S O P H I A
I trudged up the stairs to Brody’s apartment, hoping that my brother would be out somewhere. Interacting with him was getting a little draining.
I wondered how Drew had made out for the few hours I was gone, though I knew asking him was futile. Whenever I asked him if he needed anything or if he was feeling okay, he always said he was fine.
We’d only been in the apartment for a week, but in that time, Drew had hardly let me help him with anything, clearly not wanting to be a bother. Why didn’t he see that—for reasons I’d prefer not to admit out loud—I wanted to help him?
His insistence that he was okay made me feel like he didn’t need me, and that wasn’t a feeling I enjoyed experiencing again. It made me wonder if I should even be at the apartment, but the thought of leaving him with only Brody to help him gave me hives.
Arriving at the apartment door, I pulled out my key and let myself inside. The main living area was empty, and all was quiet. Maybe they’d both gone out? I shuddered at the thought.
Brody had no business taking someone in Drew’s condition anywhere. Honestly, he had no business taking an able-bodied person anywhere. I stepped farther into the apartment and listened carefully. Was that…mumbling?
I started down the hall and saw light emanating from under the closed bathroom door. When I reached it, I put my ear up and listened for a second.
“Okay, Drew, you got this. Make this bathtub your bitch.”
A snort of laughter escaped before I could stop it. I slapped a hand over my mouth as the muttering continued from within.
“How hard can it be? People in way worse shape than me bathe themselves every day.”
Was this fool really trying to give himself a bath with a cast that came up to his hip as well as one on his forearm? Irritation stamped out the humor as my knuckles rapped harshly on the wooden door.
“Jesus Christ!” Drew yelped. “Brody?”
“No, it’s me. What the hell is going on in there?”
The door suddenly flew open, and the words I’d been about to spit out at him evaporated as I let my eyes rove over him. He was naked save for a pair of navy-blue boxer briefs and his casts.
This.
This was exactly why I shouldn’t have offered that he could stay here.
How was I supposed to keep a clear head when he looked like that? Granted, he was skinnier than when I’d last mapped his abs with my tongue, and his skin was still a bit mottled in places from his healing injuries, but there was no denying what a fine piece of man he was. Fuck every part of my life.
“Sophia, what are you doing here?”
“Why are you naked? I mean—” I closed my eyes in a grimace before rephrasing. “Are you seriously trying to give yourself a bath? Are you sure you don’t have any lasting brain damage from your accident?”
He leaned against the doorjamb and crossed his arms over his chest. “Nice to see you too,” he said dryly.
“You’re not supposed to get your casts wet.”
“I’m aware.”
“How were you planning on accomplishing that?”
“Carefully.”
“Why didn’t you just text and ask me when I would be home so I could help?” God, this man was so irritating. He could tell his entire family we were engaged, but he couldn’t pick up a goddamn phone?
He rolled his eyes, which only increased my homicidal ideations.
“I’m capable of bathing myself,” he said.
“Really? Because I distinctly remember the nurse saying differently before you were discharged.”
“That was almost a week ago. She couldn’t have meant for me to wipe myself down with wet wipes for the rest of my life. I’m fine.”
You’re not fine. You almost died.
Just thinking the words made my breath stutter and my sinuses burn. I closed my eyes and pinched the bridge of my nose so I could give myself a second without letting on how emotionally devastating all of this was. It was better to have him think I was annoyed by his existence than to have him realize how much I cared about having him in the world.
“Drew, she was very clear. Not only do you have the casts, but you have incisions that can’t be soaked in water.”
“I wasn’t going to soak. I was just going to stand under the shower for a couple minutes.”
“You? Were going to stand? In a slippery bathtub. On one leg.” I punctuated each phrase in the hopes that it would get through his thick skull.
“No, as a matter of fact, I wasn’t.”
“Then what were you going to do? Lie down while the water rained all over you and got everywhere? And how were you planning to get back out?”
Hadn’t he thought of any of these things? I felt like he used to have better ideas, but then I remembered that he’d been convinced by my dumbass brother to take over his shitstorm of a life for a semester, and suddenly Drew’s idiocy made more sense.
How had I forgotten I was dealing with a moron?
“Wrong again, Yoda. I had it all figured out. So if you’ll just see yourself out, I’ll get back to my business.” He attempted to close the door in my face, which nearly made me forget how sad I’d been that he’d almost died. I was getting ready to kill him myself.
I put my foot against the door to halt its progress. “I’m so sorry, fiancé, but your business is my business now. You put us in this situation, so you can just simmer your ass down and let me help you.”
“I don’t need your help, Sophia. I can do this myself.”
The last sentence was spoken through gritted teeth, and I suddenly understood that this was about more than a shower. Drew had been relying on himself for a long time, and all of that was stripped away in a flash. Granted, that flash had been his own goddamn fault, because seriously, who rode a motorcycle in a snowstorm? But still, maybe he deserved a little more compassion.
I took a deep breath and looked up at him. “Show me how you were going to go about it, and if I’m reasonably sure you won’t break your neck attempting it, I’ll leave you alone.”
