“Vaughn! T.J.! Dinner!”

“I swear your mom has yelled that same thing the same way every time I’ve been at your house since we were five years old.”

“Yeah, I think Cade and my dad can hear her clear down at the beach. It’s incredible how they always show up within five minutes of her hollering.”

“Did you hear that Dave invited Krissy Love to homecoming?”

“No. What the hell? Dave was hanging out with us at lunch. He never said anything to me.”

“I didn’t hear it from him, I heard it from Krissy’s new BFF, Teal Monroe.”

“Teal? The girl who moved from Oakland?”

“Yeah… You ever think about going to homecoming?”

“I don’t know. Guys don’t really think about that shit, T.”

“Well, some guys do, because they ask dates and get a suit and go.”

“That doesn’t mean they thought about it ahead of time. They just see some girl whose pants they want to get in and realize that homecoming might be the golden ticket.”

“Gross. I’m glad you’re not like that.”

* * *

“Vaughn!” his older brother Ty yelled from outside Vaughn’s bedroom door. “You ready for PT?”

Vaughn stood from his bed, his prosthetic leg giving just slightly as he initially put weight on it.

Hell, no, he wasn’t ready for PT. He hadn’t been ready for it yesterday or last week, or anytime in the two months since he’d had the accident either.

And he especially wasn’t ready to have T.J. see him looking weak and damaged yet again.

But if there was one thing he’d learned since the accident, it was that the people around him—his brothers, his aunt, T.J.—they were really fucking stubborn, and they weren’t going to leave him alone until he’d proven that he was the world’s best little amputee.

“Coming,” he snapped through the door before he pulled on a T-shirt with Big Sur Organics printed on the front. He looked down at the shorts he was required to wear so that T.J. could see how he was maneuvering with his prosthetic limb. As if just the fact that she knew he had it wasn’t humiliating enough. Nope. He had to do things in front of her with it. Squats, stairs, leg lifts, twists and turns. The one thing he’d drawn the line at was her seeing his stump without the prosthesis. Other than that, she’d been privy to nearly every horror since he checked out of the hospital.

That meant she’d seen him struggling to walk across a room. She’d seen him wipe out on the driveway when the gravel gave more than he’d anticipated. She’d seen the awkward way he moved when trying out his running blade. She’d witnessed it when he’d developed a rash from the lining of the prosthesis and it crawled halfway up his thigh before they were able to treat it and get him a different fake leg.

Yes, T.J. had seen every disgusting, weak, humiliating thing about him—in the last few months as well as the six years before that. Nothing like the only woman you’d ever loved knowing what a fuckup you were.

He sighed as he swung the door open and faced not only Ty but also his oldest brother, Cade. They both looked at him with those expressions that said while they pitied him, they were also prepared to take his ass down if they had to. And unfortunately, as he’d learned more than once recently, he might be a big guy, but they were just as big, and there were two of them.

“You ever going to shave that mess?” Cade asked as he appraised Vaughn’s new beard.

“Why do you care?” Vaughn grunted as he moved past them, focusing on smoothing out his gait.

Cade shrugged. “Just figured it might be a deterrent to all your women.”

Vaughn huffed out a bitter laugh. “You think? ’Cause I’m figuring it’ll be the nasty-ass stump where my leg used to be that’ll do the trick. I don’t think they’ll even notice the beard.”

“Dude,” Ty chastised. “You know that’s not true. There are plenty of women in the world who aren’t that shallow.”

“I know of one who’s waiting for you in the gym,” Cade added with a wink.

Vaughn scowled and sped up, opening the front door to the house he shared with his aunt, Ty, Ty’s daughter Katie, and sort of Cade and his girlfriend Nina. Truth was, Nina and Cade seemed to spend a lot more time in the guesthouse than the main house, and they were getting ready to build a place of their own a ways down the long driveway that wound from the PCH through the family’s expansive ranch lands.

He didn’t bother holding the door open for his brothers as they followed him. If they insisted on following him around like he was a toddler, then they could hold the door open for themselves. One side of his mouth twisted up as he mulled over the analogy. He sort of was like a toddler—learning to use his legs, chafing against authority, wobbling around the family house while everyone bit their tongues and tried not to get too mad at him.

Only difference was that no toddler he knew had ever had to figure out how to avoid an erection while he learned to walk. Because whenever he faced the sight he was looking at now as he stood in the doorway to the custom gym Cade had built for his rehab, his dick stood at attention like a disobedient puppy.

He knew he was blocking the entrance, but he couldn’t move for a moment as he struggled to control his reactions to her. She was turned in profile to him, her shiny hair in a high ponytail, the ends still falling to her middle back, it was so long. The blue polo shirt she wore was fitted, covering the essentials, but still tight enough to show her magnificent rack. Vaughn was a breast man, and T.J. had the most beautiful pair he’d ever laid eyes on.

