Chapter 4

FOUR

In all hisyears as a physical therapist, Will had seen patients react to their injuries all across the spectrum. He’d had driven, chipper patients who weren’t going to let a little paralysis let them down, and he’d had patients who had fallen into a depression so deep that they’d barely stopped crying through therapy sessions. And yes, he’d had patients who had reacted with anger and frustration too, some of them even worse than Oakley.

But there was no denying that Oakley was different. Not just because he’d caught Will on a bad day either. Although Will had to admit that going off on Oakley the way he had, while woefully unprofessional, had been the most cathartic thing that had happened to him all day. Blasting a surly, entitled patient with an injury that some of the other people he’d treated, and Brandon, too, would envy had been exactly what he’d needed to center himself and remember why he’d gone into physical therapy in the first place.

After that significant introduction, Oakley had actually been willing to put in the work to get his body on the road to being in the best shape possible. Will could tell that Oakley hated it with the fire of a thousand suns when Will touched and bent and pressed his unresponsive legs. He didn’t need to ask to know why either. He’d dealt with more than enough patients who had been vocal about the mental distress of having no sensation in such a vital part of their body.

Oakley hated it, and he took his frustration out on Will by swearing at him and calling him names. He’d even resorted to questioning Will’s credentials on more than one occasion. And Will had given it right back, dropping F-bombs all over the place and calling Oakley spoiled and ungrateful as he’d worked him through set after set of exercises.

It was still all under the umbrella of routine, though. For the first week and a half, at least. Then Oakley’s brother, Heath, had announced with a somewhat guilty voice that Heath’s Notting Hill home had been fully renovated with all the physical therapy equipment and handicap-accessible upgrades that money could buy.

Just like that.

Because, billionaires.

“I still don’t think this is a great idea,” Heath said as Will supervised the transition from the ambulance that had taken them all from GKH to Oakley’s ridiculously posh neighborhood. “What if there’s some sort of emergency in the middle of the night and you need help?” he asked as he pushed Oakley’s wheelchair into the discreetly gorgeous townhouse at the end of Ladbroke Square.

“That’s what the nursing staff is for,” Oakley answered in a flat voice.

Will would have added something witty to the exchange, but he was too busy studying his surroundings. Notting Hill had turned into a ridiculously posh neighborhood in the last couple of decades, but it still looked unassuming and Victorian. Oakley’s house stood at the end of a block of homes and flats, but it had traces of excellence that made it stand out from the others, despite fitting in. It had bay windows instead of flat ones on the ground floor, and a sun room of some sort jutted off the side.

It was gated as well, which was an impressive task, considering the closeness of the streets. Everything about the house whispered, rather than screamed, that someone with a burgeoning bank account owned the place.

Will had his doubts about whether a big old building like that could in any way be suitable for a man with Oakley’s particular injuries, but those doubts were shattered the moment he followed Oakley, Heath, and the nurse into the house. The downstairs rooms were surprisingly open, and the furnishings were comfortable and homey. And already, handrails had been installed along most of the walls. There were ramps over the few stairs leading into the house as well.

But the most surprising thing was that somehow, miraculously, Oakley—or more likely Heath—had already had a small lift installed, albeit awkwardly, in a corner of the front room. Will took the stairs to the first floor as Heath and Oakley rode the lift, but Will was still able to discover that what had once probably been a guest bedroom had been converted into some sort of lift foyer.

“Sorry we had to demolish the guest room to put this in,” Heath was in the middle of apologizing as he wheeled Oakley out of the room. “More demolition and construction will be necessary if you want to be able to get up to the second floor.”

“There’s nothing I really need up there at the moment,” Oakley said in a morose grumble.

“What’s upstairs?” Will asked, reading the signs that whatever was up there, Oakley was sore about it.

Heath cleared his throat and said, “Just a gym, a media room, Oakley’s home office.”

Will stared at Oakley. “Build the lift up to the second floor,” he said, making what should have been a suggestion into a command. “You’re definitely going to need everything up there.”

Oakley glared at Will. “It’s none of your business,” he snapped.

“I’m here to continue your therapy as a private consultant,” Will told him, resting his hands on his waist and feeling like a scolding schoolteacher. “I’m telling you, you’ll definitely need the gym equipment.”

“What, you mean the treadmill?” Oakley replied sardonically. “The stationary bicycle?”

