Can't Hold Back (3 page)

Alia filled her plate with vegetable lasagna and made her way through the chaos and hubbub in the retreat’s big dining room.

She liked the style of the room, a mash-up of ski-lodge chic and French restaurant—bare wooden tables, squat candles, Fiestaware, and dim lighting. She wondered whether Jake or Mira had made the design decisions. She could see it playing out either way.

“So? How’s it going?” Gabi demanded, as Alia sat with two of her new friends. The retreat’s activities director, Gabi was sweetly chubby, dark-haired, dark-skinned, and thirtysomething. On Alia’s first night, she’d grabbed Alia’s arm and urged her to come sit with her. “With only a few women on staff, we all keep an eye out for one another,” she’d explained.

Alia took a bite of the lasagna. All the food at the resort so far had been amazing—healthy
and
hearty—and this was no exception. “I think it’s going pretty well.”

“The residents like you,” Melinda said. Melinda taught paddleboarding, kayaking, canoeing, waterskiing—pretty much anything that involved a boat. “You’re getting rave reviews. And off-color comments. About, you know, happy endings.”

Alia blushed. “Um, yuck.”

“Just ignore it.” Melinda tucked a bit of curly hair behind her ear. She was married to Joe, who ran the retreat’s stables, but he was off leading a sunset horseback ride.

“It’s the downside of being one of just a few women in a testosterone bath.” Gabi smiled wryly. “And somehow it got out that you’re single, too. I’ll say that’s one good thing about Geoff. Keeps the horny horde at bay.” She wrinkled her nose. “If he were better at his stud work, I might not mind so much.”

Already Alia knew about Gabi that her husband was fifteen years older, a heavy drinker, and sexually neglectful. Actually, she’d learned that in her first fifteen minutes of association with Gabi, along with a bunch of additional facts about both Gabi and other staff members.

A scrap of deep voice caught her attention. Nate was sitting not far away, with a bunch of guys, chatting amiably.
Huh.
But she guessed it made sense. He didn’t hate the world, only
her
—and she had to admit he had good reason.

Like you helped Becca?

She hadn’t tried to apologize or explain her past behavior
.
Instead, she’d paddled away from him, because she’d known she was too hurt and angry to continue the conversation. But she hadn’t given up on the idea of helping him with his pain. Far from making her feel like she shouldn’t interfere, his accusatory tone on the lake had reminded her how much she owed him.
I could make up for what I did. I could give him something back in exchange for what I took away.

He looked like hell. Gray-faced, hollow-eyed, scruffy, like he hadn’t seen a razor in days. It had been two years since she’d seen him, but he could have been ten years older. And he’d lost weight. Before, he’d been built like a running back, packed solid into T-shirts and jeans that were loose now.

He’d been golden, irresistible, one hundred percent confident.

But that was all history. Nate’s vitality, his dazzle, how Alia had given him, like a twisted gift, to Becca. And how that had come back to haunt all three of them.

Right now, he was just a guy who hurt. Who needed help. She could totally handle that. She’d figure out a way to get him in her office, on her table. She’d get him talking, track the pain to its source, root it out.

“Earth to Alia!”

“Ah. Just trying to figure out a work problem. Sorry, I’m here. You were saying. Husbands protect you from the hordes.”

“At least Joe provides some services above and beyond security,” Gabi said to Melinda, with the expressive equivalent of a wink-wink, nudge-nudge.

“Joe does earn his keep,” said Melinda, contentedly.

Alia grinned.

“So, no one special in your life?”

Both women leaned in, eyes gleaming.

“No. Last boyfriend was about six months ago, and I’m actually enjoying the dry spell.”

“Is there a story to go with Mr. Last Boyfriend?”

“Peter.” She told the story, such as it was. Peter had been in a bad place when she met him, unemployed and more or less homeless, which had propelled their relationship into high gear. He’d moved in with her quickly and had loads of time to devote to wooing her, and for a brief period of time she’d thought he was
the one.
But around the nine-month mark, when she’d been sure he was about to put a ring on her finger, he’d gotten a job and she’d discovered that he was a workaholic. So when he’d suggested he move into his own apartment, she hadn’t minded as much as she should have. And then things, well, faded away.

