by Maren Smith
She cracked her cast against the door as she fumbled in the darkness for the door latch. When she found it, she braced herself, experimentally hooking the latch with her swollen fingers. She pulled, but the minute her fingers met the resistance of the metal latch, blinding pain shot up her arm again. She shouted, quickly unhooking her fingers before he reached her door and accidentally half-killed her by opening it.
“Stop now,” he said, moving in to reach around her.
“I can do it!” She tried to unbuckle her seatbelt, but the cast kept banging into everything. She couldn’t feel the button on the locking buckle, and her fingers were swollen. It was like trying to do fine mobility things with someone else’s hands. They weren’t obeying her, and even when they did, it hurt.
It hurt so badly!
Hugging her arms, she fought a surge of stinging tears as he leaned in around her, unbuckled the seatbelt, and untangled it from around her arms.
“Come on,” he said softly without censure or a single ‘I told you so,’ not that she couldn’t hear it, anyway. Every single ‘you can’t’ she’d been told over the course of her life came barreling through the forefront of her mind.
She got out of the car and slammed the door shut with her cast. Glaring at him, despite her raw rubbed nerves, she knew he didn’t deserve, she stormed past him to the porch.
“Do you want to try opening the door?” he asked calmly, following in her wake. He even held up the keys.
She looked at them, glared at him, shook her head, and waited.
The aching throb in her casts was pulsing so hard, she couldn’t feel the tender arousal that had had her squirming only minutes ago in the truck, which was for the best. That was definitely for the best because she was not a weak woman. And never, ever again, would she let herself fall for a man who thought she was.
He opened her front door. If she could have got in ahead of him, she’d have slammed that door on him, too, but he went in first, holding it for her while she trailed in behind him.
“What can I do to make it feel better?”
Be mean, she thought bitterly. At least then, she’d feel justified in being mean back. Her eyebrows buckled, but she never took her eyes off the wall, dead ahead of her.
“Honey?” he pressed. “Are you hungry? Can I make you something to eat? What would make you feel better?”
Great. Now she wasn’t just mad, she felt guilty too. None of this was his fault, after all. He’d just gotten home from ten-full days of being gone on business, and the last thing she wanted to do was this. Any of this!
“Look at me,” he said.
Shoulders slumping, she raised her unhappy gaze to his.
“It’s going to be okay.”
It didn’t feel that way.
“I need a bath. I want to go to sleep, I’m tired,” she said, wilting, wanting nothing more than for tonight to go away,
The heat of his hand touched her back, and for all that she’d been so unreasonably grumbly, he leaned in to brush a kiss across her forehead. He was wearing the seductive spice-scented deodorant she liked so much. That, almost more than the kiss, whittled the last of her anger away, leaving her nothing but exhausted and sad.
“Come on,” he coaxed, turning her by the shoulders and walking with her down the hall toward her bedroom and the bathroom. He went in first, dropping the plug in the bottom of her clawfoot tub, and turned on the water, adjusting the temperature until he deemed it perfect.
“Do you need to potty?”
“I can do it,” she shied, clamping down on her Little’s instant nod.
He stepped back to give her plenty of room, then stood there, arms folded, waiting.
“You’re looking at me,” she said.
He turned around, facing the hallway, his broad back filling up the doorway. With his arms folded like that, his back looked even more muscular than normal. The change in stance didn’t make her feel better.
“You’re listening to me,” she said, her voice small against her will.
“If you go potty and can’t wipe, are you going to pretend like you did, flush so I won’t know the difference, then hop into the tub to hide you can’t clean your bottom?”
She hated how easily he seemed able to read her mind.
“No,” she lied, but there was too long a pause in between his question and her answer.
He didn’t move. “Go potty, Kelly.”
She did, blushing hot and staring at his back the whole time. This was just too embarrassing. Sure enough, while she was eventually able to fumble enough toilet paper off the roll to wad up, there was no bend in her cast.
She cried, mortified and hating her helplessness in a way no amount of fit throwing could adequately express. She was too tired for fits and far too disheartened to bear asking him for help. She sobbed with her head bowed, sitting there until he came to take care of her.
He wiped her eyes and her nose, then took care of things further south. Helping her up, he undressed her, pulling off the hospital gowns and scrubs, and the only word he said had nothing at all to do with her tears.
“Oh, Baby.” He stared in horror at the dark bruises that bisected her everywhere the seatbelt had been.
“I-I’m f-fine.” She hiccupped, wiping away the tears with her forearms.
He didn’t bother responding. Holding her elbow to steady her, he helped her into the tub.
“I’m going to get Tub Ducky.”
“I don’t want Tub Ducky,” she lied.
Rummaging through the cupboard, he gently dropped her yellow rubber duck, with its faded sailor hat, into the bathwater before excusing himself from the bathroom. She sat there, sniffling, unable to do anything with Tub Ducky except bat at it with her cast when it drifted on the ripples and bumped into her tummy.
Now, she felt guilty about that, too.
A few minutes later, Cole came back in with two plastic grocery bags and duct tape.
