Incapable (Love Triumphs Book 3)

by Ainslie Paton

  In the surgery he took a seat and waited. He wasn’t a regular, there was a queue and he wasn’t dying, or in danger of bleeding out. He wanted to call Georgia, Taylor, Angus but what did he say anyway? He didn’t know anything yet.

  Before he got anywhere near the doc, Lina called. She gave him a serve for not making another appointment with her. She had a name and address for him, he could skip the GP and go straight there without the usual referral.

  The specialist was the best, obviously discreet, would cost a bomb over and above health insurance. Damon had heard the name bandied about. Three hours later he had a dose of chemical magic to soothe his throat and appointments for a barrage of specialist tests, from a biopsy to an MRI.

  Doc Reithmyer wasn’t saying it was cancer, but she wasn’t saying it wasn’t either.

  He went home and waited for Georgia and Taylor. They’d call Angus, Jamie and Sam and he’d tell them what he knew, what they could expect and how he wanted to handle it. He’d talk to his parents and run through the same agenda.

  Then he’d have the tests and they’d wait and they’d get through whatever this was together.

  He ordered Thai and when they’d all arrived and the food was being dished out he admitted the reason for calling them together had nothing to do with having a beta copy of the Dystopian Conflict game.

  Georgia put her hand into his and he held on. He told them what was going on, like he should’ve done with his sight.

  “This all happened today?” Taylor stood behind him, massaging his shoulders.

  He nodded. “Couldn’t tell you earlier, didn’t know what to say.”

  She gripped the back of his neck. “Had nothing to do with you losing it last weekend, nothing to do with that throat chakra ink?”

  He shrugged her off. Angus sighed. He felt Georgia’s breath heave beside him and someone put a glass down hard on the table. Resentment curled in his chest. He’d done this the right way and it still wasn’t good enough for them.

  Georgia put her hand over the blue ink on his pec, his vague prayer to the cosmos. “You knew about this last week.”

  He wanted to shrug her off too, but only until it struck him how much it might help her to know he’d been acting out of fear. They’d talked about it, but he’d let her think it was the drinking that sparked the fight, the ever-present worry people managed him, weren’t real with him, and the desperate need for that not to be part of what they had together.

  “I didn’t know. I coughed some junk up that night.” He shrugged again. “It spooked me a little.” He put an arm around her and pulled her closer. “A lot. It spooked me a lot. That’s why I was drinking. It might’ve happened once before. I can’t be sure.”

  All she said was, “Oh, Damon,” and he wanted them all to leave so he could hide his frustration and fear in her skin.

  Taylor moved to his side, turned his head and slammed their foreheads together, but she said nothing and was gone before he had a chance to.

  No one was eating much. Sam went out to get more beer and Angus got angry. He went to the backyard and called Heather, but Damon could hear his shock and apprehension. He left the table and went out to the yard.

  “On your six, mate,” he said, standing on the deck. Angus was somewhere in front of him, his feet moving on the grass.

  “Doug says the Blink is quiet. I told Heather. She’s coming over after study group.”

  “Hope she’s hungry.” A poor attempt at a joke. Heather ate like food was a sin and she was desperate to stay out of hell.

  Angus stepped up on the deck. “You’re sure this specialist is the best there is?”

  “I can get other opinions.” He would, he needed to chase up additional recommendations. “But we need the test results first.”

  “I want to know the worst-case scenario.”

  “No point thinking like that. It’s likely to be so much simpler.” It felt like a big deal. He’d given himself a stress headache over it, but he wasn’t bleeding anymore, whatever the doc gave him to numb his throat made him feel less choked up.

  “As if you’ve not already gone there, Damon.”

  “I haven’t.” There was no reason to panic Angus with worst-case scenarios. He refused to believe that’s where this was headed anyway.

  “This whole tell the gang thing is admirable. A huge improvement on let’s not tell anyone I’m totally blind, so I’m a fucking danger to myself, but you’re only giving us half the story.”

