Merit
Hallowell, Maine
Present Day
It’s the grunting I hear that wakes me. The door to the spare room I’m sleeping in, next to Ryan’s, is open. I quickly sit up. More grunting. My head gains clarity, and I know I’m not at my place in California. I’m not at Pop’s, but I’m at Ryan’s, and Ryan is injured.
Quickly, I untangle myself from the sheets and walk to his bedroom. I push the door open. He’s sitting on the side of the bed. His back muscles flex and fill his T-shirt. He’s thick and solid in all the places a man can be. A lot has changed about Ryan when it comes to outwardly appearances, but I can’t think about that now.
“Ryan? Are you all right?” I call from the door.
He doesn’t speak.
So, I walk to his bedside. His left arm is still strapped tight to his side.
I get down on my knees in front of him. His eyes are closed.
“Ryan, look at me. Are you in pain?”
He doesn’t nod at first, but he knows I’ll stay in this position and wait for an answer for as long as it takes.
Slowly, he nods.
I go to the kitchen and grab two pain pills, a stool softener, and a glass of water.
Better to get these in his system now, I think to myself.
When I walk back into his bedroom, he’s standing. I roll my eyes. I don’t tell him he could have waited until I came back to help him for two reasons. One, he’s in pain, and he doesn’t want to hear it, and two, he wouldn’t listen anyway. He’s too damn stubborn.
I walk to him and stand in front of him as he towers over me. His chest fills the front of his T-shirt as he takes a big breath in.
“Here. Take these right now.”
Ryan’s eyes melt into mine. He holds his middle. He reluctantly puts his hand out, and I drop the pills.
“What’s this one?”
“Stool softener.” My lip curls in delight. “You’ll thank me later.”
He throws the pills in his mouth. I hand him the water, and he swallows them down.
“Where do you want to go? Living room or back to bed?” I cross my arms over my chest, realizing my nipples are hard—and not because of the man standing in front of me, but because I’m cold. “Or shower?”
“Shower,” he says without hesitation.
“All right. Well, we’ll need to get your shirt off. What’d the doctor say about the brace?”
“Don’t get it wet.” His eyes are still on me.
“Can we take it off?”
“Yeah. But I think I can take it from here, Mer,” he says.
“Trust me, if I wanted to help, you’d know.” I try to push off any heat that’s reached my voice, my body.
Deflect, Mer. Deflect.
The curiosity of what he looks like under his shirt does affect the part of my brain that influences all other female parts of my body.
I blow a big breath out. “Yell if you need me.”
Sitting in the living room, I pick at my nails, really not focused on my cuticles, but what the beads of water look like while sliding down his body. The same body I’ve touched in intimate ways. Though we were much younger, I wonder if his muscles move the same, if his climax creeps the same way, and if he loves me differently.
“Hey.” I see him in the hallway.
“Hey. With the cracked ribs, I’m having a hell of a time with pulling off the brace,” he sighs. “Can you help me?”
I nod and walk to him as if it’s just between friends. As if he’d asked me to mail letters. Buy postage. Make soup. But, really, this is more. More personal than I’ve been with a man in a long time.
You’re assisting with a brace, Merit, not asking to give him a blowjob.
Ryan turns his back to me. “See the piece of Velcro? Just pull that back, and I can get the rest.”
One thing about Ryan is that he always smells good. Even after football practice in high school, yes, he smelled like sweat, but he always seemed to smell fresh, too. Like a bar of soap and expensive cologne.
With his back to me, I take him in. I wander around in his scent, taking in our memories, both good and bad, pushing back on the want that I’ve spent years fighting. I pull back the Velcro with one quick movement, proving to myself and him that I can push the need for him back further, not allow myself, my heart, to get wrapped up in him again.
The brace loosens, and he groans, his back still to me.
“Are you all right?” slips from my lips and out into the space that surrounds us.
“Fine,” he says through clenched teeth.
“Is the pain medication kicking in yet?”
“Gettin’ there.” He turns to me. “I lied.”
I stand, staring up at him, waiting for his response. One thing Ryan is not is a liar.
“I need help with my shirt.”
Oh. Keep your shit together, Merit. You’re here to help, not be his latest fuck. You’ll never be his latest fuck either. Remember that. As bad as it gets, you’ll never give in to his ways. The ones he uses with Sadie or the other women he’s been taking home since you left. He’s a different person now. Hang on to that.
Ryan keeps his arm in the same position and attempts to slide the brace off. “Ahh,” he calls out, an uncontrollable sound.
Carefully, I reach up and help him slide it off his shoulder and his middle, and it drops to the floor.
