Water poured out of different compartments of my prosthetic leg when I took it off, and I dumped it into the bath tub, laying the various parts out flat on the counter. I stared at the scattered pieces as I filled the tub with hot water, all the while cursing under my breath. Now that the adrenaline had faded, I realized getting thrown into the pool with my leg still on wasn’t exactly the best thing to happen to me. Insurance helped me pay for my leg back when the accident happened, but as I grew, I had to pay for my own upgrades — and getting one that was waterproof wasn’t at the top of my list.
It would be fine, I knew that because I’d been caught in the rain more than a time or two on my bike. It just needed to air out and I would have to change my liner and socks. Still, I had to take the foot shell completely apart, which meant I’d have to walk out of the bathroom on one leg.
In front of Emery.
Nerves assaulted me the entire time I bathed, mind racing with how he would react when he saw it. Would he cringe or pretend he didn’t see it? Which would be worse?
I sighed, towel still wrapped around me as I studied the leg on the bathroom counter after my bath. I had a feeling he already knew about it, if not before John’s comments at Earl’s, then definitely after. But was I ready to show him?
I guessed it didn’t matter now.
Creaking the door open just a crack, I peered out at Emery, who was sitting on a towel on the floor at the foot of his bed, writing in his journal.
“Hey, can you hand me my bag?”
He looked up at me, eyes catching on my towel before he snapped into action, grabbing my bag off my bed and handing it through to me, making sure to turn so I could open the door wider and slip the bag through.
“Thanks,” I said when I had it, closing the door again. “I’ll be right out.”
“Take your time.”
My hands were shaking again as I dressed, pulling on the one and only pair of gym shorts I’d packed. They were short, the edges of them hugging my thighs. The fabric was tight around my right thigh and loose around the left, and I eyed my imbalance in the full-length mirror, stomach rolling at the thought of Emery seeing me like this. No one had really seen me without my leg on, other than my parents, who didn’t notice, and Lily, who didn’t care.
But I didn’t have a choice, so I threw my bag over one shoulder and tucked the parts of my leg under my other arm, ready to lay it out to dry on the desk in our room. Then, with an unsteady breath and my head held as high as I could manage, I opened the bathroom door again, standing in the frame of it as Emery’s eyes landed on me.
It was impossible to ever get used to the way he looked at me, especially when those two lines formed between his brows. Every time his eyes pinned me, I swore I never wanted to move again.
Pushing my glasses up the bridge of my nose, I watched as his gaze flowed down my body, catching for just a moment on the bare leg that still existed before flicking to the one that was absent. I opened my mouth to say something but he was already on his feet, taking my bag from my shoulder and the parts of my leg from my other hand. He dropped my bag near the foot of my bed and laid out all the pieces of my prosthesis on the desk, and I just stood frozen in the door frame, watching him.
“Here,” he said when he finished, moving to my side. He grabbed my left arm and hooked it around his shoulder, bending to my height and helping me to my bed.
“I can do it on my own,” I whispered, but we were already across the room.
“I don’t doubt that.”
Emery made sure I was settled on the bed, my good foot on the floor while my stump hung down, the cut just below the knee. His eyes roamed over both of my legs as he pulled up the desk chair, laying the towel he’d had on it since he was still wet before sitting down and rolling closer to me.
He wasn’t grimacing, or studying it like it was a science project, or looking at me with pity. He just seemed to be taking in the lower half of me for the first time, his eyes tracing my thigh, my shin, my ankle, before finally landing on my scar, on the most vulnerable part of my entire body.
“You already knew, didn’t you?” I asked after a moment.
He found my gaze, nodding slowly. “I suspected, but I figured you would tell me when you were ready.”
“I’m never ready to tell anyone about it,” I said quickly. “But… I didn’t really have a choice tonight.” I eyed my leg drying out on the desk.
“Fuck, I’m so sorry, I didn’t even think about it when I threw us in the pool.”
“It’s fine. It’ll dry.”
Emery swallowed, eyes searching mine. “John was right, you know. You are beautiful. With or without your prosthetic.”
Everything about the situation made me want to crawl right out of my skin. I didn’t want him to see me like this, or tell me I was beautiful when all I felt was broken. I tucked my wet hair behind my ear, eyes on the carpet between us. “You should go shower.”
“I will,” he said, voice low. “Can you tell me what happened? Is that… would that upset you?”
A shudder rushed through me and I shivered with the force of it. Emery reached out, his hands finding the outer edges of each of my knees, and he rubbed the skin there. I watched his thumb rub the normal, toned muscle of my right leg and the thin, damaged muscle of my left. The warmth from his skin made me shiver again, and when my eyes found his, my stomach flipped at the heat I found there, too.
“It’s hard,” I whispered, and my eyes watered, though I tried to fight against the tears.
Emery just squeezed my thighs a little tighter, the pad of his thumb tracing the skin in smooth circles, eyes resting on mine as he waited.
I took a deep breath, folding my hands on my lap and staring down at them as I spun my ring. “It was my twelfth birthday. My parents forgot. Again,” I added, and my heart stung with the familiar ache of being forgotten, a feeling I knew too well. “It was the first year I didn’t care to remind them.”
I was still watching my hands, but I felt Emery staring at me, felt his gaze on me. I pushed out another breath and kept going.
“My dad didn’t come home from work that evening, and my mom thought he was cheating again. So, she threw me in the car to go look for him. I begged her to stay home, but she insisted, and she had been drinking. I knew better than to argue with them when they were drinking.
“I was reading my book in the back seat, A Wrinkle in Time, so I don’t really know what happened. All I remember is my mom cursing, and then the car jerked, over and over again. It felt like we were hitting the biggest speed bumps to ever exist. Then we flipped, I don’t know how many times, and I blacked out. When I came to, there was smoke everywhere, and I looked down and there was just… blood. So much blood.”