Will pressed his mouth tightly and blew out through his nose. “Let me take a look at what else is up there.”

He wasn’t in the mood to let Oakley win the point that most of what his home gym was stocked with would be useless to a man who’d lost his ability to walk. There were plenty of things that would be useful, though—mats and weights, and even an exercise ball. But most of it was entirely inappropriate for Oakley’s current situation.

That didn’t stop Will from spending the next half hour bringing everything that he could use for Oakley’s therapy session down one floor. Oakley conceded that it would be useful to convert one of the remaining guestrooms on the first floor into a different sort of gym. So while the nurse, Stanley, helped settle Oakley into his bedroom and took him to the bathroom, Will and Heath started shifting things around.

“This is a bad idea, isn’t it,” Heath sighed as they took apart the bed in the guest room at the front of the house so that they could move the mattress and all the pieces into the room next to it. “I shouldn’t have let Oakley bully us all into letting him come home yet. I’ve read that spinal cord injury patients can spend months in rehab facilities before they’re ready to come home.”

“Well,” Will grunted as he lifted and flipped the mattress, “your brother was only going to drive everyone mad where he was. And since his injuries are below the part of the spine that controls breathing, heartbeat and circulation, digestion, and the other important things, it might actually be better to have him in familiar, comfortable surroundings.”

“Comfortable for whom?” Heath asked with a frown.

Will waited to answer until they’d carried the mattress over to the other room. Without the bed, the guestroom-soon-to-be-gym seemed much bigger. “You don’t have to be here all the time, Mr. Manfred,” he said. “Oakley has hired enough nurses to stock a small hospital. Clearly, you’ve got his place kitted out as it should be. And on top of all that, I’m here.”

Heath sent him an uncertain look. “I’m just not used to the idea yet.”

Will wanted to laugh and tell him that if he wasn’t used to it, he should just imagine how Oakley felt. But he wanted to see how Oakley was settling in so he could get an idea of what treatment would look like that afternoon.

Since there was still a mountain of work to do to make Oakley’s house as accessible as it needed to be, therapy ended up looking like Oakley lying in his bed with Will sitting between his sock-clad feet about fifteen minutes later.

“Don’t break or scuff anything as you move it all around,” Oakley called through the open doorway and into the hall.

“I’m not going to break anything,” Heath called back, sounding peevish.

“You need to give your brother a break,” Will said, grabbing one of Oakley’s feet and pulling his sock off.

“What’s it to you how I speak to my own brother?” Oakley demanded with a frown. “And put my sock back on.”

“Why?” Will asked, beginning Oakley’s exercises by bending and flexing his ankle to limber those muscles up. “Are your feet cold?”

Oakley glared at him. “You know I can’t feel them.”

“Then you won’t care if your socks are on or not,” Will told him with a sharp grin. “And you won’t feel this.”

He grabbed Oakley’s big toe and pinched it. On the surface, he was fucking with Oakley. In actuality, he wanted Oakley to somehow feel the pinch. Any sign at all that Oakley was regaining sensation in his lower extremities would be an amazing and excellent one.

But Oakley had no reaction at all, other than a frown that Will could clearly see was meant to cover up a look of utter despair. “Fuck you,” Oakley said, without much energy.

“You’d like to,” Will said, trying harder to get under Oakley’s skin. A vicious, angry Oakley he could deal with. He wasn’t so certain he would know what to do with a gloomy, depressive one, despite his training. “Why else would you have gone to such lengths to get me in bed?”

“Fu—” Oakley stopped himself from cursing again.

He reached back to grip the ornate headboard and jerked his head to look out to the hall. Somewhere in the distance, they could hear Heath and Stanley talking as they discussed how to set up the gym room.

“It’s not like I could even if I wanted to,” Oakley grumbled, almost inaudible. “I can’t feel any of that either.”

“Oh, so I could kick you in the balls for being a grumpy git and it wouldn’t matter, then?” Will teased him with a smile as he moved on to bending and flexing Oakley’s knee.

His harsh comment had exactly the desired result. “I could have you sacked, you know,” he snapped, facing Will again and glaring at him. “None of this is appropriate behavior. How do I know if you’re even licensed for home care?”

