Losers Weepers (Lost & Found 4)

My eyes rolled. Rowen and I didn’t do one-sided conversations too well. “No promises.”

Shoving off the door, she reached into her back pocket and removed a roll of duct tape. From the look of it, the roll was brand new. From the look of her, she was planning on using every last scrap of it on me.

When she took her first step my direction, I would have made a zipping motion across my lips if I could have. Instead, I clamped my lips tight and gave her a “Happy now?” look. She paused, probably waiting to see if I really could keep my mouth shut, before moving closer and sliding the duct tape roll over her wrist like it was a bracelet. I didn’t doubt that she wore duct tape rolls as bracelets any old time, which meant Jesse got off cheap and easy when it came time to go jewelry shopping.

“You’re behaving like an asshole. A really big one,” she said, situating a hand on each hip as she glowered at me. “But instead of concentrating your assholery on yourself, as you typically have in the past, you’re focusing it on everyone who cares about you or wants to help you. That’s not okay.” Her voice was mostly calm, although that was probably because I was keeping up with my whole lips-zipped thing. “I know why you’re doing it. I get why you’re pushing us away when, really, you need us most.”

Of course another eye roll was in order, but she didn’t threaten me with the duct tape again, so I guessed eye rolls were acceptable.

“I understand what you’re thinking because, God, it actually pains me to say this—no joke, I feel like I’m about to shove a samurai sword through my stomach right now”—Rowen’s face pulled into a pronounced wince before continuing—“but I understand what you’re thinking because you and I are more alike than we’re different. And shit, I just said that, didn’t I?” She shook her head, looking as if that might have been the most sobering reality she’d had to wrap her mind around to date. “But my point is that I get you, Garth. You go and bust your back, and instead of relying on people to help you because that’s what people do when someone they care about gets hurt, you’d rather push them away because that, Garth Black, is how we think we’re proving our love for those people. We love them, therefore we can’t allow them to spend their time taking care of us or attending to our needs or staying at our side, even when life throws us a cruel curve ball. I get that kind of thinking so much it’s scary.” She looked around like she was searching for a chair to settle into, but since none were close by, she just sat on the edge of my bed and curled her leg beneath her. “We love them so much we don’t want to bury them with burdens. Right?”

When she seemed to be waiting for some kind of response from me, I offered a nod, eyeing the duct tape roll still swinging from her wrist.

“There was a time when I would have rather let Jesse go than have him stay and feel obligated to dole out my medication or wipe my butt.”

My brows hit my hairline in warning. All things of a toileting nature were a sensitive topic, for obvious reasons.

“I thought that mindset was like the purest form of love there was—cutting someone loose when my life became a clusterfuck to spare them from the same thing happening to theirs—but that’s a seriously messed up view of love, and it sure as hell isn’t pure.” She shook her head, pulling at a thread dangling from the hem of her dark jeans. “That’s conditional love. The kind we might justify as being okay because it’s not us saying we’ll only love them if they do this or don’t do this, but instead we’ll only let them love us if we do this or don’t do this. But how is that real love, Black? How can we feel the way we do about the people we do and justify letting them go?”

When she paused again, I could tell from her eyes that she wanted me to answer—in words instead of facial expressions. “We justify it because we want the best for them, and we realize we’re not that.” My voice sounded tight. I wrote it off as being from the prolonged silence instead of the real reason I knew it was off.

“But would letting them go be what’s best for them really?” she asked in what was quite possibly the quietest voice Rowen Sterling-Walker possessed. “Would you like it if Josie did the same thing to you if she was in this bed instead of you? Would you believe her pushing you away and letting you go was what was ‘best for you’?”

She let those questions hang in the air for so long I doubted I’d ever be able to forget them. In some way, I knew those questions would always haunt me.

