knows that people are upset, and he’s thrown by it, but I don’t even think he realizes why.
My body’s shaking, my heart telling me it’s okay, that once the drugs wear off, he’ll be back to the Luca I’ve come to know. But my head’s screaming at me to walk away before things get any worse.
What if Blair is right, and he can’t kick them?
What if the drugs take over?
“Everly, I think you should go,” Jack murmurs calmly as he steps away from Luca’s bedside and heads toward me, spreading his hands wide to usher me from the room. His words are obviously not a request.
I back away just as Luca reaches for the button again, the whole scene that just happened, completely gone from his mind already.
Tears burn my eyes, but I allow Jack to direct me toward the door, opening it for me and waiting until I step out. He holds the door, a solemn look on his face, his eyes avoiding mine. “We’ll be shipping him back to Washington in a couple days when everything settles down. It’s probably better if you just leave it until then.”
I lick my lips, they’re dry, my heart still racing and my head just… I don’t even know. I feel strange. Confused. “Do you… uh… want me to stay?”
Jack shakes his head. “Noah will be heading back on a plane within the hour, with the information and records they pulled from the bunker. He will need help, and that’s far more important. Luca will be fine.” He looks over his shoulder, and the sounds of soft snores fill my ears. “He will be fine… I’ll make sure of it.”
I swallow a hard lump in my throat but just nod in agreement, hoping Jack will be the one who’ll be able to talk some sense into Luca, and when he comes off the drugs that he won’t remember what happened so, I can forget it too.
I wheel myself into the kitchen as Lily is making breakfast. Yes, fucking wheel myself. Because I’m confined to this stupid wheelchair for at least the next three weeks until my leg becomes stronger after all the trauma it suffered.
I fucking hate it. I hate this chair. I hate that I’ve had to move in with Kace and Lily because I can’t get around my own house, and I need help getting in and out of bed. I hate that for a couple days there, my body was so sore that my best friends had to help me get on to the goddamn toilet to take a shit because I refused to have one to those nurses come in every day like I was a fucking invalid.
But you know what I hate the most right now? Myself.
It took a couple days to get my head back in the right place, and also a very intense visit with Blair, who made sure that I was very well aware of just what I was putting in my body. Including the struggles I would have to go through—that he had to go through—in order to get his life back after his long addiction to pain meds.
I listened, my brain is finally able to compute what he was telling me. I knew fucking better, and I knew that he’d had to sit there and watch me for two days, go through exactly what he’d gone through, this time seeing it from the outside. I knew it must have been killing him, and I hate that I’d put him back in that place where he still felt weakness sometimes.
I can’t say it was fun, but from that day, I’d gone pain med free. Actually, it was kinda hellish, but much to my surprise, one person had come through for me who I never would have expected. Apparently, Lily’s best friend Molly is into all this crazy natural and holistic medicine. Shockingly, I found that some of it actually worked. After a few days of hating the fucking world because of the searing pain in my leg and other parts of my body, she’d shoved a couple green pills down my throat and wouldn’t you know, it became almost bearable.
Molly and I have a love-hate relationship that’s hard to describe.
She hates me, I love to remind her why.
But I guess when it comes down to it, we both share one thing, our love for our best friends, who also happen to be a couple. So when push comes to shove, we really are on the same side.
“Hey,” Lily grins as I roll into the kitchen, almost running over her foot with one of my wheels. I’m still getting used to this thing. I’ve been injured
before, it’s part of the job, but never this bad. Never to the point where I can’t fucking walk.
“Sorry,” I murmur under my breath as I pull open the fridge and grab a bottle of water.
“Kace had to meet with Jack early, but he said he’d come back about ten to pick you up for the team briefing,” she explains, refusing to look at me, thinking maybe I’ll agree if she plays it off like it’s no big deal.
“No,” I reply simply, placing the water in my lap and twisting myself around before wheeling back out the way I came. “Call him and tell him not to bother.”
“Luca…” she says with a heavy sigh, following along behind me as I head for the already open sliding doors that lead out onto the patio. I have to get up some speed to get over the door tracks, landing on the wood decking with a thump, sending a jolt of pain through my body before I’m able to roll forward toward the outdoor table.
