“What I need is chocolate. Or more alcohol. Or some combo of the two.”
He opened the icebox and produced a bag of chocolate candies. “Leftovers from Valentine’s Day,” he said when she raised a brow.
“It’s June.”
He shrugged. “And?”
She snatched the bag. “And what kind of a monster lets candy sit around for months uneaten?”
He laughed and feigned trying to take the bag back.
“Touch it and die.” She looked at the bag more closely, reading the slogans on each individually wrapped chocolate. Love you, or love you not. “A girlfriend?”
“An ex.”
Emma’s brows went up. “Do you have an ex-squared too?”
He gave her an amused look. “No.”
“Lucky you.” She opened the bag. “It feels a little like we’re in high school sharing a bottle of booze you stole from your dad’s stash.”
“My dad’s stash also included an old stack of Penthouses. If you want me to go grab those, just say the word.”
She smiled and tipped his heart over.
“How did your mom feel about the Penthouses?” she asked.
“Hard to say. She died a long time ago.”
She met his gaze, her pretty dark eyes warm and sorrowful. “That sucks.”
If she’d given him an empty platitude, he’d have done what he always did when it came up. Nodded and moved on. Because he never talked about it with anyone. “It was cancer. When I was a freshman in high school.”
“Oh my God. How devastating.”
“Yeah. Neither me nor my dad dealt with it well.” Apparently now that he’d started playing the sharing game, he couldn’t seem to shut the hell up. “Another beer?”
“Not unless you plan to carry me down. And nice subject change.”
Simon laughed, and so did she, and it was a beautiful sound. He wasn’t sure he’d ever heard it sound so easy and carefree before. And if he wanted her to remain a patient, he’d have to make sure he didn’t hear it again.
“Thanks for tonight,” Emma said and lifted her beer. “And all you’ve done for me. Because of you, I feel a lot more like myself. Maybe even ninety percent.”
“That’s pretty good. Shouldn’t be hard to get you to one hundred.”
“I’m good with the ninety.”
He cocked his head. “You don’t want more?”
She shrugged. “I’m lucky to be where I am.”
“Not lucky. It’s your own hard work.” He paused because he could tell he was missing something. “Maybe we should talk about the hundred percent thing.”
“Let’s not.”
He’d seen a lot of patients over the years. He knew the real recovery was far more mental than physical. “You still don’t feel like you deserve that last ten percent,” he guessed.
Their gazes met, hers wary and stubborn. “Thought this was a safe-space bubble.”
He nodded slowly. “It is.”
“Okay, then.” She laid her head back, closed her eyes, and let the silence wrap around them once again.
Chapter 6
Step 6: Show up.
Emma had been at her new place for well over a week, and she was still feeling the daily effects of walking up and down the stairs to her apartment.
Her apartment.
In spite of herself, the words gave her a thrill.
The steps though, not so much. She’d been using the gym in the PT clinic, which Simon had encouraged her to do, specifically the treadmill. If she was ever going to get back to running, this was the only way. Yesterday she’d managed to walk full weight bearing at the heart-stopping rate of 1.25 mph. Sure, a long way from Usain Bolt speed, but progress.
She was in an Uber on her way to Paw Pals for a puppy training session with a new client when her phone rang with an incoming FaceTime call from her parents. With Hog up against her right side and her left arm still slow to accept commands from her brain, she almost missed the call.
“Hey, baby,” her mom said with a smile. She had her hair piled on top of her head, half of it escaping. Her only makeup was a swipe of mascara and rosy cheeks from smiling. She line danced twice a week with her friends and taught water aerobics at her local senior center, and she was in better shape at fifty-five than her thirty-year-old daughter. “You okay?”
“I’m good. How are things there?”
Her dad just smiled. He rarely spoke a word. Probably couldn’t get a word in being married to her chatty mom, who was beaming. “You have Hog with you! Hi, Hog!”
Hog leaned into Emma and smiled into the phone while breathing his hot breath on Emma’s neck. “He says hi too.”
“Such a sweetie. Did he stop eating your socks?”
“Mostly.”
Her mom laughed. “I miss him. Oh! Guess what? We took first place at the annual country line dancing tourney.”
“That’s great, congratulations.”
“Thanks. One of the judges is an attorney, and he said you should be suing the pants off the man that hit you. He said you should also sue the other car, the one that hit him. And also the city because the stop sign was partially covered by a low-hanging branch from one of the oaks lining the street. And—”
“Mom.” Emma pressed her fingers against her eyelids. They’d talked about this a hundred times. Maybe a thousand. It was exhausting and it made her sad. “I was running. I ran right off that curb into oncoming traffic—without looking. I wasn’t paying attention. The fault is mine.”
“Emma—”
“Mom, the insurance companies all ran their own investigations, remember? Fault was undetermined. Which made it a no-fault. I got medical coverage and a small settlement.”
“But at the end of the day, your so-called medical coverage turned out to be only eighty percent coverage.”
“I know.” Oh how she knew.
“I just thought if you sued now, all these months later so they could see how your life has changed, how you’ve suffered, you could get a settlement that would set us up for life.”
Us. And she couldn’t even get mad because her mom had given Emma a year away from her own life. She closed her eyes and tried to imagine suing the people she knew weren’t at fault. She thought of Jack Swanson, the driver of the car who’d hit her. He’d lost a whole lot more than a family business and a job.
He’d lost his wife.
His entire life.
She’d tried to find news of him. She needed to know that, like her broken bones, he was healing. But the man had zero social media presence. So far all she’d been able to hunt up for him was a physical address. She’d Uber’d by his place enough times that she was going to have to cut back on her food budget, but she’d not seen hide nor hair of him. “I’m sorry, Mom. I know this isn’t what you want to hear, but I’m still not going to sue.”
Her mom was quiet for a moment. “My greatest achievement was having you. Raising you, watching you become the sweetest, kindest, warmest-hearted person I’ve ever met, so I’m not surprised. I understand, and I’m proud of you and who you are.” Her eyes watered and she sniffed.