Blended (Redemption #1) (28 page)

He helps me as I wash his legs, by holding onto the bar above us. He’s essentially standing, but he’s holding himself up. The muscles in his upper body flex as I help him lower himself down again. I’m sure that it’s difficult to sit down when you’re unable to feel half of your body.

Once we’ve got him rinsed off, dressed, and back in his wheelchair, I’m about to call Madelyn in to help me get him into bed. “Wait. You need to freshen up as well. I’d like to watch you shower and get ready to meet my mother.”

“You should be resting, Wade.”

“There’s not a chance in hell.”

I’m still naked when I roll my eyes toward him and step back into the shower, making quick work of it. Forty minutes have passed since we first got him into the shower, and now Madelyn is knocking on the bathroom door, “Mr. Brass, is everything all right?”

With just a towel around me, I open the door as she’s about to knock again. “We’re fine, thank you.”

“I need to administer the next dose of his medication. He must be in pain by now.”

“Oh. Okay, come on in.”

She strides past me purposefully into the bathroom to where he’s fallen asleep in his wheelchair. Once she has him in the room, I quickly get dressed into a pair of his sweatpants and one of his undershirts before helping her, and Colin maneuvers him into the king-sized bed.

I watch her closely when Colin leaves as she connects him up to an IV stand she has set up. I wince at the needle she puts in his skin before pushing the medication into his bloodstream through the IV.

He doesn’t stir once through it all.

She puts on a blood pressure cuff on his other arm and sets it to take his vitals every half an hour. I lean over him and adjust the pillow beneath his head until he looks comfortable.

“Sleep well, Whiskey.”

“Hadley?” I hear Isla call from outside the door.

“Come on in.”

I hear the door open as I pull the comforter over his body and run my hand through his hair when I’m startled by a sob.

“Oh, Waylon.”

I turn around quickly and come face-to-face with a beautiful older brunette woman. She’s tall and unquestionably stunning.

“I just administered several medications, so it will be at least three hours before he’s able to wake up again,” Madelyn says, extending her hand to Lillian. “I’m Madelyn Elyse, his in-home nurse for the next two months,” she says as if she’s the most important person in this room. She’s honestly pathetic.

Lillian smiles at her but turns her attention toward me as Madelyn starts to speak again. “You must be Hadley, sweet girl.”

“I, uhm, yes. It’s nice to meet you, Mrs. Brass.”

“Please, call me Lilly,” she says in her English accent as she pulls me into a comforting hug.

“How are you holding up, Hads?” Isla asks as she rubs my back as I’m hugging Lillian.

I’m stunned that these women both seem to care about my well-being just as much as they care for Wade’s.

“I’m okay.” I release Lillian, and she walks to Wade’s side.

“I’ll give you three a moment. Madelyn, if you don’t mind leaving them in privacy, I’d appreciate it.”

She looks me dead in the eye and dares me. All right, bitch, stay if you please. I walk into the closet and pick out one of his workout sweatshirts before walking out of the bedroom. Maybe I should get Colin to get Madelyn her own room. That way, I won’t have to deal with her when she’s not tending to my Whiskey.

Exhaustion overtakes me as I settle down on the couch and pull his sweatshirt on. It smells like him, and I feel like I’m home. My home, though, has a heartbeat.

I’m woken by soft voices arguing. I force my eyes to open, and I realize that I’m draped around Wade on the couch. He’s seated next to where I fell asleep, and he’s holding onto me while I rest my head against his shoulder.

“Mr. Brass, she shouldn’t be applying her weight on you.”

“She weighs next to nothing. You’re dismissed for the evening, Madelyn,” he hisses at her.

“Waylon, respect the nurse, please,” I hear Lillian’s voice from across the room.

I force my eyes to open the remainder of the way and jolt upright.

Wade finds my eyes with his and his face softens. “Hi, gorgeous.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to pass out. When did you . . . how . . . ?”

“You’ve been out for hours, and when I woke without you in bed next to me, I couldn’t stand it. I had Jacobs bring me out here while Madelyn was on her break. Now, she’s pissed because I pulled you up against me.”

I roll my eyes and kiss his cheek before I turn to face Madelyn and Lillian, who are now having a discussion across the living room.

As I watch them he moves my frizzy curls behind my neck and leans down to brush his lips against the column of my neck. “I love you,” he murmurs.

A tremor runs down my spine at his words. I turn to face him and brush my lips against his. “I love you, Wade.”

His eyes are locked on mine when his mother walks up to us, and I feel as if we’re teenagers who just got caught making out.

“I haven’t seen Waylon this happy in years, Hadley, and considering the circumstances, I’d say it’s a rather large achievement. Thank you for all that you do for him.”

I want to tell her that it’s Wade who has changed me, who has given me a life full of emotions that I have never experienced before. Yes, I may still be on my anti-depressants and anxiety medication, but he makes me feel, I don’t know, whole.

“She’s one of a kind,” Wade says to his mother as she leans down to hug him.

“I’m headed to bed, you two. Would you like for me to help to move you back to the bedroom, Wade? Your nurse is rather upset about finding you out here.”

“Jacobs was in the kitchen the last I saw him. He’ll help me.”

“I’ll just go and get him then.”

She walks away from us and I stand up, careful not to disrupt how he’s seated. I stretch out my sore limbs, but stop when I hear him chuckling.

“What?”

“You look ridiculous in my clothing. It’s as if you’re drowning in fabric.”

I shrug and set my hands on my hips, “I’m comfortable, and they smell like you. Plus, I have no idea where my suitcase ended up with all of my flights.”

“I’ll have Jacobs look into it, and you can wear my shit for as long as you’d like.”

Madelyn clears her throat and Wade and I both say “What?” in unison.

“Excuse me, but Colin is here to assist me in moving you back to the bedroom.”

