Page 16 of You Can Make Me
“Your feet okay? No pins and needles?”
“No, actually. This feels…good.”
I sucked in a breath for luck. “Good enough I could massage them?”
He quirked one shoulder. “I guess. You don’t have to.”
God, I wanted to. It was killing me to not touch him. If this was all I could do for him, I’d do it. I hadn’t touched him since he’d been able to shower on his own, which was about a month ago. I was a starving man in his presence.
I glided through the water to sit in front of him and reached for his left foot. The minerals in the water made his skin silky as I ran my hands gently over the ball of his foot, his arch, and his heel. “How’s that? Can you take a little more pressure?”
“Yes.”
His voice was hoarse when he answered me, and I smiled to myself in the darkness. He’d once told me that foot rubs were the way to his heart, and that mine were good enough to get me plenty of other benefits. He’d been so playful then. As I gently ran my thumbs along his tight tendons, I couldn’t help but mourn what we’d lost, just as I mourned the loss of his exuberance, his confidence.
Cooper, are you even in there?
“Can I ask what you’ve been working on?” Sometimes he’d shared his stories with me…in the past. I was probably pushing my luck asking—this was the most we’d talked since I’d broken him out of rehab—but he’d been spending hours on the computer, mostly cursing when the internet would crap out. I really needed to figure out how to fix it for him.
“I don’t know. Not really a story. I thought about an exploration of the purpose and function of rehabilitation centers and whether they truly meet the needs of patients, but it’s tooclose to home. I don’t want to think about all that, but then I was doing other research…”
“Yeah? Anything I can help with?”
He exhaled, and I felt tension ease in his foot. Maybe this would start to loosen him up.
“Not really. Just looking at material about success rates for scar removal treatments.” He sighed. “There’s not a lot out there other than practitioner websites.”
It was my turn to exhale.Thank God.
“Any luck finding someone promising?” I didn’t want to press too much or he’d freeze up.
Another one-shoulder shrug. “I don’t know. There are a ton of so-called experts, but it’s hard to tell from the pictures. You can’t trust they’re not doctored.”
“Can’t hurt to call, right? Maybe we can set up a phone consult?—”
“Denny.”
I opened my mouth to argue, but then I sighed. “Sorry. I know you’d rather I don’t help unless asked.” At least it wasn’t Detective Hamilton.
He leaned forward a bit, bearing his weight onto his hands. “I’m just…I’m not sure I’m ready for more disappointment.”
The first doctor he’d spoken with at the hospital after he woke up said he could absolutely do some work on Cooper’s facial scars to lessen the severity, but there was no way to completely remove them. He also advised that Cooper wait six to twelve months, until he’d fully healed, and that suggestion had left him distraught.
The second doctor offered laser treatment that couldpossiblyremove eighty percent of the scars’ appearance. Cooper was frustrated, saying he didn’t want to go through painful procedures if they weren’tgoing to work.
“I don’t blame you.” I released his left foot and reached for his right. I sensed the anger building and braced myself for impact.
“But you think it doesn’t matter.”
“I never said that.” I knew better than to even engage, but it wasn’t in my nature to not be honest, especially with Cooper. “I said they’re nothing you need to hide. You were attacked. Everyone knows what happened. The scars prove you survived, andthat’swhat matters.”
This was the point in this argument when he usually blew up or shut up. I tentatively worked his arch while I waited.
“Sometimes I don’t feel like I survived.”
I stilled my hands and gazed up at him, wishing for a little more light. Wishing his hair wasn’t so damned long that I couldn’t see his eyes when he dipped his head like that.
“How do you mean?”
