7. Emery

7

EMERY

I looked up from the text conversation I’d had going with Rowdy and hid a laugh behind my hand. It’d barely been an hour, but there was Woody with a white head wrap holding ice packs to his jaw as Doug helped him out to the lobby.

“I normally send patients to my guy who specializes in root canals, but...” Doug gestured helplessly at the man in question.

Woody looked so pathetic that I wanted to kiss his forehead and tell him it would all be okay. Knowing that would get me kicked in the nuts, I went for the joke instead.

“Yeah, there’s no way you’re getting Woody to wait for a specialist. He’d sooner go after that tooth with a pair of pliers.”

“Don’t talk about me like I’m not here,” Woody slurred as he joined us in the waiting room. “I’m not an idiot.”

I rubbed his shoulder. “Sweetheart, we’re gossiping about your stubbornness, not your intelligence.” I turned to Doug. “So, what? You did the root canal? Can I assume you put on a temporary crown and I’ll have to make sure this one comes back for the permanent one in a couple weeks?”

Woody glared up at me. “I’m not some helpless child. I can come back on my own.”

“Yeah, right,” Doug and I said at the same time.

Woody brought his hand to his ice pack. “I hate the both of you so much right now.”

Doug laughed. “Actually, I’ll have his crown by Friday.”

“We’ll be back on Friday, then,” I promised, giving Woody a serious look.

“Whatever. Rowdy can drive me.”

“Rowdy’s going to Austin for the weekend, and he’s leaving early on Friday morning,” I happily informed him.

Honestly, I shouldn’t have been poking him in this condition, but I loved the idea of him needing my help, as minimal as this was.

“Why is Rowdy going to Austin?” Woody asked, irritation flashing in his pretty eyes. “Doesn’t he have a job?”

“He does, but the guys at Rebel Sky are going to a gay rodeo event in town and asked Rowdy if he wanted to join them.”

“Fine.”

Doug handed me a stack of prescriptions. “I’ve already called Clovis, and he said they’re ready to be picked up. Make sure he takes these with food.”

Woody grabbed the prescriptions from my hand. “I can read instructions. I don’t need you to make sure of anything.”

“Of course,” I demurred, holding the door open for him.

That netted me another glare, and I shared a wave with Doug.

“Call me if he’s in any pain.”

“Will do.”

I got us situated in the car and headed toward the pharmacy.

“You don’t have to look so smug,” Woody mumbled, adjusting his ice wrap.

“I’m not feeling smug, so I have no idea what you mean,” I answered, suppressing a grin.

“There.” He pointed at my face. “Why are you smiling?”

I drove for a bit, not sure how to explain it.

Woody crossed his arms over his bony chest. “Smug asshole.”

A few minutes later, I pulled into the pharmacy lot and parked the car. Facing him, I noticed his wrap coming loose so I undid my belt and reached across, pulling it apart and re-velcroing it together. Despite the frustration flaring in his eyes, he didn’t stop me.

“I’m not being smug, I promise,” I finally said, pointing to my phone. “Rowdy warned me that you get nervous at the dentist’s office, but I noticed you weren’t nervous with me in there.”

“That’s because you and Doug were pissin’ me off,” he grumped. “And Rowdy had no right talking about that anyway.”

I was about to laugh at his expression when his eyes shifted off to the side.

“Hey,” I said, rubbing his arm. “Rowdy didn’t go into detail, he just said that you had some unpleasant experiences as a kid.”

“Yeah, well.” He reached for the door handle. “That’s in the past.”

I grabbed his wrist, stopping him. “I’ll take care of the prescriptions for you.”

“I don’t need your help,” he said, pulling his wrist from my hand.

“I know, Woody,” I said, softening my voice. “I know you don’t need my help, but this is what neighbors do. Now lay back and rest and let me get this.”

He hesitated, like maybe he was going to fight me, but then winced, bringing his hand back to his jaw. After another moment of stubbornness, he sank back against the headrest.

“Fine.”