He looked at me for a moment before releasing an audible sigh and hopped back a bit—sounding like the sudden movement cost him dearly as he sharply inhaled—so I could push the door open and he could lean against the sink.
“I dragged that in here so I could sit on it. I have it all planned out. It’ll be fine.”
After I took a couple steps into the bathroom, I saw what he was referring to. He’d brought one of the plastic chairs from Brody’s small kitchen table into the bathroom and somehow managed to get it into the tub. I had no idea how he’d managed to accomplish such a feat and didn’t feel up to asking.
It actually wasn’t the worst idea I’d seen him have, and I felt frustrated with myself for not thinking of getting him one of those shower chairs earlier. My grandmom had needed one after she’d had her hip replaced.
I moved closer to the tub to better assess the situation. The chair wasn’t a perfect fit. The legs didn’t sit on the bottom of the tub but rested along the side, which probably wasn’t very stable. Not to mention the added issue of him getting into the tub in the first place. He’d have to basically throw himself into the chair in order to clear the lip of the tub, and then he’d have to hope the chair held him.
It was precarious at best.
“I’m really not in the mood for an ER trip today. Just let me help you.”
He groaned, but it sounded more from frustration than anger at me. “I don’t want someone to wipe me down. I want to enjoy a hot shower like a normal human being.”
“So dramatic. I wasn’t planning on ‘wiping you down,’ as you so appealingly put it. Just let me help you into the tub, and then I’ll hold on to the chair to make sure it doesn’t fall.”
His brow furrowed in a way that I absolutely did not find adorable. “Wait…how are you going to do that?” His eyes widened. “Are you going to get in the shower with me?”
“No. Jesus. I’ll get you settled and the
n try my best to reach around the shower curtain and hold on to it. You just need to keep your boxers on.”
A smirk started to spread across his lips. “It’s not like you haven’t—”
“Nope. Stop right there. Boxers stay on, or you can forget this whole thing.”
“Okay, okay, whatever you say,” he placated. “So, how do you want me?”
If there was ever a loaded question, it was that one.
D R E W
Sophia did this cute thing with her lips, almost like she was giving someone a crooked kiss, as she took in her surroundings and tried to figure out the best way to give me what I asked for.
I truly did appreciate that she hadn’t totally shut me down. I knew I was maybe coming across as a baby, but living this way was wearing on me. While I knew my situation would be so much worse without people who gave a shit about me, it wasn’t easy being stuck in an apartment and unable to do basic things for myself. I needed this shower in a way that didn’t even make a whole lot of sense to me, let alone Sophia. But it was what it was.
“Okay, so if you shuffle close to the tub and put your arm around me, I can sort of hip-toss you over the side. But gently.”
“So…your grand plan is to lift me into the tub?” I didn’t mean to shit all over her plan, but seriously. I probably outweighed her by at least sixty pounds. And that was a conservative estimate.
Her narrowed eyes told me I should’ve just gone along with her, certain death be damned.
“You have a better idea?”
“Yeah, you leave, forget you ever saw me in here, and we’ll let the cards fall where they may.”
She sighed like I was the most annoying person on earth. “It’s you falling that worries me. Though I’m not sure why. It’d serve you right for being such a pain in the ass.”
She took a couple steps closer to the tub, but I shot my hand out and gently took hold of her bicep.
“I’m sorry. The last thing I wanted was to make your life harder.”
It was why I’d left in the first place. Being with me would never give as much as it would cost her. Yet here I was, taking from her anyway. But right now, I was too selfish to do anything differently. Apologies were all I had to offer, even though they’d never be enough.
Sophia stared at me for a second before giving her head a small shake and pulling her arm from my grasp.
“It’s fine.” Though the sound of her voice told me it was anything but. She grabbed a towel hanging on the back of the door and slung it over the shower curtain rod. “Okay, put your bad arm around my shoulder, and grab on to the towel with your good arm. Between the two things, we should be able to get you into the tub.”
As much as I hated to shoot down another one of her ideas, I had to.
“There’s no way that bar will hold me. I don’t want to break shit we’d have to call a landlord in to fix.”
Putting her hands on her hips, she stared down at the tub like it had personally offended her.
“What about this?” I began. “You can help me lower down so I’m sitting on the edge. Then I’ll use my good arm to scoot back onto the chair, and you can help me swing around. Then we’ll just drape the curtain over my leg cast to keep it dry. I have wraps for the one on my arm, but I can also probably keep it elevated out of the spray as long as we position the showerhead the right way.”
She thought for a second before saying, “Yeah, okay, that could work.”
A smile lit up my face. “Great.” I stood up, putting all my weight on my good leg. But I must’ve risen too fast, because momentum pitched me too far forward.
Sophia registered what was happening quickly and stepped toward me so she could catch me. I felt her arms wrap around me, and though she was strong for a girl of her size, gravity was on my side.
It felt like slow motion: the way she shuffled back like someone who’s carrying a load too heavy for them, the way she bent her knees to try to grab me around my core, the way I silently prayed that I didn’t smash this beautiful girl—probably the love of my life—like she was a gnat beneath me.
