Page 76 of Playing for Keeps (Checkmate 4)

20

Riley

Passage

It was late January before I got to stand on my own two feet again, then the weeks zoom by while Andi helps me get used to my reality. Linc wasn’t wrong; I’ve been in his office at least once a week since the first day, and some weeks, two or three times.

It’s not all rainbows and roses. I wasn’t given a leg and now my life magically reverts back to how it was before November. I still use my crutches every single day, and some days, my ass ends back up in my wheelchair. I attend physical therapy sessions most days – some ordered by my doctors, others ordered by Andi. Thankfully, the latter kind are also hosted by Andi, and often, when I impress her, she shows her excitement in ways most PT clients couldn’t even dream about.

My dick isn’t broken anymore.

I don’t know what was wrong with it. I don’t know what fixed it. I suspect it was all psychological and my own insecurities about my missing leg, but Andi and her pot brownies unlocked the door I was shut behind, and now I don’t even have to give my dick a pep talk on the way to the bedroom.

I can handle everything else – my leg, my job, my mom, my relationship – I can take anything on, so long as I get to keep Andi. And she swears she’s sticking, so, I’m working hard to be worthy.

Sex is not the same as before – it’s not as wild, as rough, as spontaneous. I don’t get to pick her up or sweep her off her feet, but having a new leg means I can fuck her against the couch again. They never took my knee, so I can be on top just like I used to be. I can do almost everything I used to, and considering that’s legions better than what IthoughtI’d be capable of, I’m learning to accept my bitterness at what was taken, and turning it into appreciation for what I still have.

And what I have now is more than I used to have, because now I have Andi.

I’m not sure how we ended up in this odd relationship; I wanted to keep her forever, she left. I asked her to leave, she announced our engagement and started squatting in my home.

Andi has moved in and taken over the master bathroom. Her clothes are in my closet, and her bobby pins leave rust marks on my sink if she leaves them too long and they get wet. Her pig sleeps with my cat every night, and wears tutus three days out of seven.

Andi makes me herAndi specialon the weekends, and egg white omelets on weekdays – because she’s a lot more responsible than she lets on, and knows a strong human body cannot live on sugar alone.

She works whatever the hell hours she wants to at the gym, and only around my schedule. Every morning, she works with me, helps me stand, helps me walk, helps me traverse stairs. She had the ramps taken away and burned the moment I showed I could climb the steps, so now when I’m extra tired, I have to sit and drag my ass up; because somehow that’s less humiliating than ramps.

I don’t often leave my house except for trips to Linc’s office, simply because I’m not comfortable with my new leg. I walk around the house fine, but going to the store is a whole other ballgame, and if I slip in aisle three and have to rely on a little old lady to help me stand, I might just kill myself.

I guess I’m not as perfectly adjusted as I’d like to be, but I’m way better than I was just a couple months ago. At least I’m not asking Dee to leave anymore.

I take one day at a time. One step at a time.

And that’s good enough for me, because at least I’m here, at least I’m living. I could’ve been dead. It took me months after discharge from the hospital to realize how close to death I came.

Too fucking close.

Alex has come by the house a couple times in the early months of this year; a few times in January, a few more in February, a couple more in March. He cares about how I’m doing, he asks me to come back to work because he doesn’t want to see a good cop down – his words – but each time he’d drive up and I’d catch sight of the cruiser in the driveway, I’d skip-hop toward the couch and sit my bitter ass down.

I don’t want to walk in front of him. I don’t want fake high-fives and pity job offers when we both know he doesn’t actually want me back. I know it. He knows it. And I’m kind enough to keep declining his offers rather than make him work with someone he doesn’t trust.

I was a traitor under his outfit. I was essentially a rat for the Bishop brothers, and though he’s since found out they were cops and not thugs, he still looks at me the way I knew all along he would; he doesn’t trust me.

He asks me back because he figures it’s the right thing to do. He’s conflicted because I went down while on shift, while on his watch, and while standing in front of the women he considers family. But to have me back would be to willingly hire a man to run through doors and protect his six when that guy is capable of – and has – lied to him for months.

There’s no room for that shit in the cop world, and it’s not like I can run anymore, anyway.

“Knock, knock?” Right on schedule, Alex thumps a heavy fist on my front door and kicks his boots against the concrete steps to dislodge any mud he might be carting around. Dee twirls around the house, cleaning up after Nacho, tidying whatever mess I’ve made, cooking my food, and folding my laundry. She whirls down the hall and through the kitchen.

She knows this routine now, but surprisingly, she doesn’t fight me on it. I thought she would. I thought she’d insist I go back to work, because I’m a cop, and that’s what I’msupposedto do. I worked hard to become a cop, and my savings will only last so long; all reasons not to sit on my ass any longer.

No woman wants to support a jobless bum.

But I guess, with her easy disposition about everything else in life, she doesn’t bring it up, she never makes me feel inadequate; I figure she’s going with the same motto she’s always had: it’ll all work out when it’s supposed to.

On the way past the couch in little denim shorts and an oversized Rollin Gym sweatshirt, she leans close and drops a long kiss on my lips. “Be nice to him, Rook. Nobody likes a grump.”

“Don’t wanna.”

---