“So you liked him better when he was a sad sack.”

“Yeah.” She smiled. “Kinda.”

“Take my word for it, though, sad sack is
not
a good long-term proposition.” Gabi sighed again.

A few tables away, Nate lowered a forkful of food that was halfway to his mouth, his face lined with pain. She could see it clearly even from here, with her well-developed radar.

The guy next to Nate leaned over. She filled in the dialogue:
Hey, man, you okay?

Nate shook him off.
Fine.

You don’t look fine.

Alia worried that even though this was a drug-free, alcohol-free retreat, it was impossible to keep stuff from filtering in. A guy who’d given up oxy cold turkey would almost assuredly be offered that or a substitute once his friends knew he was suffering. And off prescription, no longer parceling out the tablets under someone else’s watchful eyes…that was when the real trouble started.

Nate was getting up now, waving his hand to assure his tablemates it was nothing.
Just hitting the latrine,
she imagined him saying. But she saw it behind his eyes, written in the creases in his forehead, the deepening lines at the corners of his features: It wasn’t nothing.

Before she could think it through, she was on her feet, pushing her chair back. “Hey, guys? I have to try to convince someone they need PT, okay? I’ll be right back.”

“Ha!” said Gabi. “You have an even tougher job than I do. I just have to convince guys they want to watch action movies and play flag football.”

Alia made a face at her and went after Nate.

He wasn’t in the hallway outside the dining room. She hesitated, then headed for the stairs.

She’d looked up his room number when he’d failed to show up for his appointment, tracking him there unsuccessfully before she thought to ask the guys on the back porch whether they’d seen him.

Just before the staircase, she heard a low, short groan of pain—more of a grunt, really. Not quite human. A wounded animal. She turned back. She’d almost missed him.

He’d ducked into an alcove, the doorway of one of the first-floor meeting rooms. He was pressed into the corner, one arm up above his head as if to brace himself.

“Nate.”

“Go away.”

“Nate, please let me help you.”

He raised his face and his eyes glittered. “What, witnessing my humiliation once wasn’t enough for you?”

She reached out a hand, but he flung his arm out and knocked hers away. “Get out of here.”

“Give me a chance. One chance. If I can’t help, I promise I’ll leave you alone.”

“No.”

She couldn’t make him accept her help. He’d made his position more than clear. She turned to go. Then a thought struck her.

“For Braden,” she said, turning back again. “If you won’t let me help you for
you,
do it for Braden.”

A long moment passed. The only sound was his breath, hard and ragged. Then he looked up, defeat in his eyes. And nodded.

Sitting in the reception area, waiting for Alia to call him into her office, he repeated “for Braden” over and over like a mantra, because this
sucked.
He would have been perfectly happy to have never laid eyes on Alia or Becca again as long as he lived, but because the universe had a savage sense of humor, Jake had gone on vacation and left Alia in charge of pain relief.

She’s the best,
Jake had said.
I hate to say it, but she’s better than me. If there’s any way to make the pain stop, short of numbing yourself to death, she will find it.

He didn’t believe it. But she’d said the magic words,
For Braden,
and she’d made him a deal he couldn’t resist: If she couldn’t help him, she’d leave him alone.

Plus, last night he had hurt so ferociously, he’d been ready to beg, borrow, or steal pills. And he didn’t want to even flirt with that thought.

When she’d said she would help him, he’d briefly thought she’d meant right then. Right there. That she would lay hands on and somehow transform the pain, and him. But of course it made sense that she was just asking him to schedule an appointment, like anyone else. Any physical therapist would have certain professional boundaries, and that probably went double for a woman working among so many alpha men, and triple for working in a setting where the pain never stopped and you were geographically available 24/7.

“Nate.”

She always said his name like it was a statement of fact. A conclusion.

He raised his head from where he’d rested it in his hands and regarded the woman standing before him.