“You can check my records, if you’d like,” Will said, working through the stretching routine as casually as he could and watching for the slightest flinch or flicker in Oakley’s expression that would hint he was regaining sensation. “I’m sure if you head upstairs to your office, where I saw that fancy computer, you could go online and do a search for me.”

“You’re a sick shit,” Oakley hissed.

“I know, right?” Will said, moving Oakley’s leg with particular enthusiasm.

It was more than he should have done, but again, he needed to test Oakley’s progress. He could tell Oakley was still in some pain, but he was at the point where a couple of paracetamol could sort it.

Oakley went quiet, though bitter frustration radiated from him like the heat of his body through the designer sweatpants and t-shirt he wore. He might have lost the use of his legs, but Oakley was a seething ball of energy beneath his bruised and battered frame. His hands and wrists still bore scars from where he had gone through the windshield of his car, as did his face, but only on the side, near his ear. Will knew from earlier glimpses that the back of Oakley’s neck was sliced up and that he’d had a few stitches under his hairline, but everyone at the hospital was dead right when they said he’d beaten the odds when it came to the severity of his injuries. He should have been dead.

“Tell me about the accident,” Will said many minutes later, as he switched to Oakley’s other leg.

“No,” Oakley said, point blank.

So much for getting the bastard to open up.

“You and Heath are close,” he said, trying another tactic to get Oakley to talk. Physical healing was by far not the only kind of healing Oakley needed, and even though Will wasn’t a psychologist, he’d picked up a few things here and there. “That must be nice.”

“My relationship with my brother is none of your business.”

That was a non-starter, too.

Will worked his way from Oakley’s ankle to his knee, then up to his hip.

“So, Notting Hill, eh? Not Knightsbridge or the City, like the rest of you posh sort?”

“Fuck off.”

Will wanted to sigh, but he wouldn’t give Oakley the satisfaction of knowing he was getting to him. He kept moving, lifting to kneel above Oakley so that he could work his hip deeper.

He was surprised when Oakley asked out of nowhere, “Why did you become a physical therapist and not a doctor?”

It took an amazing effort of will not to burst into a self-satisfied smile as he answered, “Reasons.”

Oakley’s face dropped into a frown. “You think this is fun? Are you some sort of sadist who gets off on hurting others?”

“None of your business,” Will answered. It felt good enough to serve back what Oakley had been dishing out to him. If he wasn’t careful, he’d end up with a half-chub and Oakley would really have something to complain about.

A few more minutes passed, before Oakley spoke again, just as Will was leaning forward over his leg to see if the stiffness in Oakley’s hips had eased up as the swelling went down. “You were in a sour mood that morning when you barged into my room uninvited. Why?”

With a bright, open smile, Will said, “Fuck off.”

For some reason, that improved his mood considerably. He moved Oakley through the rest of his exercises on that side before switching back to work on the other.

His concentration had gone into moving Oakley’s body and trying to glean clues about how well his healing was progressing so much that he was startled when Oakley said, “I’d been drinking. My boyfriend and I—well, he’s not my boyfriend anymore, we’d broken up literally seconds before the accident. Anyhow, we’d been at a New Year’s Eve party. Ellis had teased me about having too much champagne and had taken the keys. He was sober. I…I got in the car and…and I fumbled around with the seatbelt but couldn’t….” He turned his head to the hallway and mumbled, “I figured it wouldn’t matter. We didn’t have that far to go.” He paused a little more before saying, “I don’t remember anything after telling Ellis it was over.”

Not once since meeting Oakley had Will felt sorry for the man. He’d stopped feeling pity for his patients years before. Pity was a useless emotion when he was the one who had to take the reins and push people to recover as much as they could.

But the grief and guilt that poured suddenly out of Oakley, like someone had finally discovered the right way to tap the keg that had all that pressure built up inside it, gripped Will’s insides in a way he wasn’t ready for. It had been an accident. It was always an accident, but Will felt that so much more than he usually did. A great many of his patients blamed themselves for their injuries in some way. Brandon certainly had. No one had forced his brother to dive off that pier without checking what might be under the water. But it was always, always an accident.

“I became a physical therapist instead of a doctor because my younger brother, Brandon, suffered a T5 fracture after jumping into a lake without checking to see that there was an old, sunken barge under the water,” Will said, still working Oakley’s legs. “He was eight. He suffered paralysis from the chest down. He still has the use of his arms and hands, though his left hand is weak, but he’s wheelchair bound, and he has various digestive and urinary problems. I was twelve at the time, and I became his carer. I insisted on it. I learned most of what I know about spinal cord injuries before I graduated primary school.”