“Will you just hold on for a second,” Lily jabs in annoyance. I can tell she’s standing behind me with her hands on her hips, thinking that the Mom act is going to make me feel bad and give in.
It isn’t.
I let out a loud whistle, and a little golden head peeks out of the kennel that’s across the lawn. Her mouth instantly falls open, her long wet tongue rolling out to the side as her eyes light up and she skids out the door, running full force toward me. She leaps up as she gets to my side, her front paws on the wheel of my chair, her two back legs bouncing up and down off the ground as she tries her hardest to leap up into my lap, with no success.
Lily groans, walking around behind me, and picks Clover up off the ground and places her on my legs. It’s strange you know, because as soon as she’s on me, she suddenly becomes still, more careful, as though Clover knows she could possibly hurt me if she’s too rough. Her wet nose nuzzles at my hand, and for the first time today I smile.
Lily pulls out the chair across the table from me as Clover sniffs, licks and makes herself at home. “You’ve gotta go back sometime,” she states finally.
I risk a glance at her and cringe, quickly looking away. It’s that look of pity that I hate. I’m already frustrated, feeling useless and like a fucking idiot for getting myself into this damn predicament. I don’t need the people whose opinions matter the most looking at me like they feel sorry for me, trying to do everything to help but wipe my damn ass.
I’ve got this far in life on my own, without having to rely on others to get me through. They have no idea that they’re making me feel even more worthless than I already do.
“Everly rang last night to see how you are,” Lily mentions softly, barely above a whisper. My hand stills on Clover’s back, and her eyes peek up at me as if she can sense there’s something wrong.
I’ve spent five fucking days trying to forget about what happened, refusing to let her come around and avoiding stepping foot within The Agency’s walls. After the drugs had worn off, Jack had basically torn me a new asshole, and I fucking felt it. It hurt, almost more than the pain in my leg. God, I’d been a fucking idiot. I’d gone full-on creeper. I’d fucking groped her in front of my team members and my boss.
After Jack’s lecture, I filled in the blanks. I had few memories of those first couple days, but the one I’ll never forget is seeing her standing across the room looking at me in absolute horror, and Blair standing at her back yelling at me. Her cheeks were flushed with a mixture of anger and embarrassment, and there were tears brimming in her eyes. She was looking at me as if she didn’t really know who I was. And I don’t blame her.
I may be a fucking asshole sometimes, but she makes me want to be better. She’d gotten used to my jokes, to the way I tease her and prod at her to get a reaction, but this was next level. This was borderline assault. And I didn’t fucking care whether I was out of my mind or not, as far as I’m concerned I should have known better. I should have known it was her.
I never wanted to be like them. Those men who came into our home when I was a child and got high with my mom and then considered it their right to take her body for their own. No fucking way. I’d never seen the drugs as an excuse then, why should they be now.
Maybe I thought I managed to escape that shit—my fucked up childhood—with my morals and beliefs in the right place, but now I’m beginning to think that maybe it had impacted me more than I want to ever admit.
I don’t deserve to be around someone as sweet as Everly. I don’t want her to ever have to go through that kind of shit or feel like she isn’t safe, and as far as I’m concerned right now, I failed her in that regard.
“She’s not upset, Luca,” Lily continues when I don’t reply caught up in my memories.
I scoff loudly and shake my head. “You didn’t see her face, Lily. It’s been haunting me for fucking days, the way she looked at me like the monster I am.” Lily’s eyes widen at my words. I feel sick just thinking about it, seeing her eyes flash across my vision. “I was a fucking douche, with a capital D. I couldn’t handle myself, and there’s no way in hell I want to be around her when I can’t even control my body or my mind.”
I’m weak.
My body is broken, and obviously, my mind is so easily swayed by outside influence that I can’t be trusted.
“You’re a fucking idiot,” the deep voice of my best friend rumbles from behind me. Clover’s ears perk up at the sound of her dad, but she quickly settles back in, her tail smacking happily against my thigh. Lily instantly stands up and goes to him as he rounds the table, so he’s in my line of sight.