I refrained from pumping my fist, but this felt like a win. I hopped out of the car before he could change his mind and went inside. Clovis was ready for me, so it didn’t take long to grab the prescriptions. In the short time it’d taken for me to go and come back, however, Woody had fallen asleep.

He looked like a dental patient in an 80s romcom, and his usually disgruntled expression had softened in his sleep.

That was the conundrum of this man. He made you want to strangle him and comfort him all in one go. One thing was for sure: I wasn’t about to drop him off at the cabin to recover on his own. So, I quietly drove him to my house and roused him enough to get him inside and set up on the couch. I made sure his head was elevated on a soft pillow as I cocooned the rest of him in warm blankets.

“Why’m I on your couch?” he slurred, sliding his hand between the blankets to take the glass of water and tablets from me. “What about Bandit?”

“I’m keeping an eye on you,” I said, lifting my chin. “And Rowdy’s visiting with Bandit as we speak.”

He scowled but followed the silent directive to take the pills. He winced as he swallowed, and a bit of water dribbled down his chin, but I was there with a hand towel to wipe away the water.

“Don’t need your help,” he muttered, too sleepy to follow up his words with any meaningful action.

“Of course you don’t, sweetheart,” I said, laughing softly when his brows stitched at the endearment.

“Not your sweetheart. ’M my own man.”

He snuggled more deeply into the nest I’d made for him.

“I know.”

“’S’right,” he said, testy even as his eyes grew heavy. He nodded off, then jerked awake, breathing like a drunk person as he looked around. “I hate this place a little less now that you and Stevie are here.”

“Why would you hate my house?”

Ignoring my question, he asked, “Why do you do everything on your own? Even fatherhood.”

I doubted he’d remember this conversation, so I went with the truth. “Because my dad died, and I learned not to depend on other people,” I said, running my fingers through his hair.

“Mm.”

He pushed his head against my palm, a wordless request, and I stroked his hair until his breathing evened out.

Just as I got up, he murmured, “You deserve people, too, Em.”

I froze, not sure if he had any idea what he’d just said. They were certainly the kindest words he’d ever said to me.

Two seconds later, a snore filled the room.

Putting his words out of my head, I ran upstairs to run a load of laundry.

I mostly let him sleep for the rest of the afternoon, waking him every once in a while to refresh the ice in his wrap or to give him more pain meds. After retreating to the kitchen to cook dinner, I returned to find the blankets neatly folded on the couch, and the man who’d invaded my dreams gone like he’d never been there to begin with.

Woody opened the door and stepped out on to the front porch, his expression agitated.

“I told you, I don’t need you to go with me to get the crown,” he said as Bandit wove between his legs.

“Yes, I do.” I bent to scratch Bandit’s head, and his tail thumped against the weathered wood. “Otherwise, you’ll try to make do with the temporary crown, and that’s not happening on my watch.”

Based on the way he thinned his lips, I’d been at least partially right.

“Fine.”

He followed me to my car, cursing about electric vehicles under his breath as he dropped into the passenger seat and pulled the seat belt across his chest. He was trying to act like he was fine, but the anxiety from before seemed to vibrate off him.

He started tapping his thighs with his fingertips, getting louder and louder as I made my way down the steep drive.

“Do you wanna talk about why you hate the dentist so much?” I asked as I waited for the gate to open.

“Not before going to the dentist, no.”

“Okay.” I glanced over at him, noting the tension in his jaw. “I don’t know if this helps, but you’ve already been through the worst part. Fitting the permanent crown will be relatively painless.”

“Doubt it,” he muttered, pressing the window button. Down, then up, then down again.

Instead of pulling onto the highway, I put the car in Park and turned to face him.

“What?”

The caustic edge to his question solidified the fact that he was terrified, even though he knew Doug to be a gentle dentist.

“I would never lie to you about something like that,” I said evenly.

He glanced in my direction, avoiding my eyes before returning his focus to the window button. Up, down, up, down.

“What do you mean?” he asked quietly.

I eased my posture and softened my voice. “If I knew that this was a painful procedure, I wouldn’t lie to you about it. Especially knowing how much you distrust the dentist.”