Not head-turning. Not flamboyantly pretty. But her eyes were warm and her hair shone in the sunlight, and her gray T-shirt hugged her curves, and if the situation hadn’t sucked so bad, if he hadn’t still been pissed at both her and her sister, if he didn’t feel like he’d been run over by a tank, he might have felt a stirring of lust.

That would have been the final straw, so it was damn good it wasn’t the case.

He got to his feet, unsteady. A week since the oxy had gone down the toilet, and still not quite clean. He could feel the hunger in his veins, clamoring at him. He felt dirty and corrupted and, God,
dizzy.
He prayed he wouldn’t throw up in her office.

“Follow me.”

He did. She wore a short sporty skirt over her leggings, and if he’d had a shred of energy to give a shit, he would have said she had a nice ass.

He didn’t remember Alia having a nice ass. Becca, yes. He didn’t remember a thing about Alia’s ass, actually, which was probably because he’d schooled himself not to look at it. He wasn’t the kind of guy who shopped around when he was dating someone, and Becca had been plenty beautiful enough to hold his attention, once she’d snared it.

“You can sit there.” She gestured at a chair and climbed onto a stool beside a computer on a cart. “So. You have some pain.”

He couldn’t decide if he was pissed that she was going to pretend that they were any therapist-patient pair or grateful that she wasn’t going to make him deconstruct the past. Grateful, he decided. He didn’t have the energy for rehashing anything. There was now, and pain, and
fuck,
he hoped Jake was right and she knew what she was doing.

“It’s not that bad.”

She made a face, as if to say
We both know that isn’t true.
“Tell me about the pain.”

“Mostly my back. Spine and right side. And it goes up into my neck. And shoulder. And then sometimes into my arm and hand. And I get headaches, too.”

She asked him more questions. Could he point to where it hurt on his back? How would he characterize the pain? Was it always the same place in his arm and hand? He did his best to answer. He told her about how it was always different, that it seemed to thrive on blindsiding him. That it didn’t follow rules.

“Jake said it was a quaternary blast injury. You’ve heard that term before, right? Fourth-order—”

“Yeah, I know.”

“Your kind of pain—chronic, unpredictable—is pretty common with that type of injury. We don’t understand as well as we should exactly what effect percussion has on all the tissues of the body.”

He nodded. “They compared it to shaken baby syndrome.”

She nodded. “Haven’t heard that one, but it makes sense. We don’t know what happens to human tissue when you traumatize it all over. We do know the brain doesn’t like being shaken.” She frowned. “Let’s see what your range of motion looks like. Stand up.”

She made him turn his head. Tilt from side to side. Swivel at the waist. Reach forward, reach backward. Step, step back.

“Tell me when it hurts.”

“Everything hurts.”

She frowned. “Tell me when it hurts more.”

He tried, but his “nows” didn’t match her actions. The pain wasn’t following her lead. It had its own logic.

He hated the pain the way you could only hate something living. The way you’d hate a nemesis.

She made a humming sound in the back of her throat, pressed her lips together. “I want to test your strength.”

She made him squeeze a grip with foam handles and a thick spring in the middle, then put his arms out and fight her while she pushed down, back, up, forward. She told him to extend a leg and resist as she tried to force it back down.

As she worked, her hair shaded her face from his view. She kept her body at a distance from his, even when she manipulated his limbs. Not enough of a distance, though, that he could ignore her perky breasts at eye level, the hint of nipple poking through her T-shirt, that sweet and generous curve from waist to hip.

Her hands on his arms and legs were professional, competent, but that didn’t stop him from noticing the quality of her touch. Warm fingers. Firm, prodding but not poking, holding but not gripping. A point of not-quite-pleasure in the middle of the pain.

It had been a long time since anyone had touched him. The last time had probably been at the VA hospital, the culmination of a long line of doctors’ visits that had yielded diagnoses and prognoses and regimens, but no relief.

She nodded, as if affirming something to herself. “No obvious weakness. That’s good. Sit.”

He did.

“Can you tell me about the blast?”

He shrugged. “If I have to.”

“Sometimes it’s helpful. I ask people who’ve been in car accidents or had other traumatic injuries, too. Sometimes there’s a detail that helps things make more sense. Does this hurt?” She touched his neck on both sides.