Rico's Recovery (Detroit Heat Book 2) (11 page)

When we broke the kiss, my pulse was rushing in my ears. My mind was strangely silent. For a change, I wasn’t overthinking things. It didn’t last long, though.

Seconds after breaking the kiss, Alan walked into the break room. I pulled upright in an instant. “I think you got the… lint, Mr. Baggio.”

It was maybe the worst lie I’d told in my entire twenty seven years. I couldn’t tell if Alan knew or not, but I didn’t wait to find out. I spun around, grabbing for an empty cup for Rico. I filled it and handed it to him.

“All right, back into the gym area like I
told
you, Mr. Baggio.”

He nodded. “Sure thing, coach.”

As Rico wheeled out of the break room, I kept my eyes glued to the clipboard. I didn’t want to meet Alan’s gaze. I did have to hear his voice, though.

“Persistent, isn’t he?”

“Hmm?”

“With you. He sure is persistent.” My heart jumped. Alan must have seen the two of us interacting. Clearly we weren’t doing a great job of hiding our attraction.

“I told him he wasn’t allowed back here, but he must not have heard me.” I tried to up my lying game. I hated that instead of thinking about the electrifying kiss, I had to backpedal and get Alan off my back.

“You know, Lizzie, I’ve seen how he looks at you. Frankly, it worries me.”

I looked up. “What do you mean?”

He stepped closer, as if we weren’t alone, “I don’t think he’s quite right upstairs. I think we’re dealing with more than just broken bones.”

I turned away, relieved and also holding back some serious laughter. Alan thought that Rico was into me, but it was because he had brain damage? Oh, God, it took everything I had not to laugh. I had been panicking, but it was all for nothing.
It’s cool, Rico. They all just think you’re brain damaged.

I turned back to my coworker. “He’s harmless. Really. I think it will be all right. He does his exercises, and we’ll get him back on his feet.”

Alan nodded. “I think he only does his exercises because of you.”

I laughed, letting the tension out. “Maybe he does do the exercises for me. If what you think is true, Alan, maybe it’s more important than ever. If he needs someone to motivate him, I say go for it.” I headed back out to the gym, eager to tell Rico what Alan thought. At the doorway, I turned back. “Thanks for looking out for me, Alan.”

I had three days off, and goddamn, did I need them. I thought the first workout was bad, but it was nothing compared to the aches and pains the second one brought out. I had something better than morphine distracting me from all that muscle pain, though. I had a kiss.

I had a kiss with the strongest, most beautiful woman I’d ever met. I knew I was taking a real risk when I grabbed her, but there was something deep inside of me screaming at me to do it. I
had
to do it. There was no other option. We never got a chance to be alone, and I wasn’t about to throw away that one moment.

I saw it in her eyes when she came back out to the gym, too. She felt the same way I did. There was no anger or shame. When she told me about her coworker, I laughed. If that was the impression he got, I wasn’t going to stop him.

The texts started flying back and forth the moment I left PT. My mother asked me what I was so interested in on my phone. I told her I was on a particularly hard level of Candy Crush. I didn’t need my family meddling in my relationship. It was complicated enough. We were hiding in the shadows, and my mother loved gossip. Those two things made for a bad combination.

The weekend was long, but at least Lizzie and I got to speak on the phone. I convinced the family to let me out in my wheelchair alone, and the second I was around the corner, I called her up.

She didn’t even say hi. “I have a surprise for you.”

I smiled at the sound of her voice. It was cheery and refreshing. “Oh yeah? What’s that?”

“Rico, you don’t really get the whole
surprise
thing, do you?”

I laughed. “Well, I may have suffered some brain damage, so big words like that might just be too much for me to take. When do I get to see this surprise?”

“You’ll see part of it on Monday, but I don’t think you’ll like it.”

I was confused, but with Lizzie, that was par for the course. She loved keeping me guessing. I never knew what she was thinking. It was like riding a rollercoaster with the crash bar still raised. Hold on tight.

“If I’m not going to like it, do I want the surprise?”

I could hear the confidence in her voice. God, it was sexy. “Yes. I think once you get over not liking it, you are going to like it very much.”

She made herself as vague as possible, and I'd have to wait a long weekend to find out what she meant. I knew we'd keep talking over the weekend, but I also knew that Lizzie wouldn't reveal the secret to me. She was so cruel and so kind the same time.

Knowing that part of the conversation was over, I changed topics. "Seems like you had quite a bit of fun the other night." My entire body tensed thinking about it. We had taken our relationship from flirting to a whole new level.

She gave me a shy little laugh. It sounded so feminine and beautiful. My eyes rolled back in my head.

"After being tortured all day at work, yeah, I needed a little bit of fun. Are you telling me you didn't have any fun, Rico?"

I smiled. "Oh, I had fun. I'm sure it would've been a lot more fun with you there, but I did the best I could."