Tears flooded my eyes again, and I tried not to blink, not to let them fall, inhaling another shaky breath.
“My left leg was pinned by the door, it had been crushed in, and the car had landed on that side. So, I was just… stuck. I didn’t notice the pain until my mom started screaming. Then it all hit me — the blood, the smoke, the pain — and I blacked out again.”
I shrugged, a mixture of emotion and complete numbness washing over me, each of them fighting for dominance.
“I woke up in the hospital, and by that time, they’d already amputated my leg. My mom walked away completely fine. She was too drunk to even tense up, so other than some bruises and cuts from the seat belt and airbag, she was fine.” Two tears slipped from my eyes at the same time, rolling down over my cheeks and hitting my thumb in unison. “She was fine, except she was angry at me, because she knew the hospital bill would be outrageous.”
“Jesus Christ,” Emery breathed, and his hands moved to grab mine. He held them tightly as I closed my eyes, more tears seeping through.
I shook my head. “It’s weird how much of it I don’t remember. Tammy, my friend from back home, says I repressed it all. But I don’t really recall much of the physical therapy, or getting used to my leg. I know it was hard, I know I hated it, but one day it was just… easier. And every day that passed, it became more and more normal. When I started doing yoga, that’s when I really found peace with it. With everything, really.”
“You do yoga without your leg on?”
I nodded. “I wanted to build strength and balance. Sometimes I do it with my leg on, just to test it, but I like doing it without it more. It’s nice to remind myself that I can still be strong, even if I am missing a limb.”
Emery was silent for a moment, then he dipped his head down a little lower until my gaze met his. He was completely surrounding me now — his knees on either side of mine, elbows resting easily on my thighs, hands covering mine, eyes piercing through my ghosts. “You are strong, Cooper,” he whispered. I looked away, but he moved until he was blocking my view again. “You are. And the fact that something like this happened to you and you’re still here, living, smiling and spreading light… it’s incredible.” He paused, swallowing. “I couldn’t do that.”
“You’d be surprised.”
“No,” he cut me off. “I’m serious. I know myself, and I would have given up years ago.” He watched me for a moment. “I hope you never do.”
I closed my eyes, his words settling around me. “I’m a little tired, could we maybe make plans in the morning?”
“Of course,” Emery said softly, backing out of my space. He released my hands and I immediately wrapped them around myself. “I’m going to jump in the shower. Want me to shut off the lights?”
I shook my head. “I’ll wait until you’re out.”
“Okay, I’ll be fast.”
With that, Emery jumped up, digging through his bag for his toiletries before dipping inside the bathroom. I let out a long, loud breath once he was gone, the memories of the crash still fresh in my mind as I fell back against the cool, rough, Native American print comforter. Kalo moved closer to me, whimpering a bit as she nudged me with her nose. She could always tell when I was sad, and I just rubbed the fur on her paw, reassuring her I was fine.
I was tempted to read another passage from Emery’s journal, knowing it was still sprawled out on the floor from where he’d been writing, but after talking about the accident, I was too tired to even lean up again. Instead, I wiggled until my head was on the pillows, tucking my legs under the sheets.
Kalo curled up beside me, and though I said I would wait, exhaustion pulled me under while the shower was still running. I faintly remember hearing the water cut off, and then the door opening. A few seconds later, the lights were off, and then I must have started dreaming, because I swore I felt a hand brush my hair back from my face.
I cracked one eyelid open, but Emery was already in his own bed, scribbling in his journal by the light from his phone. And I fell back asleep to the sound of the page turning.
“Okay. So, we have Colorado Springs and the Grand Canyon,” I said around a mouthful of banana muffin, washing it down with iced coffee as I continued planning our route the next morning. “What else?”
The sun had barely risen, but Emery and I had been up for an hour, eating breakfast from the hotel lobby and figuring out our next moves. Emery seemed to have woken up in a good mood again, which I was thankful for, since I needed his patience and cooperation to figure everything out.
“I want to drive up the Pacific Coast Highway,” Emery said. He was playing fetch with Kalo, though she rarely brought the toy back, usually flopping down in the same spot and chewing on it, instead.
“Okay, let me see…” My tongue stuck out of the corner of my mouth as I studied the map on my phone, making notes in the notebook Emery had bought from the lobby when we grabbed breakfast. “Done.”
“Don’t you need to make plans for where to stay and stuff, too? For Seattle?”
I nodded. “I do. Next hotel we stop at, we should make sure it’s one with a business center. I can just spend a day putting in apartment applications and job searching.”
“Sounds like a boring way to spend a day.”
I rolled my eyes. “It’s called being responsible. You should try it.”
“Nah.” He winked at me, tugging on Kalo’s toy until it was freed from her jaw before throwing it again.
“Should we hit Vegas?”
Emery paused then, Kalo nipping at his hand still holding her toy. She’d actually returned it to him this time. “Fuck yeah, we should go to Vegas. And we’re staying right on the strip, too.”
I chuckled, marking it down on the list. Once we had everything we wanted to do listed out, I made us a driving route, calculating eight hours of driving max per day, though most days would be less.
“If we go this way, it’ll take us…” I did the math in my head, pulling up the calendar on my phone. “Eleven days to make it to Seattle, but that’s if we’re driving every day. So if we end up wanting to stay more than one night somewhere—“
Emery coughed. “Vegas.”
“Like Vegas,” I repeated, laughing. “Then it might be a little longer.”
“So, about two weeks?”
“About two weeks.”
Emery tossed Kalo’s toy before smiling at me from where he sat on the edge of his bed, his hair still messy from sleep, muffin crumbs gathered in his lap. “Let’s do it, Little Penny.”