I felt my brows pinch together as I worked to put my thoughts together—they didn’t seem to want to stick. “Just because I know what I’d do if Josie’s and my situations were reversed doesn’t mean I can assume that’s the same choice she’d make for herself. Just because she’d have to wrestle me into an iron box, padlock it, and ship me off to Tel Aviv to push me away doesn’t mean I’ll have to do the same to her.”

Rowen graced me with a look that made it seem like she was having a conversation with a kindergartener. “Have you tried asking Josie for her opinion?” She lifted a brow and gave my arm what looked like a hard shove. I didn’t have to feel it to realize that was Rowen’s way of trying to shove, cram, or force some sense into me. “Have you tried talking to the woman you love, the one who loves you in return, to see what she has to say about what happens next? You know, hear her input on what she’d like for her future instead of choosing for her?”

I narrowed my eyes at her. “I’m picking up on your sarcasm, and after putting up with it for so long now, it no longer has an effect on me.”

“Come on, Black.” Another arm shove. “Ask her. That’s all I’m asking of you. Could you imagine if Josie started acting the way you’ve been lately because she was trying to do what was best for you without even asking you for your opinion on what was best for you?” Rowen’s nose wrinkled. “Damn, that was a mouthful, but did you get what I said?”

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“Yeah, I got it. You’ve never had much of an issue at getting your point across, Sterling-Walker.”

She lifted her eyes toward the ceiling before getting back to boring through mine. “Yeah, but does you getting it mean you’re actually going to ask her about what she thinks and wants? Or are you going to keep on playing the martyr who’s convinced himself that maybe he tricked life for a while but deep down he’s never deserved anything good because there’s nothing inside of him that’s good?”

When I looked away, she leaned over me until she was in my field of vision again. When I looked away again, she did the same thing. Finally, I gave in and met her pointed stare with one of my own. “Don’t project your warped views on me.”

“I’m not,” she said in that still-calm voice. “I’m identifying.”

My heartbeat was starting to pick up, not really from what Rowen was saying but from how what she was saying was hitting me. “Stop identifying then.”

She tilted her head, a partial smile crawling into place. “I will. When you stop trying to force my best friend into a life she doesn’t want.”

I huffed sharply. “That life she doesn’t want meaning taking care of a cripple for the next fifty years?”

Rowen leaned in closer and arched an eyebrow. “Spending the rest of her life without the person she loves.”

YESTERDAY I’D BEEN hell-bent on skipping the doctor appointment Josie had made for me. How I’d wound up in the medical transport service van today, propped up in one of their loaner wheelchairs—which looked identical to the one I’d sent back—was beyond me, but I supposed it had something to do with what Rowen had said to me. Or more accurately, what she’d pounded into me.

I wasn’t sold on what she’d said or converted to the way she viewed love versus the way I did, but she’d given me enough to chew on through the night and into the morning. So when Josie had peeked her head in earlier, asking me if I still wanted her to cancel the appointment, I told her I’d go, doing my best to keep my doubt and skepticism to myself. If she wanted to believe there was a chance for me to make a recovery, I wouldn’t rob her of that. I would have given my useless left nut to still feel any margin of hope.

She’d been so out-of-her-mind happy I’d agreed to go that she’d rushed over, thrown herself over my lap, and kissed me so hard and so long I almost forgot I couldn’t feel anything from the neck down because everything north of that area was feeling pretty damn amazing. Only when I went to fold my arm around her back to pull her closer was I abruptly reminded of my predicament . . . if you can consider being a quadriplegic a “predicament.”

That kiss had been an escape, a vessel capable of transporting me to another world, and that realization led me to wonder if I could just spend the rest of my life kissing Joze. Then being paralyzed wouldn’t be so damn hard to face. If I could always feel her lips formed around mine, her soft breath warming my neck, her hands tangled in my hair . . . if I could just freeze that moment of perfection for the next however many more years I had left, I could do it. I could live as a paralyzed man and leave this world with a smile on my face. If only I could just keep Josie this close . . . if only . . .