The tension in his shoulders, which’d kept them up near his ears, released a little. He pressed the window button a few more times.

“I suppose you wouldn’t,” he said, his voice now barely audible above the cars passing in front of us.

“In fact, I’m glad that Doug is openly bi. I’m usually pretty confident in my queerness, but dental work is one of those super vulnerable situations for populations who experience discrimination in other areas of life.”

He rolled the window all the way up and stopped fidgeting with the button. I was pretty sure he’d already figured out I was gay, either from gaydar or town gossip, but this was the first time I’d acknowledged it out loud.

His eyes tracked down my body before meeting mine. “What could you possibly know about vulnerability?”

I ran my hand through my hair, not sure if he’d remember the conversation we’d had when he was on pain pills. Might as well.

“My dad died unexpectedly when I was seventeen, and every minute I wasn’t in school, at practice, or in a game, I was working to help my mom out. There were months where the only reason we had the mortgage paid was because I’d put in the overtime.”

“Sorry to hear about that.”

I lifted a shoulder. “I’d already had colleges scouting me, but I knew I had to keep that part of me hidden, or I’d be fucked.”

“Did something happen?” he asked, trying to act uninterested even as he cocked his ear in my direction.

“You could say that.” I cleared my throat. “I’d had a list of colleges I wanted to attend, and the scout from my top choice hit on me after watching me practice. Made it clear that if I did as he asked, he’d make sure I had a full ride scholarship.”

Woody’s jaw tightened. “Son of a bitch.”

I nodded in full agreement. “Yep. I got out of there, but then spent a solid week unable to sleep, certain I’d fucked up.”

He brought his brows together. “How is that your fuck up?”

“I was certain that Mom and I were going to be homeless because I hadn’t given that asshole what he wanted. After a week, he reached out to me and said my scholarship was pending review.”

“Pending sleeping with him, more like it,” Woody grumbled.

“Exactly.” I let out a long breath. “And I’d basically decided that I’d do it. I wanted to throw up every time I thought about responding to him, but I was going to have to because I was stuck, you know?”

“Shit. Did you . . .?”

I shook my head. “The next day Austin came through with a full ride.” I wiped some invisible dust from the dashboard. “So, yeah. I do know what it means to be vulnerable.”

He went quiet for a few moments and I bit my lip to prevent myself from filling the silence.

“So . . . You know how he clocked you, even though you were trying to keep it quiet?”

I nodded.

“Did that ever happen before you knew you were gay?”

“Yeah, of course,” I answered, not sure where he was going. “I’m pretty sure my high school coach and my mom knew before I did.”

“But they were cool about it?” he asked, fiddling with the window control again.

“Yeah.” I watched him play with the window for a few seconds, then asked, “Did that happen to you? Did you get clocked before you knew you were gay?”

He rolled up the window, then looked out of it for several seconds before answering.

“Pretty sure that the old dentist in town had me figured out.”

I shifted uncomfortably. “Did he hurt you?”

“Maybe?” Woody shook his head, seeming to search for the words. “I mean...I had no proof, so I never said nothin’, but I suspected he didn’t prevent pain for me the same way he did for others.”

Thinking of my daughter, I was instantly enraged for him. I wanted to pull him into my arms, to reassure him he was safe, but I knew he’d reject that outright.

I softened my tone. “Impossible to put words to something like that when you’re a kid.”

He let out a breath, like maybe it’d been trapped in his chest for years. “Yeah.” He gave a dry chuckle. “You’d think I’d have been used to it with how my dad treated me, but no.”

God, this man was breaking my heart.

“Anyway,” he said before I could put my foot in it. “We should probably take off. Don’t want to make Doug wait.”

“Good call.” I pulled out onto the highway and got up to speed quickly. “And hey, if all goes well, we’ll do what me and Stevie do after a difficult doctor’s visit—we’ll go for some ice cream.”

He snorted. “Fuck off.”

I smiled. “You’re welcome, Woody.”