  “Give me a break, man. I’ve told you everything I know. There is nothing more to say, until after the tests.”

  “What about admitting you’re shit scared you’re going to lose your career.”

  Damon waved him off. “Because I’m not. I get I’ve upset you. But it’s not going to go that way. There’s no history of cancer in the family. I don’t smoke, drink to excess, do anything else that’s a risk factor other than belt out songs in your bar. It’s not about the cigs the other night or the beers or the song list. It’s just one of those things.”

  “If you’re not being straight with me I’ll save the lot of us the worry, I’ll rip your tongue out.”

  He sighed and turned to go back inside. “I can’t talk to you when you’re like this.”

  “Like what?” Angus ducked around in front of him, a hand to his chest. “Concerned?”

  “When you don’t trust I’m telling the truth.”

  “Fuck my hesitancy on that front.”

  “I didn’t lie to you. I didn’t tell you everything. There’s a difference. I copped to it because the effect on you guys was the same as if I had lied. But I didn’t set out to lie to you and I’m not doing it now.”

  Angus slugged from a bottle and breathed heavily. The breathing of a man wrestling with a dilemma. But, shit, he had it easy now: a successful business to run, a life he liked, a woman he loved, health he took for granted. Once they’ve have sorted this out with a scuffle, a few punches, well aimed on Angus’ part, lucky on Damon’s. He made a fist and then shook it out. He’d need more than luck to get a slug in and he didn’t want to fight with Angus, there were enough fights ahead.

  “Rip my tongue out, my career is definitely over. I can’t begin to tell you what it’ll do to my love-life.”

  Angus snorted into the neck of the bottle, muttered, “Smug bastard,” and the moment was over.

  Georgia stayed the night, though it was one of her nights for being at her own place. He tried to talk her out of it with no enthusiasm. He couldn’t have raised a fake eyebrow of it. He didn’t want her to think she had to stay. He was well, he was feeling in control, but he was desperate to be alone with her, and so relieved to finally have her in his bed, both of them equal in the dark, reliant on touch and smell and sound to see each other’s passion.

  Their lovemaking was gentle and considerate, as if Damon’s day had already held too many terrors and they needed to be rubbed away to nothing with sliding hands and sticking skin and kisses that drugged them both into a delicious frenzy then a languorous stupor.

  Georgia touched him everywhere, filled his head with shiny visions and coloured shimmers. She let him hear her abandon when she screamed her orgasm, when she cried, unrestrained; wetting his neck and his throat and cheeks with her release and fear and love.

  He could handle losing his voice temporarily if he had the sound of Georgia in his life. He’d get through this and he’d find a way to do it that didn’t crush her with his need.

  24: Kiss it Better

  Georgia carried it around for a week. It was postmarked London, which was another word for trouble. It was addressed to her at Avocado in Hamish’s big scribble, reason enough to believe it was a letter bomb and best left undisturbed.

  It was the week the rumours started. The ones that said Avocado was in financial trouble, struggling to make increased rent payments and losing business. They’d all been assured that was flat out wrong, everything was fine. That it was a rival studio being evil to try to steal their
business, and there were more than enough jobs on the books. But then salary payments were a day late. It was supposed to be a stuff-up at the bank, but they were all nervous. Lauren didn’t bother to hide her browser opened to a job search site. Trent wore a frown so constant it was practice for the everyday wrinkles he’d wear without effort in ten years’ time. There was talk of redundancies.

  It was the week Damon had laser microsurgery to remove a polyp.

  Georgia sat in his room, waiting for him to wake. Taylor was in the cafeteria with Heather. The letter sat heavy at the bottom of her bag, ticking, sweating, doing whatever paper missiles from another life did when they landed in your hands and waited for you to act so they could explode all manner of unwanted emotion in your face.

  Hamish had never written her a letter. There was no useful reason for him to start now. There was also no reason she had to open it. For all he knew she’d moved on from Avocado and it’d never found her. Odd that might turn out to be a partial truth, even if the timeline was backwards.