He nearly groaned as his gaze dropped lower and he saw that she was wearing shorts today. Of the short-short variety. Her firm, toned legs stretched like the road to paradise from her ankles to her barely covered hips. And just as he was about to step into the room, she rotated, turning her back to him and bending over to position a large medicine ball in front of a bench.

The sight of T.J.’s perfect little ass peeking out from those shorts was the final straw.

He spun, ready to get the hell out of Dodge, only to find himself faced with both older brothers.

“Going somewhere?” Cade asked, one eyebrow raised.

Ty shifted to see around Vaughn, a glint entering his eyes. “Problem?” he asked with a smirk.

Vaughn swallowed and cleared his throat. Fuckers. He hated his brothers.

“Come on, cowboy,” Cade chided. “You can do it. She doesn’t bite.”

Vaughn did groan out loud at that, images of her perfect pearly white teeth scraping over one of his nipples playing across his mind.

Ty chuckled. “Stop making it worse for him. God knows her shorts are going to be enough of a problem.”

Cade shook his head and nudged Vaughn on into the room. “I’m sure he could find a solution to that problem if he wasn’t so damn stubborn.”

Vaughn shut his eyes, praying for some scrap of patience to endure this hell. Letting out a breath slowly, he drove his elbow back into Cade’s rib cage, smirking in triumph when he heard the grunt as he met the mark. Then he held his hand over his head, flipping off both brothers as he marched into the gym and gritted his teeth for another session in how to be half the man he used to be.

* * *

T.J. refused to look at the shenanigans going on between the Jenkins brothers. She’d known them her whole life. Growing up with them had been like growing up with a pack of tussling Labrador pups. Although by the time she and Vaughn were in high school, Ty and Cade had become too wrapped up in their own adolescent lives—dating, surfing, college—to pay much attention to the youngest Jenkins boy.

And that had been just fine with T.J., because then she had become Vaughn’s number one in everything. She was already his best non-brother friend, but once Ty and Cade grew up, she became his favorite companion, the one he turned to for movie nights and drives to the beach after dark. The one he wanted to take camping out on the ranch in the summers, the one he called when there was a basketball or football game he wanted to go watch at the high school.

But when they were sixteen Vaughn had gone and done something she’d never completely understood. Instead of inviting T.J. to homecoming—the first dance he’d ever wanted to attend—he’d asked Teal Monroe. And T.J. had thought her heart might break right in two.

It was true they’d never kissed or held hands or done any of the typical boyfriend-girlfriend things, but she and Vaughn were a set, a pair—like salt and pepper, cake and icing, eggs and bacon. Everyone at school viewed them as one entity. “Are you and Vaughn coming to the party?” they’d ask. “Does Vaughn have Sturgis for Science?” “Do you think Vaughn would sign up for Student Council if we asked him?” T.J. was Vaughn’s other half until he went and asked another girl to homecoming.

And so for all of junior year and part of senior, T.J. and Vaughn weren’t as close as they had been. He discovered another world, with other girls, and T.J. had never felt so betrayed. He teased, dated, and eventually screwed other women, and T.J. stood by and watched. Hurt, ashamed, and confused, she hadn’t known how to respond except to act as though she didn’t care. And that was what she’d done for eighteen long months. Then Winter Ball had rolled around, and Lance Preston, the son of Big Sur’s favorite city councilor, asked T.J. to go to the dance.

And that was when T.J. and Vaughn’s story really started.

“Hey,” he said as he came toward her across the gym floor. She observed his gait, noting how smooth and sure it was. He didn’t even realize how much progress he’d made since the accident. Someone who saw him on the street now would never know he had a prosthesis.

“Are you ready to work?” she asked, sticking to business, because he’d made it known early on that he had no interest in associating with her otherwise.

She and Vaughn had been through a lot since that fateful day in senior year when Lance had asked her to Winter Ball and Vaughn had reacted with a jealous fit that ended up in the loss of T.J.’s virginity. They’d been lovers, they’d been estranged, and they’d been best of friends, but now they were client and therapist. Nothing more. Or so Vaughn seemed to wish.

“I’m here,” he answered. “Let’s get on with it.”

She gave him one sharp nod, then pointed to the aerobic step where he had to do one hundred step-ups leading with the injured leg.

He sighed and went over to begin. It was the first exercise they did every time he had PT, so he knew the routine. She watched his movement as he stoically counted off his steps—first leg up, second leg up, first leg down, second leg down. Repeat.