“Hands,” he said, and when she held them up, he wrapped her arms from fingers to elbows in the grocery bags. “That’s not watertight, so don’t put your hands in the water. Do you want your tub crayons?”
Like she could do anything with them. Glaring at her Popeye-ish bulky arms, she laid back in the tub, stared at the ceiling, and tried to hide how useless she felt. She told herself she was dealing with this so badly because of the painkillers and because she was tired, and maybe even because her normal everyday routine had been so thoroughly destroyed these past few days. Nobody was expected to be happy when their daily routine was in the toilet—and would be for the next six weeks.
She just needed to give herself time to heal. She’d eventually figure it out. Her hands weren’t going to hurt forever. Give her a day, maybe two, and she’d find a way to pick up her keys that wouldn’t half kill her. She could wear nightgowns for six weeks and eat cereal dry if she had to, right out of the box, if that’s what it took. She might be hurt, but she wasn’t useless—she refused to be. Man’s ability to use tools and adapt to any insurmountable problem was what separated him from the animals, right? So given enough time, she would figure it out.
Eyes closed, she heard more than felt when Cole knelt by the tub. Ripples of water lapped at her bent knees and around her stomach and ribs as he dipped a washcloth and soap to get them wet enough to lather.
“Top down or down up?” he asked, startling her.
Shit. Realizing she’d nodded off, Kelly sloshed water in her haste to sit up.
“Um… top down,” she mumbled, almost whacking herself in the face with her cast when she went to rub her eyes. They didn’t want to stay open, and she was tipping over the threshold of sleepiness, where fighting her way back to wakeful seemed as pointless as getting upset about it.
“Okay, quick bath,” Cole said, noting the jerk of her head as she caught herself nodding again.
“No, I’m fine, the water’s just so warm.”
“Beddy-bye will be warm, too,” Cole soothed, lifting the long light-
brown strands of hair off the back of her neck, so he could soap her down.
That felt far too good. She closed her eyes again, letting her head hang forward until her chin almost touched her chest while he washed her back. She startled awake again when he said, “pitties,” but she was so out of it, he was done washing her armpits before she fully realized what he was saying or doing.
“Lie back for Daddy.” His hand was behind her head, guiding her back until she was lying against the gentle slope of the clawfoot tub. The washcloth passed across her chest, spreading lather over her skin without applying any real pressure, especially in the places she was bruised. She ought to tell him, she really wanted to wash her hair, but the effort to open her eyes, much less her mouth, was impossible.
The next time she startled awake, the gentle flow of water was trickling over her forehead and through her hair, spilling down her back into the tub. She almost bonked them both with her casts.
“Shh-shh,” he said, pulling her into his comforting embrace. He was half-kneeling on the floor, leaning well over her with his strong arm under her shoulders while he wet her hair. “Let’s get your hair washed, then you can go to bed, okay?”
“I didn’t wash my hands,” she mumbled.
“We’re not going to, baby. You can’t get your casts wet.”
She hated the feel of the bags around her fingers. “I didn’t wash my feet.”
“I did.”
“I didn’t feel it.”
“I promise, I washed your feet,” he said, chuckling as he poured another cupful of water over her head. “I washed everything from your pretty face to your even prettier toes.”
“Foot freak,” she tried to joke.
“Kink shamers get their bottoms spanked.”
Don’t threaten me with a good time. She couldn’t tell if she actually said that part out loud. It was too lulling for her to resist when he poured shampoo on her head and began working it in.
The next thing she knew, he was helping her stand while the sudsy water was busily running down the drain. Her legs wobbled unsteadily as he quickly wrapped her in a towel, then lifted her all the way out. He sat her on his lap, so he could hold her securely while he dried her off. She kept trying to rest her head on his shoulder, but he kept waking her up.
“No, sit up now.”
She cried. “I’m so tired, Daddy.”
“I know, I’m hurrying.” He took the bags off her casted hands, then made her stand, so he could help walk her into her bedroom and over to her bed.
She had a slew of t-shirt style nightgowns, most of them with funny sayings across the front, like That Friday Night Feeling or Sleep, Eat, Coffee, Repeat. He didn’t bother putting any of them on her. She wasn’t sure she’d have had the strength to let him. She barely managed to stay upright long enough for him to peel the blanket back. The second she saw her mattress and top sheet yawning open, she crawled onto it.
Curled on her side, her head on the pillow and her useless casts clunkily resting on top of one another, she sighed out a sleepy, “Thank you.”
And that was all she knew. After that, sleep claimed her.
Chapter Three
Cole left her bedroom door cracked, so he’d hear if she needed anything. He cleaned up the bathroom, threw away her ruined clothes, read up on the medications the hospital had sent home with her, then gave her painkiller schedule its own alarm setting on his cellphone, so he’d be sure never to forget one.
Adjusting the thermostat, he shut off the lights, then walked in to lie down on her bed beside her. Only then, with the faint light of the streetlamp outside shining its dim glow through the cracks in her window curtains, did he let himself think about how close he’d come to losing her. He studied every curve of her face in the semi-darkness, seeing the dark line of her seatbelt bruise instead. His fingers ached to touch her—her hair, her skin, any part really—but he didn’t for fear it might wake her.