Soon, we were nearly horizontal, both of us falling like giant oaks in the forest. I extended my good arm to try to keep my weight from crashing down on her. I heard her grunt as she hit the floor, her arms still wrapped around me, her body weight pulling mine down hard on top of her.
Pain ricocheted up my body as my injuries screamed from the jarring contact. But instead of moving off Sophia, I looked down at her frantically.
“Holy shit, are you okay?”
She opened her mouth to reply, but her words were cut off by a familiar voice. I looked up to see Brody standing in the doorway, eyeing us curiously.
“Did I just walk in on some kinky shit?” he asked. “Because I can come back later.”
Sophia groaned beneath me while I glared at Brody.
“Help us up, you asshole.”
“You guys are a mess,” he said as he came over and hoisted me up. “How did you ever survive without me?”
It showed how fucked up my life truly was that I didn’t have a good answer.
Chapter Eight
S O P H I A
“I don’t need a babysitter.”
Drew sat on the couch, arms crossed over his chest, looking as indignant and pouty as a toddler who’d missed his nap.
It’d been two days since Bathgate, and Drew and I had silently decided to never mention it again. I was also striving to never think about it again. But it was slightly difficult to forget a mostly naked Drew on top of me, even if the circumstances hadn’t been particularly sexy. The way my mind kept trying to replay the event was sexy, in a warped, desperate way that made me ashamed to be alive.
“You kinda do,” I replied. “That’s why we’re in this whole mess.”
“No, we’re in this whole mess because Mother Nature is a frozen whore.”
Okay…
“Maybe so, but that doesn’t change the fact that things are how they are. You need to go to the doctor, and you can’t go alone, so someone has to take you. And seeing as how you proposed to me in a hospital room—” The power of his glare momentarily interrupted me, but I managed to forge on. “I’m the logical choice to take you. So, chop.”
He was in a worn pair of sweats and a threadbare T-shirt. Personally, I liked the look on him, but the doctor—and the January temperatures—would likely be unimpressed.
“You have class.”
I sighed dramatically. “The things I sacrifice for my fiancé.”
“Will you stop with that?” he grumbled. “I said it in a moment of temporary insanity.”
“Hmm, your insanity seems pretty permanent to me.”
“Has she always been like this?” Drew yelled around me to Brody, who was sitting at the table eating a bowl of Froot Loops.
“Since the womb.”
I scowled at my brother. Looking at his cereal, I said, “You do realize it’s almost one, don’t you?”
“Toucan Sam can’t tell time,” he quipped.
“What the hell does that even mean?”
“Figure it out, Dean’s List.”
“I could if it made sense, America’s Least Wanted List.”
Brody’s lip twisted on one side as he squinted. “Much too long to be an effective insult. Maybe you do need to go to class. Your brain is clearly degrading.”
“Must be the company I keep.”
He nodded. “That was better.” He rose from the table and put his bowl in the sink.
“Put your bowl in the dishwasher. There’s no maid coming to clean up after you.”
“Obviously. Why would a maid come when you’re here?”
I was going to kill him. It’d be worth the jail time to no longer have to share the world’s oxygen with him.
“If you two are finished, can you both leave so I can take a nap?” Drew asked as he began the arduous task of lying down.
“No way. Get up. We’re going.”
“We’re not go
ing anywhere. I’ll call an Uber and get myself to the appointment. I’m just going to rest my eyes for a second.”
He started his descent again, so I was forced to close the distance between us and grab on to his shirt. As I tugged in the opposite direction gravity was pulling him, he squawked like an affronted seagull.
“What the hell are you doing? This is abuse,” he yelled as he tried to resist my pull, which wouldn’t have been hard had he not been injured.
Maybe manhandling him wasn’t the best plan of action. I abruptly let go, afraid of hurting him. But that was an even worse idea because it caused him to flop down inelegantly.
“Oh shit,” I said before covering my mouth with my hands. “Are you okay?”
“Why is it every time you try to help me, I end up falling over?”
I smiled meekly. “At least this time it was a soft landing.”
“Tell that to my ribs,” he grumbled.
He wasn’t wrong, but his tone irritated me. Couldn’t he see I was trying to help him?
“I said I was sorry.”
“Yeah, so did Chris Brown.”
“You did not just compare me to a batterer!”
Drew opened his mouth to retort but was interrupted by a shrill whistle. We both turned to look at Brody, who was leaning on the low wall that separated the kitchen from the living room.
“As fun as this has been, can we all call a truce for a minute? Sophia, go to class. I’ll take Drew to his appointment.”
“I think a responsible adult should take him,” I replied coolly.
“Like one who just dropped him on a couch? Or maybe the one who threw him onto the bathroom floor?”
“I didn’t throw him,” I muttered.
“For once, do the thing that makes sense instead of arguing about it forever just because it wasn’t your idea.”
“I don’t do that.” I totally did, but I’d be damned if I’d ever admit it to these jackholes. When I turned to look at Drew, he was smirking at me. “I don’t.”
Deny, deny, deny.
“Of course not. Have fun in class.”
“You’re both really annoying,” I complained as I made my way toward the bedroom to get ready. I closed the door on their laughing.
Truth or Dare You (The Love Game Book 2) Page 6