Colin Jacobs is, for lack of a better word, a machine. His arms barely fit into his suit jackets, and he’s got more muscle on him than I’ve ever seen on a person before. If I could guess, I’d say that he’s a bodybuilder, and not much older than Wade. He steps forward and helps Wade move into the wheelchair before Madelyn almost runs over my foot with it on the way back to the bedroom.

This bitch needs to go. There is no way in hell that I’m going to let her treat me like this for two months. Colin looks over at me with a look of disgust on his face. “She’s one hell of a grumpy bitch.”

I cannot help but burst into a fit of laughter at his words. “Colin! I didn’t know that you actually spoke English.”

“Yeah, yeah. What do you say we get in there before she mauls him?”

I nudge him in the arm before following behind him.

Madelyn refuses to leave after getting Wade settled in. I glance over at him from where I’m seated at his feet. The anger radiating off of him is almost palpable.

“Are you sure that there isn’t anything else that I can get for you, Mr. Brass?”

“For the third time, Madelyn, no, there is not. You’re dismissed.”

“Yes, sir,” she bows her head to him as if he’s going to whip her with his dick. Jesus, this woman needs help.

I watch him shake his head in disbelief as I crawl up onto my side of the bed and reach over him, turning off the light on his nightstand as she walks to the door.

“One more thing, Mr. Brass. Dr. Heath would advise against sex this soon after the surgery,” she twirls around and exits the room before either of us is able to respond.

I lean up on my elbow and watch him stare in disbelief at her. “How the fuck did I end up with this insane woman?” he mutters to me in case she is standing just outside of our bedroom door, which I wouldn’t put past her.

“I have no idea, but I think that Colin might do us a favor and get rid of the body.”

We laugh together as I settle down against him. His arm comes around me, pulling me closer. I lift my leg over his and kiss his neck. “Will you tell me something?” I ask.

“What is it that you want to know?”

“Anything about you, really.”

“As long as you take off this sweatshirt. I want to be able to touch you.”

“Deal,” I say as I sit up and pull his sweatshirt off and toss it to the end of the bed before I move back into the spot where I was lying before.

“Do you remember what I told you about myself? That I have struggled with what you are going through?”

“I do.”

He sighs and lifts his shirt off of my lower back until he can touch my skin and run his fingers around the studs of my piercings.

“One of the things that I would use to kill the craving I had for it was to pay for multiple women at once, or I’d participate in group sex sessions at an underground club in Las Vegas.”

My eyes widen as I stare up at the ceiling in the dark. “Sex parties?”

“Exactly.”

“I’ve always wanted to venture into one of those, but I never found a club that I was comfortable with doing it in.”

“The thrill of fucking someone and then five minutes later being sucked off by two different women is overwhelming, and it satisfied me immensely.”

“I’ll be damned.”

“I’ve been countless times. Each time I’ve made a trip to Las Vegas, I’d find one to attend.”

“Did you go when I met you over a month ago?”

“I was on my way to one when I first saw you in the elevator.”

“That feels like a century ago, Wade.”

“It does, and I still have those pink lace panties.”

“Oh? Did you ever get off on them?”

He chuckles and lowers his hand to my ass. “No, I wanted the real thing. I wanted you.”

“I did too. I still do.”

“Come here,” he says when he pushes upward on my ass until he’s able to lock his lips with mine. I run my hand down his chest and smile against his kiss.

“It’s your turn to tell me something that I don’t know about you, Rye.”

“All right. Since we’re on the topic of our sexual addictions, I’ll tell you why I use sex as a coping mechanism. I mean, really, you were the one that brought to light just how deep in the trenches I was with it—am with it—but I’ve known that I’ve done it for years now.”

He nods in understanding and waits for me to continue, deciding not to push me for answers. It’s another thing that he gets about me. I won’t speak if someone is forcing me to. I’ll shout out what I need to when I’m comfortable instead of when I’m told what to say and when.

I clear my throat, preparing to tell this man,
my
man, what brought me to my knees at an early age. “When I was ten, my mother killed herself in a bathtub. She slit her wrists, and I sat in that water with her until I couldn’t feel my toes anymore because of how cold it was.”

He turns his shoulders to face me; it takes him a few tries, but he gets there.

“Go on.” He must notice the worry crossing my face because he says, “I’m fine.”

I nod. “Well, I was immediately placed in a foster home and two weeks after living with my new parents, the man raped me. I remember the piercing feeling and the smell of semen and sweat as if it were yesterday.”

His body stiffens as he wraps me in his arms. “I’m sorry.”

I shrug. “I’m not going to say that it’s okay, but it’s in the past, and it’s what’s been holding me back. Once I was switched from one house to the other, I landed in a house with Lola Marc. That’s who you met at our apartment in Chicago.”

“I remember.”

“She’s been through a lot as well. When I was placed in this new house, she was already there. It was just the two of us for a few years and during those years, our foster parents would take turns on us. Him as well as her.”

I shake my head trying to rid myself of those memories, of those horrors, the demons that haunt me, day in and day out.

“How is it possible that you were put into two foster homes with adults like that?”

“Lola and I have spoken about it a lot. We figured out that we both had the same social worker on our cases. As it turns out, he was selling us to these families while using his name to foster us under. There were a few other girls that I remember seeing when I was with him, but we only found out the truth once we were nineteen. Lola saw his picture in the paper.”

“Jesus.”

I purse my lips as I think back to the day that I got the call from her. It intensified my need for sex to a level that I hadn’t experienced before. I was dick-hopping as if my life depended on it. That’s when she first sought professional help, and it’s when I grew the need to help her.

“I’ve lived in and through a lot of dark, yet the only thing that made me feel anything was the physical act of sex—until you.” I yawn and curl into his side.