Despite how wonderful it was, our stolen kiss had been damn close to a mistake, and I knew it couldn't happen again. Lizzie had been right when she said we couldn't see each other until I was up and walking. Until I was able to get around by myself, she and I were nothing more than physical therapist and patient.

It made me ache. I was being cockblocked by my own body.

Despite the fact that I was trapped in a chair, it wasn't a bad afternoon. The sun was shining, I was out of the house and somewhat on my own, and Lizzie and I were having a great conversation about everything and nothing at the same time. Our talk came easy as if we'd known each other for years. When I realized how short the time we’d known each other actually was, my eyes opened wide in disbelief.

None of my past relationships had felt this strong. Even the girl I'd been with for two years in high school paled in comparison. It was hard to be careful with Lizzie, but I knew I had to be. There was something powerful between us.

After our conversation ended, I sat in the chair for a few minutes. I watched the leaves dancing in the breeze. For a few moments I wasn't trapped in the chair. For a few moments, I was just resting there and thinking of her.

I was aching to get back to work, aching for her, and aching just to be able to stand on my own again, but it could've been worse.

I took the long way home. Well,
longer.
On the way back, I had to fight against the wind. I enjoyed the challenge, even if it was a small one. I could feel my muscles getting stronger day by day; especially my heart.

The weekend was long, even if it was filled with texts and the few short conversations. I was ready to get back to physical therapy. Well, I was ready to get back to Lizzie, and it just so happened that she was a physical therapist—
my
physical therapist.

Monday morning, my pops dropped me off. He wanted to stay, but I insisted. I wanted to try to get back to a normal life, and that meant doing as much on my own as possible. After he drove away, I turned and began to wheel myself inside. I smiled as I rolled through the doors.

The usual crowd was already there: older people with hip fractures and kids with sports injuries. They were my new crowd, at least for the next few months. As I looked around, there was one person missing. I didn't see Lizzie. Figuring she might be in the break room, I wheeled myself toward the cubbies, ready for another intense therapy session with my coach.

As I stuffed my drawstring bag into one of them, I heard a voice behind me.

"Well, hello, Rico." It was what's-his-name, Lizzie's friend who thought I was a little slow. I could hear it in his voice. He spoke to me like he was talking to a six-year-old.

I turned in my wheelchair to face him, smiling just a little too wide.

Alan. That was his name. "Good morning, Alan.”

"And how are you this morning?" He spoke each word clearly, making sure I could understand each one. I wanted to roll my eyes, but it was good that Alan didn't suspect anything between me and Lizzie. I'd have to keep it up.

Nodding to him, I said, "Good, good. You?" I tried not to oversell it, just slow things down a little bit. "Where's Lizzie?"

Alan bent down so that we were eye to eye. "Oh, buddy. Did they not tell you? Lizzie isn't going to be your physical therapist anymore. From now on, it's you and me."

I tilted my head and looked past him. Was that the surprise? Because that was a pretty shitty surprise. Why would Lizzie take herself off my case? We hadn't had any problems and nobody suspected that there was anything between us. A million questions flooded my mind. Had I done or said something wrong over the weekend?

Aside from my handicap, things had been going just fine. We were moving forward and getting to know each other. I didn't know about her, but I was counting down the days until I could step from the wheelchair. It was only two months away, maybe less, but maybe she couldn’t wait that long.

Alan didn't give me much time to think about it, though. It wasn't long before I was doing leg presses, riding the bike, and learning to use the rowing machine. I worked hard, but my heart wasn't in it. It wasn't just me that I had been working for, and that other person wasn't around anymore.

When I finally got a break, I asked, "Is she not around today?"

Alan handed me a cup of water and shook his head. "I think she took a case that runs on an opposite schedule. Lizzie usually works with pretty tough cases, buddy. I guess your recovery went better than expected, which is a good thing, right?"

I nodded, keeping up the ruse. I didn't know if that was the excuse he gave, or if it was the truth. Either way, I wasn't happy. Lizzie had been my rock. She had been the thing keeping the blackness away, and without her, I didn't know if I could keep it at bay.

My session of physical therapy seemed to take days, not the simple hour. I just wanted to be done. If Lizzie wasn't there, I didn't see the point. I could stretch at home.

The hour was finally up, and after giving Alan a halfhearted goodbye, I wheeled back to my cubby. My phone was flashing, and when I turned on the screen, there was a text from Lizzie.

Surprise.

She hadn’t lied. She had promised me that I wouldn’t like the surprise, or at least some of it. That much was true. If the surprise was that I wouldn't see her anymore, I could have done without it. As always, though, she had me intrigued. I couldn't just leave it at that, and I knew she wouldn't give in or make things easy, so I had to text her back and find out what the rest of the surprise was.

You were right. I didn’t like it at all.

I knew she had something good up her sleeve, but it was hard to imagine—especially after a workout with my new coach, the guy who thought I was mentally challenged.