Three Loving Words (11 page)

Enzo

I’d never liked to see a woman cry. That was a bit hypocritical considering I had been the cause of many of Paige’s tears, but that was different.  I didn’t have a valid reason as to why; it just was. I think all men had a predisposition to inwardly cringe and panic when they saw the first telltale sign of watery eyes.  I couldn’t say I haven’t caused many tears to be shed, even before Paige, but I’d always found a way to walk away from the situation, leaving me unscathed and probably an asshole too. Hey, I never promised to be a good guy. And yes, I caused more than a few sobbing moments with Paige, but try as I might, I couldn’t be nice to her. Who was I kidding, I never tried to be nice to her.  I did try to be civil, and that worked out pretty well most of the time.  Maybe it worked out well about half the time; I spent the other half trying hard not to throw something across the room.  Everything she did pissed me off.  If she was happy, I was annoyed; if she was singing, I was squirming; if she was dancing, oh, don’t even get me started on what I was feeling then.

I didn’t even know what troubled me more. Maybe the fact she could be happy no matter what I threw at her, and I knew I wasn’t a peach to live with.  But that was what she signed up for, though, so tough.  Maybe a small part of me was irritated with the fact she wasn’t that carefree, that cheerful, that happy-go-fucking-lucky with me, but then again, we weren’t friends, and I had never given her anything but grief. What did I expect?

The ironic part was that I was a pretty relaxed guy, at least around my friends and the people I cared about; I was just something else around Paige.  I couldn’t control myself around her.  My temper seemed to rise higher than a thermometer could measure.  I knew that if she had been a guy, she’d have gotten her ass handed to her on numerous occasions. The funny part was that, to an outsider, she didn’t deserve it.  She probably even thought so, too.  Yet she had forced this life on both of us.  I didn’t have a choice, so it had come down to her, and she had agreed.  I gave her one reason and one reason only to believe I’d lay a hand on her, and that hadn’t been my finest hour, but I had kept my promise since then.  I didn’t touch her – not the way she wouldn’t want, at least.  And I’d never hit a woman, no matter what.  Yet she flinched every fucking time I was near her.  I didn’t think she even realized she’d cower a bit from me even when we were nothing more than strangers passing each other in the hallway.  Never, and I mean never, had a girl shied away from me.  They flocked to me as if I was some decadent dessert they had been saving all their calories for.  So naturally, I was more than a little ticked off whenever Paige would steer clear for that reason alone.  It didn’t help that a very small part actually cared that she thought I was a monster based on a drunken mistake.  I probably should have felt guilty, maybe even a little sad, but I just felt frustration mixed with anger.

In any case, when I heard her bawling that day of her final, I was tempted to turn around and head back to my room.  Even when I knew she had been crying because of something that happened between us, I tuned her out as any normal guy would.  But this was different.  I didn’t know how I could tell, but her crying seemed defeated.  Whenever I’d heard the inkling of blubbering before, it was more like self-pity.  As much as I hated it, I also admired Paige for her resilience and her don’t-give-up attitude, so curiosity won out.

After I had learned exactly what had her feeling like that, I had to help her out.  I knew how hard she worked to get where she was.  I had never worked like that a day in my life, so you’d think I wouldn’t realize the value, but I wasn’t oblivious.  I’d also like to think I was pretty smart.  Actually, half the reason I didn’t do much work in school was because it bored me.  I could have run circles around most of the teachers.  I picked things up quickly and wanted the next lesson before anyone else.  I learned early on that that wasn’t going to happen, so I stopped caring.  The other half was because I didn’t need to work hard.  I simply had to look around the extravagant house I didn’t pay for to know that.  I had come very close to losing that, but that was now a moot point.

I was also an asshole, but I was not that much of an asshole.  Okay, yeah, I was.  But something about the pain in Paige’s voice had me handing her the keys before I even realized what I was doing.  It should have been that jackass boyfriend of hers helping her out, but a part of me liked that I was getting to play the hero.  When she looked at me as if I was a god, it stirred something inside me, something I liked very much.  And I couldn’t have that, so I went back to being a jerk the minute she walked back in the door after her exam.  Things went back to our norm quickly after that.  I even had the pleasure of running into my lovely wife with her boy toy and one of her friends from the club while eating lunch.  That was an interesting day.  Her friend’s eyes went wide when she saw me and then tapped Paige’s hand a moment before I pulled up a chair and made myself comfortable.  Needless to say, Paige called me obnoxious and a few other choice words under her breath, her friend restrained Luke on several occasions from getting his ass kicked because Lord knew I’d beat him in a fight any day, and her friend had a very amused look on her face the entire time.  It bothered me something fierce, like she was in on a secret I should have known about.

I naturally went and found myself a companion that night.

So things were pretty usual until about two months later.  It had been early evening when I picked up my phone.

“Hello, may I speak with Enzo Faust?”  The very feminine voice on the other end had me second-guessing answering a number I didn’t know, but I knew none of the women I hooked up with would have been that formal.

“This is he.”

“Mr. Faust, my name is Monica and I’m a nurse at County Hospital.” Getting a call from a hospital or any medical related number was never a good thing.  There were only three reasons they would call you – the first was that there was something wrong, the second was to remind you of an appointment, and the third was by mistake, and let’s face it, that never happened.  And when they reminded you of an appointment, you anticipated that call.  So when someone says they were a nurse from a hospital, the pit of your stomach drops, no matter what. 

“Your wife has been in a minor accident.  She’s all right, but she has some slight contusions and a concussion.  We can’t let her leave on her own,” she finished.