She gives him a kiss on the cheek. “Please, talk some sense into him,” she pleads as Kace brushes his lips across the top of her hair before she gives him one last squeeze and heads back inside.
Kace takes the seat she’s just vacated and knocks his knuckles on the table. “You look like shit,” he says, never being one to sugar coat it. “You need to get out of this house, and you need to start working on some of the rehab shit that the doctors gave you to do.”
The doctors gave me a huge list of things to do every day as I start to heal. At first, it began with small shit, like lifting the leg up and down a few times and trying to rotate it if I could. They want me to keep it moving as much as possible to avoid any future problems that could arise if I let it sit static—apparently that old saying ‘use it or lose it’ is actually pretty much on point.
“I’ve been doing—”
“Don’t bullshit me,” Kace sneers, rolling his eyes like he already knows I was going to try and talk my way out of this. “You’ve been too busy feeling sorry for yourself to do any of the things the doctors advised you to.”
I narrow my eyes across the table at him, but he just looks at me with a bored expression on his face. Kace has never been intimidated by me, even when we weren’t friends and I joined the team as a new recruit, thinking I was hot shit. I wasn’t, and it was Kace that made me realize that.
It’s why we’re best friends. Because he balances me out, reminds me when to pull my head out of my ass, and reminds me there are people out there who actually give a shit about whether I come back from a mission, dead or alive. So I better fucking fight my damn ass off to make it the latter.
“All right, I haven’t. I’ll start tonight,” I tell him, admitting defeat.
“You can start in the car on the way to The Agency for our team briefing,” he instructs, pushing back from the table and drawing Clover’s attention once again. I grit my teeth. “I already told Lily, I’m not going.”
Kace places both his hands on the table and leans down, his eyes staring into mine with an intensity that I don’t often see directed at anyone but the enemy. “You want to play that game, fine. You will be at that briefing. That’s an order, not a request.” His voice is low and deep, leaving no room for fucking arguments, but I’m going to try anyway. Because I’m a stubborn motherfucker.
“And if I don’t?” I query, my hands clenching tightly to the wheelchair, holding back from wanting to punch my best friend in the face.
“If you don’t… then you’re out. You’ll no longer be an agent of the SO7,” he snaps, and it’s like an injection of venom straight to my heart. I know by the tone of his voice that he’s serious, but I know he doesn’t take any kind of pleasure in saying the words.
The SO7 is my fucking life. They’re like my family, and even though I’m wallowing in enough self-pity to drown myself right now, walking away from them is never going to be a fucking option.
“Fine,” I snap. “But only because the SO6 doesn’t sound as good.”
I see the twitch in the corner of Kace’s mouth, but he manages to force a smile back down. I huff. “Lead the way… oh great leader,” I tell him, sweeping my arm out like he’s royalty.
“You’re gonna make this fucking painful aren’t you,” he groans.
My eyes light up, and I smile, and damn does it feel good. “As painful as possible. Don’t say you weren’t warned.”
My muscles are tense as I wheel my chair through the halls of the main room of The Agency. Co-workers turn to look at Kace and me, some nod with warm smiles, others quickly turn away, all not knowing what to say.
“We’re expected in Jack’s office now. You okay to make it up the ramp?” Kace asks, and I send him a death glare making him grimace and hold his hands up in surrender. “Okay, just making sure, but… I’m here if you need me.”
He walks off in front of me up the ramp, and I grit my teeth preparing my strength to push myself up the small incline. I’m strong, I know that, but I’ve never had to push myself up a ramp in a wheelchair. This is a whole new experience, and honestly, I just want to turn around and wheel my fucking sorry ass out of here, the fear of rolling back down this ramp and crashing at the bottom is very real and kind of fucking daunting.
I move into position and start wheeling up the incline, it’s tough, and it takes a lot of effort. My muscles are burning as I pant harder for breath. Kace turns at the top of the ramp looking back to me, watching me cautiously for any signs of fatigue. The signs are there, for sure, I’m still weak from my injuries, but Jack’s windows are floor to ceiling, and I know the team is all in there watching me. I’ve never felt more pressure, and it’s eating me alive as I push to get up this motherfucking ramp.
