Page 88 of Please Open Me
When it came to raising me, my father didn’t do much. Hell, if there wasn’t a camera involved, he wasn’t there. His job as a father was to provide for us, financially anyway, which didn’t work out great considering my mother was just as career-obsessed as he was.
Still, I remembered one thing from my short-lived childhood: my father loved my mom.
Her happiness was his top priority. I’d never felt much love from either of them, but I thought I knew what it looked like between two people, at least, in the romantic sense.
Which was why, three apologies deep into Mason ignoring me, I was losing my damn mind.
And not the cute, flirty, I’m-ignoring-you-but-secretly-turned-on kind of way she sometimes pulled. No, this was full-on,I don’t want to be in the same room as you, mad. The worst part? I had no fucking idea why.
I’d followed her from the kitchen to the nursery twice. Offered to change Rosie’s diaper. Even volunteered to run to the store for her favorite overpriced granola bars that tasted like birdseed and dark chocolate.
Nothing.
Not even a sarcastic comment about me being whipped. Which I was. Embarrassingly so.
It was driving me insane.
So, I had two options:
Keep apologizing until she cracked.
Or assume she’d hate me forever and panic.
Apparently, panic won. My brain didn’t ease into it—it went straight to the worst-case scenario, the kind of thought you don’t even want to admit to yourself. I needed to love bomb her and remind her that I loved her more than anyone ever would. Then came the guilt for even considering it, because that wasn’t who I was, at least not on purpose.
Still, the idea lodged itself in my head and refused to leave, twitching under my skin. The house felt smaller by the second. Rosie’s laugh in the background, Mason’s footsteps drifting in and out of earshot, and me—hovering, useless.
So, I left. Ended up at the gym.
Before the accident, that place had been my sanctuary. My health regimen was obsessive—workouts lasting hours on end, strict meal plans, pushing my body like I could outrun my thoughts. After talking with Cameron, I realized my “discipline” looked a lot like Mason’s eating disorders, just in a different costume.
Still, I’d loved it. Pop in a good audiobook or some music, work until every muscle ached, walk out feeling like I’d sweated the world off my shoulders.
Eight months ago, that all changed, courtesy of the metal rod now living in my leg.
Thirty minutes into my workout today, and my shirt already looked like I’d swum here. I started with fifteen minutes on the stair machine to loosen up my bad knee, but by now the whole leg had decided to protest my existence.
It wasn’t the kind of pain that sends you rushing to the hospital, which was somehow worse. This was a deep, grinding ache, like someone had jammed a steel pin into the gears of my body. Some days it felt like the rod wasn’t fixed at all, like it rattled inside the bone, slamming against whatever scraps were left in there.
Even lying back on the bench, hands wrapped around the bar, my knee throbbed so intensely it made lifting feel impossible, despite not even being part of the exercise.
I gritted and tried to push through it, after all, the last thing I wanted was to drop two hundred and fifty pounds directly on my chest. But I was fine. Ihadthis. That was, until a pair of incredibly calloused hands appeared on the bar.
“Slow down, dude.” Instantly, I recognized the voice, and that alone made me want to drop dead. “Rack the bar. You’re about two seconds away from popping your shoulder out of place.”
I grunted as I put the weight into the holder above the bench, leaving me to stare at the last person I wanted to see.
“Mattie, what a pleasant surprise,” I grumbled, trying not to sound out of breath.
“Uh-huh,” she said skeptically as she offered me a hand. “Look, quite frankly: I don’t give a single fuck if you hurt or even kill yourself, but my girlfriend likes you so…”
She shrugged, making sure to keep her hand outstretched for me.
And I sat upwithouther help.
“She’smygirlfriend.”
“Our.” Mattie didn’t even blink. “You may have had her first, but I think I’m one slumber party from her moving me in.Plus,I know somethingyoudon’t.”