  She doodled on the pad in her lap that would become Damon’s voice when he woke. A squiggle that turned into a flower that became a wheel. Whatever job that letter was sent to do it was already acting inside her brain like a toxin. She should open it. What’s the worst it could say? She wrote, Never Loved You, then scribbled over it so it was a block of blue ink in the top corner of the page, like the chakra on Damon’s pec. You could still see the letters. She ripped that page and the two under it out of the pad, scrunched them up and shoved them in her bag.

  Hamish had loved her. Before. After, he’d had no control over the way his head injury changed him. After it became clear he’d never be the same person, have the same ambitions, he’d gotten mean, spiteful, especially as Rafe was starting to make a name for himself as a song composer; it made Hamish’s loss all the more intense. But he wasn’t going to write her a letter to say he’d never loved her. Why would he bother, and since that was the worst she could think of, and he clearly wasn’t dead if he was penning poison letters. She should read the stupid thing.

  She put the pad down and studied Damon. His test results were as he’d expected. He was in good company: Keith Urban, John Mayer, Adele all had vocal cord lesions like his. All had surgery and went on to recover and so would he. Laser surgery to remove the polyp, two weeks of total silence, three months of nothing strenuous and then he’d be clear to go back to work. No one had to know, his schedule would accommodate it, and the only thing he’d miss out on was his gigs at Moon Blink. He’d been superbly confident, never doubting for a minute whatever was wrong was manageable, but it was a relief to have that confirmed.

  He lay so still, pale under the remnants of his tan, dark smudges under his eyes and his hair radically mussed. She wanted to climb in the bed with him and snuggle up, be holding him when he woke, except doing that would likely wake him and she didn’t want that.

  They’d come a long way since their first meeting. She’d been so nervous; first day in a new job, such a big industry name, such a gorgeous looking man. She’d thought he was drunk. She’d been intimidated by him. Now she knew what he looked like when he hadn’t bothered shaving, and he was still half asleep, bringing her a cup of tea in bed, when he was wet through and stinking from his gym work-out, when he was wearing earphones and surfing on his PC, when he was listening to a book, micro-emotions flitting across his face, his hands occasionally moving to express his enjoyment.

  She was there the day he had his first meeting with the seeing-eye dog people and the night he mistook sugar for salt and ruined a good minestrone soup. She’d seen photos of him as a baby, as a teenager wearing bottle-bottom glasses and as a young adult, hot looking, and so cool in dark shades at uni with Taylor, Angus, Jamie and Dalia.

  One of her pleasures was watching him, reading his expressions. She’d never tire of it, having long assimilated his lumbering grace, his occasional awkwardness with his easy strength and physical confidence, and finding it every bit as endearing as his dimpled chin and cheek.

  He wasn’t intimidating anymore and that had nothing to do with him being drugged asleep in a hospital bed. He was familiar and comfortable and every day she was more and more in love with him.

  And through loving him her whole life had improved. She slept better, performed at work with more confidence, smiled more, laughed more, engaged more in the world around her without the trepidation she’d felt since Jeffrey knocked her life off course. The damage Jeffrey did was still with her, scored into her bones, along with the sorrow that was her time with Hamish, but she was stronger now, and feeling positive about the future.

  She had Damon to thank for that. The blind man who’d helped her see a way to rebuild her life. She stuck her hand in her bag and felt for the letter and then Damon made a sound and opened his eyes.

  She stood and leaned over him. “Hi,” a hand to his cheek. “Don’t try to talk. Everything went well.”

  He grabbed her hand, frowning, squeezed it and opened his mouth.

  “Here, write it down.” She put the pad in his hand. “You’re not allowed to have your tablet in here. Do you want a nurse?”

  He struggled upright and took the pen. He wrote, What day? It was a disjointed scrawl, hard to read. He was really going to need his tablet and keyboard, and even then since he mostly dictated it was going to be rough on him.