I love you, babygirl.
He couldn’t say that out loud, yet. Kelly was the perfect definition of someone with whom one could move too fast, and he wasn’t about to do anything that might risk scaring her into leaving—not even a declaration of love, only six months into the relationship. Six years into this might still be too soon. He’d test those waters when they reached that anniversary. In the meantime, he was content to be friend, lover, Dom, and Daddy, whenever, wherever she needed it. Especially in moments like now, when she refused to admit how much she did, in fact, need him.
This had happened four days ago, and he’d been late to the party because she didn’t want to disturb his business trip. They would have to talk about that tomorrow. Morning would come soon enough, and the fit that would surely follow when he put his foot down and issued a new rule—nightly phone calls from here on out, especially when he was out of town and most especially if she got hurt. He didn’t care if it was a paper cut. By God, nothing like this was ever going to happen again.
How long he laid there, thinking that over and over again, he didn’t know. One minute, he was watching her sleep, and in the next, her six o’clock pill alarm started beeping.
He was not a morning person; Kelly was even less so. He barely got his eyes open the entire walk to the living room to get her pill.
“What the hell…” she groaned when he shook her shoulder and refused to stop until she woke up. He stuck the pill in her mouth and made her chase it down with several swallows of water.
“Do you have to go to the bathroom?”
“Fuck you.” Flopping onto her back, she pawed with one cast until he pulled it all the way up over her head. “Sadist.”
Some couples simply had no business talking to one another before their first pot of coffee. He was fine with them being one such couple.
Crawling back into bed beside her, he fell asleep again.
He was much more ready to be awake at eight when the beeps of a reversing trash truck woke him. He laid there, yawning, stretching, and rubbing his eyes before the much softer rustle of crinkling plastic caught his ear. The stretch of bed beside him was empty. He didn’t know when Kelly got up, but he found her in the kitchen, dressed in an inside-out nightgown and swearing softly under her breath as she struggled with the fine motor skills required to separate out a single coffee filter, so she could get the coffee started.
“Need help?” he offered.
She jumped, then stomped her foot. She whipped around and, in what could only be described as a fit of frustration, threw the entire package of filters at him. He didn’t try to catch them, but he did grab her arm before she could storm out past him.
He felt for her. He really did. He’d broken his right arm as a kid and couldn’t imagine breaking both at the same time, but he wasn’t going to do this for the next six weeks.
“Where's your coloring pens?” he asked.
She turned on him, the flash of tears and anger in her eyes almost as heart-wrenching as the swollen fingers she threw up in his face and waggled. “Like I could color with these things! Ow.”
He frowned, quelling her misplaced show of temper. “Show me where you keep them.”
She scowled, but dropping her head, took him to the little writing desk in the corner of her bedroom. When she pointed, he opened the bottom drawer where she had dumped half the world. It was an untidy clutter of miscellaneous papers, notebooks, paperclips, a Magic 8-Ball, a white stuffed kitten with big glitter-blue eyes, and at the very bottom, several boxes of coloring medium—crayons, gel pens, and markers.
Sitting down at her desk, he selected a red one and held out his hand. “Arm.”
Reluctantly, she held out her left arm. Turning it over, in his neatest penmanship, he wrote, It will get better, then dotted the simple sentence with three little hearts. Capping the marker, he sat back and waited while she studied it.
Her shoulders slumped, and she sniffled. “I know.”
“Okay,” he said simply. “So, knock off the crap. This isn’t fun for me either, you
know. You can be as hateful as you want, but I’m here, and I’m not leaving until I know you’ll be okay. Got it?”
A guilty wince tugged at the corner of her mouth. “Got it.”
“Ten minutes in the corner. I won’t make you pull your panties down this one time, but consider it a warning.”
She snorted. “Shows what you know, Daddy. I couldn’t figure out how to put underwear on, so I’m not wearing any.”
“And there goes your warning,” he said, standing. Clamping a hand onto the back of her neck, he steered her out of the bedroom into the living room, where he promptly planted her nose in the only corner he could see from the kitchen. Gathering the hem of her nightgown, he pulled the excess cloth up, tucking it under her arms around her ribs. “Hold it here.”
The faintest tinge of a blush coloring the part of her face that he could see, she clamped it between her elbows and her ribs.
“I’m going to make us breakfast, then we’re going to make your naughty board.”
“I’m not three,” she muttered mutinously into the corner. “I don’t need a naughty board.”
“You’re definitely not thirty, either,” he retorted as he headed into the kitchen. “But until you decide to stop acting like a brat, the naughty board is exactly what you’re getting.”
She snapped around. “I’m not thirty! I’m twenty-eight!”
Pausing in the kitchen doorway, he snapped his fingers and pointed to the corner.
“Right now, young lady, and don’t turn around again unless you want to sample one of Daddy’s punishments.”
Scowling, she turned her glare back on the corner. Watching long enough to make sure she intended to stay there, he went into the kitchen. He checked in all her cupboards, then her fridge. Her behavior definitely didn’t warrant it, but anyone with two casts deserved a little attitude leeway.
