“You can be naked now if you’re ready in five minutes flat after.”
“Works for me.”
No. I fuckin’livedfor him. And I showed him by blowing him in the shower, his cast wrapped in plastic for the very last time. Then I drove him and Rubi to the hospital to have that fucker cut off and burned.
In the fracture clinic, I stood guard at the back of the room, Rubi flanking me, while medical staff took a literalsawto Nash’s leg.
It was too much for Rubi. He flinched, ducking behind me. “Hold me, Locktipus.”
I snorted. “Shh.”
But I got it. The blade was nowhere near Nash’s flesh and bone, but we loved him so fuckin’ much, neither of us took a full breath until the nurse put the saw down.
She eased the cast from Nash’s leg, peeling away the inner layers that had protected his healing bones and surgical wounds all this time, concealing the extent of his injuries from the rest of us.
I was better prepared than Rubi. He took one look at the scars littering Nash’s sun-starved skin and left the room.
Nash winced for Rubi, not for the sake of the knee joint that hadn’t moved for the last three months. “You should go after him.”
“Not happening. He’ll be back.”
The nurse gathered the scraps of Nash’s cast. “Do you want to keep it?”
“Fuck no.”
“Aw.” She held it up to the light. “But it’s so pretty. Do you mind if we put it in our display on the children’s orthopaedic ward?”
Nash smiled. “If you like.”
She beamed back at him, charmed. Smitten. Knew the feeling.
The nurse bustled away in time for Rubi to come back, his reddened eyes and pursed lips still showing his distress.
“Fuck a duck, Nashie. That dolly peg looks like roadkill.”
Nash flashed a V-sign. “And that’s why you don’t work in healthcare. Help me up?”
Surprise arched Rubi’s brows. Nash hadn’t asked for help the whole time he’d been incapacitated. He’d let people feed him—that was it. Anything else had been a battle of wills with a man who said almost everything with a disarming smile on his face.
Rubi edged closer, grasping Nash’s shoulder, leaving the other for me, and together we helped him set two feet on the ground.
“You’ll still need the crutches for a while,” Rubi reminded him. “Until Harry works his magic on you.”
Nash tested the leg, a tight breath expelling from his lungs.
“Easy.” I took more of his weight. “Take your time.”
He needed it. And the crutches, but it was good to see him without the cast distorting his frame. Even better, though stiff and sore, his leg was doing everything the surgeon had said it would in the best-case scenario for a full recovery.
We left the hospital. Rubi shadowed us back to Orla’s car, body-doubling for me as much as I was for him. This shit was emotional.
Rubi had a hip flask in his jacket pocket. Whiskey. Irish.
I waved it away.
Nash nudged me. “Drink it. I can drive now.”
“No.”