Page 12 of Necessary Roughness

He heard the text noise on his phone go off. He pulled the phone up and hit the text to see who it was. Star sent him a nude pic. The phone slipped out of his hand before he could delete it. One of the doctors standing around his bed grabbed the phone and held it up so everyone could see.

“She must be friendly,” one of the other doctors said.

“It’s my ex. Please give me the phone so I can delete it.”

The surgeon still in golf wear said, “All I ever get from my wife are grocery lists.”

Tanner managed to get his eyes to coordinate long enough to hit Delete. The doctors decided they had somewhere else to be.

Finally, there was blessed silence. He’d already been told he was having surgery in the morning. He was so high on whatever it was they gave him that he could have sworn he heard Jordan’s voice and felt a smaller, cool hand squeeze his.

“I heard you’re going to be here for a few days,” she said.

“Yeah,” he muttered. He could smell her perfume too, the pear and flower scent he hadn’t been able to forget. They must have given him the good shit.

“Your family is on their way here from the airport too.” He wasn’t sure how she’d gotten that information, but he’d puzzle that one out later. He felt her sigh brush his cheek like the whisper of fairy-godmother wings. “I wanted to tell you I’ll see you when you’re a little better.”

“No you won’t,” he said.

He heard her musical laugh. She probably had to go back to the forest to hang with the elves or something. “Oh, I will,” she responded. “Rest.”

He wasn’t sure how much time passed in the haze of more pain meds, nurses who wouldn’t let him get any damn sleep, and hearing his mom’s knitting needles clicking away while she made him another sweater or something. He opened his eyes to see twilight stealing through the large window to his left. His mom’s knitting lay on the recliner next to his hospital bed. She and his dad must have gone to get some food.

Harrison strode into Tanner’s room seconds later.

“You’re awake, bro.” He reached out for Tanner’s mom’s knitting, placed it on the rolling table in front of Tanner’s bed, and sat down in the chair. He held up the strip of pudding snacks. “The nurse gave me some food. Want one?”

“I’m not really a pudding guy.” He rubbed one hand over his face. “I thought I heard Jordan’s voice. Was she here?”

“You’re calling her by her actual first name now?” Harrison ripped the foil lid off one of the pudding containers and licked it.

Tanner didn’t dignify that with an answer.

“She was here. She wanted to find out if you had to have another surgery. She didn’t stay long.” Harrison licked the spoon he was using. “By the way, she met your mom. You’re in big trouble.”

“Huh?”

“Your mom spent the rest of the afternoon talking about why you should date someone as sweet and charming as she is.”

“Did you tell my mother that she spent an hour yesterday torturing me?”

“Your mom doesn’t seem to care about that.”

***

SEVERAL DAYS AFTER Tanner’s wipeout in the shower, Jordan went to the rehab facility Tanner was staying in. According to his surgeons, the repairs to his knee were in better shape than they had hoped for when the inflammation receded. Tanner had been resting for the past week or so, and he’d been given the thumbs-up for PT again. Marco had invaded her work area that morning to tell her that the surgeon had requested Jordan work with Tanner again.

“His surgeon? Why? There must be someone else more qualified that would make him happier.”

“Does anything really make him happy?” Marco said.

“He still wants to work with you,” Jordan said.

“That’s not going to happen.”

The lure of extra money warred with the knowledge that the further away she got from Tanner, the better it was for her. The cost of living in Seattle was unrelenting. She loved the area, her family was here, and she’d prefer to stay despite the skyrocketing expenses. Several of her friends had moved back in with their parents after graduating from college and were still living there. If she saved enough she might be able to come up with a down payment for a condo the size of a shoe box in Auburn. The best part of buying a place was that she’d never have to deal with a roommate again unless she wanted to. Plus, the constant filling out of rental applications and credit checks weren’t cheap, either. Her parents had made sure that she graduated without a mountain of student loan debt. If she stayed on track and didn’t go nuts in the shoe department at Nordstrom’s Anniversary Sale anytime soon, there was always hope.

If she was brutally honest with herself (and maybe she should try that for a change), the extra money had almost nothing to do with the fact she was still working with Tanner. The more time she spent with him, the more she realized that he wasn’t such a bad guy, which was scarier to contemplate than an evening spent locked in one of those escape-room things with all her ex-roommates.

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