Incapable (Love Triumphs 3)

It was the week the rumours started. The ones that said Avocado was in financial trouble, struggling to make increased rent payments and losing business. They’d all been assured that was flat out wrong, everything was fine. That it was a rival studio being evil to try to steal their

business, and there were more than enough jobs on the books. But then salary payments were a day late. It was supposed to be a stuff-up at the bank, but they were all nervous. Lauren didn’t bother to hide her browser opened to a job search site. Trent wore a frown so constant it was practice for the everyday wrinkles he’d wear without effort in ten years’ time. There was talk of redundancies.

It was the week Damon had laser microsurgery to remove a polyp.

Georgia sat in his room, waiting for him to wake. Taylor was in the cafeteria with Heather. The letter sat heavy at the bottom of her bag, ticking, sweating, doing whatever paper missiles from another life did when they landed in your hands and waited for you to act so they could explode all manner of unwanted emotion in your face.

Hamish had never written her a letter. There was no useful reason for him to start now. There was also no reason she had to open it. For all he knew she’d moved on from Avocado and it’d never found her. Odd that might turn out to be a partial truth, even if the timeline was backwards.

She doodled on the pad in her lap that would become Damon’s voice when he woke. A squiggle that turned into a flower that became a wheel. Whatever job that letter was sent to do it was already acting inside her brain like a toxin. She should open it. What’s the worst it could say? She wrote, Never Loved You, then scribbled over it so it was a block of blue ink in the top corner of the page, like the chakra on Damon’s pec. You could still see the letters. She ripped that page and the two under it out of the pad, scrunched them up and shoved them in her bag.

Hamish had loved her. Before. After, he’d had no control over the way his head injury changed him. After it became clear he’d never be the same person, have the same ambitions, he’d gotten mean, spiteful, especially as Rafe was starting to make a name for himself as a song composer; it made Hamish’s loss all the more intense. But he wasn’t going to write her a letter to say he’d never loved her. Why would he bother, and since that was the worst she could think of, and he clearly wasn’t dead if he was penning poison letters. She should read the stupid thing.

She put the pad down and studied Damon. His test results were as he’d expected. He was in good company: Keith Urban, John Mayer, Adele all had vocal cord lesions like his. All had surgery and went on to recover and so would he. Laser surgery to remove the polyp, two weeks of total silence, three months of nothing strenuous and then he’d be clear to go back to work. No one had to know, his schedule would accommodate it, and the only thing he’d miss out on was his gigs at Moon Blink. He’d been superbly confident, never doubting for a minute whatever was wrong was manageable, but it was a relief to have that confirmed.

He lay so still, pale under the remnants of his tan, dark smudges under his eyes and his hair radically mussed. She wanted to climb in the bed with him and snuggle up, be holding him when he woke, except doing that would likely wake him and she didn’t want that.

They’d come a long way since their first meeting. She’d been so nervous; first day in a new job, such a big industry name, such a gorgeous looking man. She’d thought he was drunk. She’d been intimidated by him. Now she knew what he looked like when he hadn’t bothered shaving, and he was still half asleep, bringing her a cup of tea in bed, when he was wet through and stinking from his gym work-out, when he was wearing earphones and surfing on his PC, when he was listening to a book, micro-emotions flitting across his face, his hands occasionally moving to express his enjoyment.

She was there the day he had his first meeting with the seeing-eye dog people and the night he mistook sugar for salt and ruined a good minestrone soup. She’d seen photos of him as a baby, as a teenager wearing bottle-bottom glasses and as a young adult, hot looking, and so cool in dark shades at uni with Taylor, Angus, Jamie and Dalia.

One of her pleasures was watching him, reading his expressions. She’d never tire of it, having long assimilated his lumbering grace, his occasional awkwardness with his easy strength and physical confidence, and finding it every bit as endearing as his dimpled chin and cheek.

He wasn’t intimidating anymore and that had nothing to do with him being drugged asleep in a hospital bed. He was familiar and comfortable and every day she was more and more in love with him.

And through loving him her whole life had improved. She slept better, performed at work with more confidence, smiled more, laughed more, engaged more in the world around her without the trepidation she’d felt since Jeffrey knocked her life off course. The damage Jeffrey did was still with her, scored into her bones, along with the sorrow that was her time with Hamish, but she was stronger now, and feeling positive about the future.

She had Damon to thank for that. The blind man who’d helped her see a way to rebuild her life. She stuck her hand in her bag and felt for the letter and then Damon made a sound and opened his eyes.

She stood and leaned over him. “Hi,” a hand to his cheek. “Don’t try to talk. Everything went well.”

He grabbed her hand, frowning, squeezed it and opened his mouth.

“Here, write it down.” She put the pad in his hand. “You’re not allowed to have your tablet in here. Do you want a nurse?”

He struggled upright and took the pen. He wrote, What day? It was a disjointed scrawl, hard to read. He was really going to need his tablet and keyboard, and even then since he mostly dictated it was going to be rough on him.

“It’s still Wednesday. You had the surgery this morning. You’ve only been out for a couple of hours.”

He scribbled, a word ending in uck and might have started with an s, and f or a tr, either way he was saying his throat felt bad.

“I could try kissing you better?”

He nodded, but there was no smile to go with it. She put her hand to his cheek again and leaned in. He felt for both her arms and held on. He smelled antiseptic and unwashed at the same time. She pressed her lips softly to his, eyes open to watch. His were closed, his breathing quiet, his reaction slow, lips slack.

He’d kissed her like it was their last ever moment together before the orderly and the anaesthetist claimed him, pouring all his fear, all his crazy brave into it, a seal so tight on her lips, so tangled in her mouth she was insensible to their audience. He’d frightened her with the urgency of it, and it left her dizzy with too much thinned blood in her body, racing with too much speed and too little control, and then he’d held her to stop her falling over and spilled wild beats into her ear, his voice a scratchy fabric rasping against her skin, agitating all her fix-it instincts and satisfying none of them.

He loved her. He wanted her. Every colour, every mood, every sound, every chance. Every day. He said it over and over, a chant he wasn’t soothed by, trying to pay forward the weeks of silence ahead.

Waiting for him to come out of surgery had been torture. Waiting for him to come back to himself was easier, even as he struggled to surface he was already past the worst that could happen.

She pulled away, thinking it was too soon to be so close, but he squeezed her arms so she kissed him again and this time he returned it like he was awake and ready. He tasted like stale cough syrup, like medicine left in the sun, but the kiss was comfort to both of them. She broke the contact but brushed her nose on his, shaking one arm free of his grasp to smooth his hair back.

“I missed you. I’m glad you’re awake. You have to be good about not talking, not making any sound.”

He nodded and their noses rubbed. There were a million questions in her head, but they’d require him to write out an answer.

“It’s weird not to have your voice.” She’d known it, but the impact of seeing him battle with it was unexpectedly difficult.