“Let’s slide my shirt up and over my right side, pull it over my head, and down my left side.”
I nod, taking my fingertips and sliding the hem of his shirt up his stomach, not allowing myself to look at his body. He winces again as he slowly pulls his arm out of the armhole and very gently slides his left shoulder and bicep through the armhole of the left side.
I try not to stare at the broken man in front of me. The one who has owned my heart since we were kids. The one with cigarette burns just below his left pectoral muscle and two more on his chest and several that cover his back. It doesn’t help that Ryan’s body has changed from the gangly teenager into a man whose beautiful body would be better left untouched, untainted by a woman who should know better. By a man who sleeps with women to bury his trauma. Even with his abs that protrude and broad shoulders that make my hips shake, I yearn more for his heart. The one I couldn’t quite capture. I want to reach out and run my hand over the scars, both emotional and physical, but a loud voice inside me screams for me to stop.
I look up and meet his eyes as a strand of my hair falls to my face, and I hear his breath hitch. He knows what I’m staring at. He knows that I’d have done just about anything to get him to leave Dubbs’s place when he was eight, ten, twelve, thirteen, and sixteen. Those were the years when it was real bad.
Ryan reaches out and slowly pushes the fallen strand of hair back behind my ear. “The scars are just remnants of my childhood, Mer. They don’t hurt anymore.”
But, sometimes, we don’t recognize how we’ve been hurt and heal the way we should. Sometimes, we turn to anything to help heal the hurt we can’t see. But I don’t say this out loud for Ryan or for me. I think both of us are just trying to get by in the best way we know how. I also don’t respond with I know because I don’t think that’s the truth; it isn’t a lie Ryan’s telling. I think it’s what he believes.
“You’d better go shower while the pain medication is still working.”
He lingers in the space that separates us, looking down at me, searching my eyes, but I turn away and make it easy for him. I walk to the couch, my back to Ryan.
I pretend to look out the window, but really, I’m holding my breath, praying to hear his footsteps back down the hallway. Finally, I do.
This isn’t a good idea. I’m setting myself up for failure, I say to myself as Ryan comes down the hallway, clean-shaven head and face. I’m sure it took a lot of pain to get there.
“Feel better?” I stand in front of eggs and bacon at the stove, glancing back at him as his scent drifts toward me, making my thoughts go haywire.
He nods and pours some coffee into a mug. He walks to the fridge where he attempts to bend down and winces.
“Hey, He-Man. I’ve got it.” I walk to the fridge and bend at the waist, not thinking that my ass is hanging out for him to see.
I snap up with the half-and-half, set it on the counter, and realize I need to shower. “Eggs and bacon are on the stove. I’m going to shower.”
When I come out, the kitchen is clean, and I find Ryan staring out the window, his back to me.
“I have a doctor’s appointment today at twelve thirty.”
“I’ll drive you,” I say, looking down at my black tank and green shorts, pushing my hands against my outfit, making sure everything is in place.
He nods.
Ryan slowly turns around, and I look at the clock. He last took his pain medication at seven in the morning.
“How’s your pain?”
“Fine.”
“One thing you’re not, Ryan, is a liar. What’s your pain at?”
“Four.”
I roll my eyes.
“Six.”
My head tilts.
“Eight. It’s at an eight.”
I walk to the windowsill where I’ve been keeping the medication. I want to be a smart-ass and ask him how the stool softener is working, but I don’t. I want to make jokes and be light, but we’re not there yet.
“I’m going to wait, Mer.”
“Wait for what? For your pain to be at a ten, so you can live in excruciating pain until the meds finally kick in? Then, you’ll silently wish you’d have taken them before you were at a ten, but you won’t say anything because that’s how you are. You keep everything in,” I huff. “Right?”
Ryan doesn’t say anything. He stands there, stiff as a board, unable to move—probably because of the pain. Because it is really at a ten already.
“Take the fucking pills, Ryan.” I grab his large hand and drop the pills in it. I barely manage a smile after I turn around and wash the only glass that’s in the sink.
I pretend to be bothered, but really, a small part of me misses taking care of people. Albeit a very small, small piece, but I do; I miss it. I cared for Pop and Eli for years before I left home. It’s what Mom had asked me to do before she died. I cared. I cleaned. I cooked. I made lunches. Made beds. Washed dishes. Did laundry. Pop was too busy, in his work and with his grief, to look up and notice. And that was okay.
“You go to Dr. Stein in Granite Harbor still, or do you see someone in Hallowell?” I dry my hands on a dish towel and turn around to find Ryan staring at me.
“Stein in Granite Harbor.”
“Well”—I lean against the counter—“we’d better get going.”