“Oh,” Oakley said, his body relaxing. “I didn’t realize.”

Will grinned up at him. “They did away with the law that required family members to wear a placard stating that their brother is paraplegic. Which is a good thing too, because the colors were so garish, and not at all your brother Heath’s style.”

“You’re a shit,” Oakley grumbled, but there was a faint edge of humor to his insult.

It was enough to speed Will’s pulse and to give him hope that he and Oakley were about to have a breakthrough. Not where Oakley’s body was concerned. The more Will stretched and manipulated his legs, the more he was convinced Oakley’s chances of regaining motor function there were negligible. He hadn’t given up on sensation returning to most of Oakley’s body, though. But that wasn’t what had Will’s insides dancing on air.

Oakley was starting to show cracks in his armor. And the sooner he let Will in as a friend, the smoother the rest of the process would be.

“I like Notting Hill,” Oakley said in a small voice after a few more minutes of silence. “It’s not where my sort are supposed to want to live.”

“Your sort?” Will asked, placing Oakley’s leg back on the bed and just sitting between his legs, as if that were a perfectly normal way to have a conversation.

Oakley looked suddenly mortified. “I’m an earl on top of everything else.”

“Oh, God,” Will said with the same intensity that he’d heard some patients’ friends exclaim when they came to visit, only to discover their friend would never walk again. “You’re a nob?”

“Fuck you.” This time, the invective came with a flicker of a smile.

Will wanted to shout in victory and fist-pump.

But Oakley’s smile faded before it could go anywhere. “I like Notting Hill because it’s fun and quirky and…and I like to walk through the parks and the markets.” He turned his face out to the hallway again, unable to hide the pinch of despair.

It surprised Will to find that he wanted to reassure Oakley that he’d get to enjoy all that again. He wanted to tell the man that this was all a bad dream, and in a few weeks, after the swelling of his spinal compression went down, he would wake up, bound out of bed, and be right as rain.

It didn’t help anything that before he could scramble for some other kind of placating words, Heath and Stanley stepped out of the new gym room and headed down the hall and into Oakley’s room.

“Well, it’s as set up as it’s going to get,” Heath said, clapping his hands together and doing the thing Will had seen a hundred other brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers do before by smiling and pretending Christmas had come early. “If you’d like to take a look in there and see if there’s any other equipment my brother might need, I’d be grateful. You can make a list, and I’ll ensure he gets it.”

“Don’t you have anything better to do than fuss over me all day?” Oakley barked, right back to where they’d started where his attitude was concerned. “Don’t you have a wedding to plan and a television show to produce?”

“Er, I do,” Heath mumbled, sending Will a guilty look. “But you are my first priority.”

“No,” Oakley corrected him. “Aubrey and Eugenie are your first priority. So fuck off and go take care of them. And you fuck off, too, while you’re at it,” he told Will. “This therapy session is done.”

Will fought the urge to sigh as he slid off the bed and stood. They’d been doing so well, making actual progress. It wasn’t lost on him that that progress had evaporated the moment Heath stepped into the room. Family had a weird effect on people.

“I’ll be back again tomorrow,” Will said, heading for the door. “Stanley here will take good care of you until the night nurse comes.”

Oakley turned away, having some sort of sulk.

“Are you certain you’re alright with treating my brother as a private patient?” Heath asked as he walked Will downstairs. “You’re certain the hospital is alright with it?”

“You’re the one who called for a favor from the Brotherhood, or so I understand it,” Will said as they reached the ground floor. “You know we all bend the rules to help our own.”

“That’s what Dr. Armitage said,” Heath said, pushing a hand anxiously through his hair. “I just want to make certain you’re alright with it. Oakley has always been a handful, but this has made him ten times worse.”

“I can handle it,” Will said with confidence that bordered on cockiness. “He’s a tough customer, but I can tame Oakley.”

“As long as you’re sure,” Heath said, his brow furrowed.

Will wasn’t sure. He wasn’t sure of anything. All he knew was that he had seen something in Oakley from the start, something that was starting to crack open between the two of them. It had promise, Will knew, and he wanted to know more.