“Alexa, play Jay Z,” Vaughn said. “Volume ten.”

Heavy beats filled the room, and T.J. gritted her teeth as the bass made her insides swirl. “Alexa, volume four.”

“Can’t hear it,” Vaughn snapped. “Alexa, volume ten.”

T.J. scowled at him, and he glared back as Jay Z reeled off a string of profanities that made even T.J.’s well-seasoned ears hurt. She marched over to the shelves along the wall where the Echo and sound system were housed and snagged the power cord in one hand before tugging it out of the wall with a snap. The room went silent.

“I’m telling Cade you broke it,” Vaughn groused.

“What are we, five?”

Vaughn snorted as he finished up his steps. “If we were five, you’d be wearing bigger clothes and I’d have two legs.”

Her eyes widened as she stared at him. He didn’t just say that, did he?

“You didn’t.”

“Didn’t what?” he asked as he moved to pick up the medicine ball, positioning himself between it and the weight bench so if he fell, it would be onto the cushioned bench.

“You did not just make some snide remark about my clothing.”

Vaughn grunted as he lifted the medicine ball over his head and then lowered it. She tried not to notice how his biceps flexed on the down stroke, but it was nearly impossible in his T-shirt that was at least a size smaller for him now than it had been when they’d started therapy several weeks ago.

It was pretty typical of paraplegics and amputees that they bulked up in their upper bodies. Especially for young, healthy men, loss of mobility in the lower extremities meant a focus on the upper body. And while Vaughn was able to do most everything he had before the accident, he still hadn’t regained his normal level of physical activity. He was an outdoor guy by nature, always riding, camping, swimming. He’d done none of those things since the accident, so he’d apparently been pumping iron. And it looked damn good on him. Too good. Because they weren’t that pair anymore, and he’d broken her heart one time too many.

He continued his reps as if they weren’t in the middle of a conversation about what an asshole he was being. When he finished the fifteen reps, he set the ball on the floor, only losing his balance for a split second. He stood upright again, wiping the back of one arm across his forehead, where a light sheen of sweat had appeared.

“It wasn’t a snide remark, just stating the fact that your five-year-old clothes would probably cover more than those shorts do.” He turned to face the weight bench, bending over and touching it with just the tips of his fingers. That only put his spectacularly hard ass directly in T.J.’s line of sight. She growled in frustration and marched around the bench so that she was facing him. He started a set of kicks with his good leg while balancing on his injured one.

“Harder on the thrust,” she instructed as he bent his knee forward, then kicked it back behind him.

He muttered something that sounded like, “That’s what she said.”

But T.J. was already so mad, she hardly noticed.

“For your information, my clothing is entirely appropriate for my job and the weather. I spend my days showing people how to use their bodies better. They need to be able to see my form, and I need to be able to move easily.”

“Why are we even discussing this?” he snapped angrily as he stood. “I don’t care what you do with your days or your clients. I have to be here, so I am. Let’s get on with it.”

It had only happened one other time since they’d started their sessions, but that time he’d been on the way out anyway, so he hadn’t seen, though Ty stayed behind and comforted her. She struggled for a moment, telling herself that she couldn’t let this happen, wouldn’t let him see what he could still do to her. But his words cut too deep, and her heart was too raw.

The tears formed without her consent, against her will, and in spite of her best efforts. She swallowed, and looked up at the ceiling quickly before turning away and hoping he hadn’t noticed.

But apparently, Vaughn wasn’t as uninterested in her as he’d just claimed to be, because she heard him swear softly.

“T.J., I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that. I…I’m sorry. Please.”

She crossed her arms, looking out the window at the Jenkinses’ house across the parking circle. She’d spent a significant portion of her life in that house. It was nearly as familiar as her own home. And she’d spent a significant portion of her life with this man. She’d been everything to him that she could be, but she wasn’t sure how much longer she could continue. She wasn’t sure that she’d survive another go-round with him. This had to end.

She spun on him, plastering on what had to be the world’s phoniest smile.

“Don’t be,” she said, all cheer and fake enthusiasm. “You’re right. You were forced to be here, and you know what? You don’t need to be. You walk and move as if you’d never had the accident. Your prosthetic works like a dream. I think we’re done.”

He blinked at her as if he was trying to process what she’d just said, but T.J. was already walking toward the desk in the corner of the room, grabbing her backpack and going to the door.

“Where are you going?” he asked, taking a step in her direction.

She looked at him over her shoulder, never breaking stride. “I’m off to live my life, Vaughn. You should go live yours.” Then she swung open the door so hard, it hit the wall behind it. But she didn’t even stop to see if it had taken a chunk out of the plasterboard.

T. J. Brisco was done. And she was so very gone.