  “It’s still Wednesday. You had the surgery this morning. You’ve only been out for a couple of hours.”

  He scribbled, a word ending in uck and might have started with an s, and f or a tr, either way he was saying his throat felt bad.

  “I could try kissing you better?”

  He nodded, but there was no smile to go with it. She put her hand to his cheek again and leaned in. He felt for both her arms and held on. He smelled antiseptic and unwashed at the same time. She pressed her lips softly to his, eyes open to watch. His were closed, his breathing quiet, his reaction slow, lips slack.

  He’d kissed her like it was their last ever moment together before the orderly and the anaesthetist claimed him, pouring all his fear, all his crazy brave into it, a seal so tight on her lips, so tangled in her mouth she was insensible to their audience. He’d frightened her with the urgency of it, and it left her dizzy with too much thinned blood in her body, racing with too much speed and too little control, and then he’d held her to stop her falling over and spilled wild beats into her ear, his voice a scratchy fabric rasping against her skin, agitating all her fix-it instincts and satisfying none of them.

  He loved her. He wanted her. Every colour, every mood, every sound, every chance. Every day. He said it over and over, a chant he wasn’t soothed by, trying to pay forward the weeks of silence ahead.

  Waiting for him to come out of surgery had been torture. Waiting for him to come back to himself was easier, even as he struggled to surface he was already past the worst that could happen.

  She pulled away, thinking it was too soon to be so close, but he squeezed her arms so she kissed him again and this time he returned it like he was awake and ready. He tasted like stale cough syrup, like medicine left in the sun, but the kiss was comfort to both of them. She broke the contact but brushed her nose on his, shaking one arm free of his grasp to smooth his hair back.

  “I missed you. I’m glad you’re awake. You have to be good about not talking, not making any sound.”

  He nodded and their noses rubbed. There were a million questions in her head, but they’d require him to write out an answer.

  “It’s weird not to have your voice.” She’d known it, but the impact of seeing him battle with it was unexpectedly difficult.

  He nodded.

  She jammed the heel of her hand against her forehead. “Oh Damon, that was a stupid thing for me to say. I can’t imagine how it feels for you. So strange?”

  A nod.

  But that was completely inadequate. He had to be freaked out. He couldn’t see and he couldn’t make a sound. He was locked in darkness,
and with no voice he had no way to control his environment. She found his hand and they clasped. “Scary?”

  He was still, then a slow nod and he squeezed her hand, his breathing quickening.

  “It’s going to be all right. You’re going to be fine. I’ll be there when you come home.” She hadn’t told him this was probably a bad time to take leave without pay from Avocado. “You won’t have to be alone. Between Taylor and me, there’ll be someone with you all the time. You can type out orders all day long and make us jump.”

  He nodded, but he had few other options and her heart contracted for him. “I love you, with or without your voice.”

  He reacted by releasing her, putting a hand through his hair, squeezing his eyes shut.

  She couldn’t read that nuance. Her comment had either upset him because it was sweet or because it was unbelievable. “Write it down.”

  A head shake. Eyes open and blinking at her, he touched his throat.

  “It feels awful? Can I get a nurse?”

  He shook his head and a hunk of hair fell over his forehead. He touched his lips then his throat. Her turn to shake her head in frustration, she didn’t know what he wanted.

  He slapped a hand on the bed and pointed again, his lips, his throat.

  Understanding uncurled the clench around her heart. “Oh, Damon.” She put her hands on his shoulders and pushed him down on his back, he winced and so did she. “I wish I did have the power to kiss it better.” She put a finger gently against his lips then to his throat, then shifted forward and did the same with her lips; the softest touch, the heaviest intention.

  If only his healing was as simple as her kiss, as simple an element as his kiss had been in hers.

  She settled her chin on her folded hands on his chest and watched his face. Eyes closed again, but there was tension in his body and his hands were restless on her.