There were no fucking guarantees in life and he was living proof of that. He hadn’t deserved this, hadn’t deserved to have his entire fucking life ruined because some fucking landlord had cut corners, ignored city ordinances, and hadn’t fixed the fucking stairs so that when Chase was trying to carry two children to safety, the fucking boards gave out and sent him to hell, killing both children in the process.
Hearing everyone tell him that he should be happy just to be alive was complete bullshit. He would rather have died that day so that he wasn’t forced to relive the memory of lying there in pain, trying to pretend that the two children that he’d risked his life for hadn’t died in his arms while he’d waited for his turn.
Nine fucking hours it had taken them to dig him out, nine fucking hours he’d laid beside those tiny bodies as he’d waited to be put out of his misery. Instead, the rubble had been removed and he’d been forced to watch as the two children who should have had their whole lives ahead of them were carefully placed in body bags.
God, of all the things that Chase wished that he could forget, that moment was one of them. He should have died with them, but instead, he’d broken his back, his legs, his right arm, most of his ribs, and a good portion of his face and body had been ripped to shreds. Thanks to his family’s money and reputation, they’d had him in surgery in less than an hour, a plastic surgeon cleaning up the mess once he was stabilized and had him in a chemically induced coma in less than a day, because the idea of poor Chase suffering had been too much for his family to stomach.
They’d kept him like that for three months.
Three fucking months of his life had been taken away from him!
He hadn’t been able to attend the services for the children that he would have given anything to save. He hadn’t been there when their small bodies were laid to rest and he hadn’t been there to wrap his arms around their grieving mother and tell her how goddamn sorry he was and how badly he wished that it had been him instead.
It should have been him.
At the very least, they should have left him conscious so that he could grieve for those children. He’d deserved to feel every ounce of pain to remind him of how badly he’d fucked up. They’d robbed him of that, robbed him of his ability to feel every ounce of pain that he had coming to him.
Instead of letting him work through everything that happened to him, they’d kept him knocked out for months until they were ready to face him. He’d woken up in agony in a fucking sterile room filled with cards, balloons, and medical equipment, alone and drugged out of his fucking mind.
That’s when they’d decided to tell him everything that he’d missed, absolutely fucking everything. He’d learned in a matter of minutes that those children really had died and that it hadn’t been a horrible fucking nightmare, that he would probably never walk again, his fiancée had been fucking his best friend, and everything good that he’d ever done in his life had been for nothing.
Now he was nothing more than a pathetic reminder of what he used to be. He was fucking nothing but a useless piece of shit who’d failed at his job. That’s what he was and he fucking hated it!
“Take me home,” Chase said, in absolutely no fucking mood to play around today.
Definitely not today.
“No,” Sloane said as she reached for the keys, but he’d managed to grab them and shove them down his front pocket until they got a few things clear.
“Listen up, because I don’t plan on repeating myself. I don’t need your fucking help, and more importantly, I don’t want it.”
Chapter 5
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” her lovely new patient demanded, interrupting what promised to be a very lovely, perhaps not as comfortable as she’d prefer, nap.
“My job,” Sloane said around a yawn as she rolled over onto her side, giving him her back and deciding that perhaps this new position would clue him into the fact that she wasn’t going to cave every time he snapped at her.
Sadly, she was wrong.
“Your job isn’t to sleep in the back of my fucking car!” the highlight of her day snarled angrily as he shifted somewhat violently in his seat, further disrupting her nap.
Why were men so damn inconsiderate? she had to wonder.
Sighing, Sloane shook her head, rolled over onto her back and stared out the sunroof, taking in the lovely spring day while her patient battled between his need to throttle her and his need to tell her to get her ass up front and drive, but she couldn’t do that.
They were at war and they both knew it.
If she gave in first, he would win and that would be the worst thing that she could do for him. He’d give up in every situation and know that all he had to do was to wait her out to get what he wanted and she wasn’t about to let that happen. Not to a guy like this.
When she’d first started in this field, she’d been young, naïve, and a bit of a pushover. Clients knew how to play her, break her heart and made sure that everything went their way. The patients loved her, but her employers hated her and had immediately rectified the situation by getting rid of her and hiring someone with more experience and a backbone. It took some time, some trial and error, but eventually, she was able to stop feeling bad for her patients and start helping them.
They didn’t need her pity. They needed her to do her job and for the past few years, that’s exactly what she’d been doing. She didn’t fall for their sob stories anymore or let herself give in when her patients complained that they were too tired, too sore, or just not feeling it today. She wasn’t a pushover and they quickly learned that just like this guy would.
Her job was to get them out of bed, out of their house, get them into a routine, show them how to adjust to their new life, learn the skills that they were going to need to make it, and most importantly, her job was to make sure that they stopped feeling sorry for themselves, accept that something incredibly fucked up happened to them, and be there to hold their hands as they fought their way back.
That meant never giving in first, especially on the first battle, and she already knew that there were going to be many battles ahead with her new patient so that made this standoff crucial. She would not give in and sooner or later, he would figure that out for himself, suck it up and do the one thing that he’d refused to do since he’d found himself in this situation.
He would ask for help.
This wasn’t about making him beg or making sure that he knew who the boss was. This was about him learning to ask for help when he needed it instead of letting things get worse. This was about making sure that one day he could lead a full life, but that wouldn’t happen until he learned how to adapt.
That’s where she came in.
If she gave in now and did what he wanted, he would give up, plain and simple. She would be doing him a disservice and she sure as hell wouldn’t be doing her job. She knew plenty of home-healthcare workers who would be more than happy sitting on their asses, playing on their phones, and watching television all day just as long as their paychecks cleared, but that wasn’t her.
She had a job to do and until the stubborn bastard in the front seat let her do it, she had absolutely no plans on doing anything other than laying back, closing her eyes and getting a little rest for the battle ahead.