Page 73 of The Boss Problem

34

CHLOE

Feeling concerned, I spun around and opened the door.

Until a few moments ago, I couldn’t wait to have Sean be powerless under my touch. To hear him when he came. I wanted him with an intensity that terrified me.

But now, all thoughts about sex fled my mind. Henry was back. I ran out of my bedroom and saw movement in the kitchen.

As I watched, a white kitchen plate went crashing to the ground, breaking into pieces before it was followed by another.

Crash! Crash!

In another moment, clear glasses flew across the room and hit the wall, splintering to pieces.

In the center, Henry sat slumped in his wheelchair. His chest was heaving, his nostrils were flared, and he wore an expression of righteous anger. He moved his wheelchair over the broken pieces and reached for another plate from the counter when I called out to him.

“Henry,” I said, stepping over the shards of glass and ceramics on the floor as I went up to him. I knelt down and put an arm around his shoulders.

He didn’t look at me, and I knew instantly this was one of Henry’s worst outbursts.

I ran through my mental list of what could have possibly set him off. College … grades … classes? Nope. I couldn’t think of any reason any of those would upset him so much. But … was it something to do with his friends perhaps?

It had happened in the past. Henry’s accessibility issues meant waiting for the infrequent bus for him to get around instead of the subway, and sometimes, some of his friends “forgot” to invite him to things. It made me mad, but Henry usually put on a brave, understanding front.

“What is it?” I asked, kneeling down to look him in the eye. “Are you okay?”

“No, I’m not okay,” he announced, spinning around and staring at the fridge. “I’m stuck and tired of being me.”

I followed his gaze and saw a picture on the fridge. A photograph of him with some of his old school friends was taped to it—good friends who had moved out of New York recently.

“Ronan and the others from class went to the mall and asked me to join them. We took the bus, and it was good. No issues there. The problems arose when we got to one of the shops that Ronan wanted to buy a shirt from.”

I closed my eyes. I had an idea what could have happened.

“The displays on the rack were too close to one another,” Henry explained, confirming what I’d feared. His pupils dilated as his fingers clenched on the next kitchen plate, still whole. “A rack of shirts caught in my wheel, and I tried to maneuver my way past it, but I toppled the entire rack.”

It wasn’t the first time this had occurred.

I watched, wondering if he was going to fling this plate on the ground too.

“You know what the worst part was?” Henry continued, the knuckles of his hands white as he clenched his fist around the ceramic plate.

The way someone reacted to him, I guessed.

“It was what the saleswoman said,” Henry raged. “She spoke to me like I was a freaking five-year-old!Oh, aren’t you clumsy?She told me I needed to be more careful, but I could see from her face that she was definitely irritated and wanted to say much more.”

I hung my head.

“I’m tired of people being condescending to me just because I’m in a damn wheelchair. I’m not even spoken to as an adult!”

He raised his arm, ready to fling this plate on the ground, and I retreated, raising my arm in front of my face when I heard a noise behind us.

When I looked up, I saw a shadow darken the hallway and saw Sean. He had heard everything.

“You’ll want to hold off on that,” Sean said, looking at Henry as he walked in and pulled me a few steps back. He saw Henry’s questioning look. “I don’t want the broken pieces to ricochet off the wall and hit your sister,” he said, his arm around my waist.

“I’m Will, by the way,” he said, extending an arm to the surprised Henry, who took it, shaking it in a stupefied way that told me Henry had completely forgotten about my date. “I was out on a date with Chloe, and I’m just dropping her off.”

---