Hearing her say something regarding my wife had my stomach not just dropping but falling through the ground and making its way to the Earth’s core.  I hated her, she hated me, I had wished a thousand bad things on her a million times over, but I never actually meant them.  Now, if half the things I wished on her boyfriend came true, I’d be doing a happy dance, but not with Paige.  She was mine to protect even if I hadn’t necessarily wanted that job or had done my part in it this entire time, and heck, I’d probably continue to be the one she needed protection from, but at that moment, I felt like I had failed.  It had been the first true time I’d felt that way.  And then realization sank in.  They had called me, not her friends, not her parents, not her boyfriend, me.

“She asked for me?”

“She’s in shock, sir.  I pulled up your information from her insurance file. It listed you as her spouse.”

“Of course.”  I couldn’t help the tiny twinge of disappointment, and I didn’t even truly know why.  I contemplated all the different scenarios that could play out.  I could leave her stranded, I could find Luke, or I could be a human being and go get her.  I’d already spent countless hours trying to tell you I was a shit guy, but I was not that bad.  I went and got her.

“What are you doing here?” she asked the minute she saw me and then winced from obvious discomfort.

“Looks like I’m your knight in shining armor today, Paige.”

“I didn’t call you.  I was about to call Luke.”

I clenched my fists just hearing his name.  “I’m your husband, so they called me.  Might want to remember that,” I added as some kind of warning but wasn’t sure what I was warning her of.

“Why are you here?” she asked again.

“They told me to come get you.”

“And you just dropped everything and came?” she asked suspiciously, her eyes searching behind me as if I was hiding something.

“Of course not.” I chuckled falsely. “I finished what I was doing first.  Took my sweet time getting here.”

“Thanks for coming,” she muttered, “but I’ll call a friend or something.”

“And prevent me from basking in this?  Never.”

“What in the hell does that mean?” she hissed.

“It means you are at my mercy.  You need me to take care of you, and it feels pretty damn good knowing you have to rely on me.  I’ll be putting this in your face for years to come.”

“I don’t need you!” she whisper-screamed.

“Tell that to the doctors.”

“I’m calling Luke,” she announced.

“Uh, uh, uh,” I practically sang and plucked the phone from her hand.  “Sorry, no phones allowed in here,” I replied smugly.

“Fine, I’ll call him when we get home.”

“Oh, shut it, Paige.  I’m going to fucking take care of you, you’re going to appreciate it, I’m going to torment you about why you got here in the first place, and then I’ll get to hang this over your head for the foreseeable future.  It’s a win-win situation.”

“How in the hell is that a win-win for me?”

“Because you get to spend all day and night with me.”

“Oh, so it’s a lose-lose for me?” she mocked.

“You want to get out of this hospital or not?”

“With you?  I’ll take not.”

“Suck it up, little girl.  I’m getting my way and you’re coming with me.”

It took another ten minutes of her whining and me towering over her to get her to agree.  The doctor signed her out and I drove her home.  I was instructed to wake her up every two hours.  By the time we made it home, she had fallen asleep in the car.  I loved when she slept, so I hated waking her, but I had to.  I shook her gently.

“We’re home.  Need help?”

She looked around the car as if not realizing where she was before her eyes settled on me.  They were wide and filled with surprise.  “I’m fine.”  She got out of the car as I followed her to the door.

“I’m supposed to wake you up every two hours.”

“Well, that sucks,” she pouted.  It had been almost endearing, like a child.  I actually felt bad for her.

“You don’t want to wake up every two hours?  You and me both.”

“Then why are you doing this?”

“Because someone has to and I’m your husband.”

“Only in name.”

“You’re mine to take care of.” I raised my voice.

“I’m no one’s.”  It was the inflection in her voice; the shaky timbre that had me biting back my response.  It could have sounded snarky, like defiance, as if she was independent, but the way she said it, it was crushed.  “I’ll never be anyone’s,” she mumbled lowly.

I didn’t like the way this conversation was going, so I changed the subject.

“Look, having to wake up right after you finally fall asleep doesn’t sound like fun to me, so let’s call some kind of temporary truce and do something instead.”

The hopeful look in her eyes at my words had me fighting a smile.  “Like what?”

“I don’t know.  Do I look like a babysitter with ideas spewing out of my ass?”

“I don’t need to be babysat.”

“Yeah, you actually do.  Every two hours, remember?”

“I’ll set an alarm myself.”

“Jesus, Paige.  I just called a truce; give up that attitude, all right?”

“All right,” she spoke quietly.  “What do you want to do?”

“Watch TV?”

“I might fall asleep.”  We both seemed to ponder, standing on opposite sides of the room.  “How about a game?” she asked sheepishly.

“What kind of game?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never really played any games.”

“What?” I asked in surprise.  She looked at me shamefacedly as if she had done something wrong.  “What kind of games are we talking about?  Video games, but I can see girls not really doing that.  Or like hide and seek because if you say no, I’ll be shocked, but I’m not doing that. Sorry, no can do.  Board games?”

She started laughing and the sound traveled through my spine down to my dick.  Then she winced and I felt like an ass.  “I’ve played the kiddie stuff.  Never played a video game, but yeah, I guess that’s more common than not playing board games.”

“You never played Monopoly or anything like that?”

“Oh, and I suppose you have.”

“Yeah,” but I might as well have said, “Duh.”

“By the time I was old enough to really play board games, I didn’t have time.  I spent it all trying to get good grades and make my parents proud.”

“I’m sure they were if you didn’t have the time to be a kid.”

“Not really,” she admitted with a shrug, but the light sheen in her eyes said she was anything but indifferent.  “I was no Nora.  Never have been, never will be.”

“Nora’s got nothing on you.”  Maybe it was the sad look in her eyes or the tight smile she was trying to hold but I wanted to make her feel a little better.  It had been the truth, too.  I had seen Nora.  She was stunning, all shapely curves and long legs, but something about Paige put Nora to shame.