Healing His Heart Read online

  Healing His Heart

  Love In Three Lakes: Book 4

  Sasha Goldie

  Contents

  1. Tyler

  2. Patrick

  3. Tyler

  4. Patrick

  5. Tyler

  6. Patrick

  7. Tyler

  8. Patrick

  9. Tyler

  10. Patrick

  11. Tyler

  12. Patrick

  13. Tyler

  14. Patrick

  15. Tyler

  16. Patrick

  17. Tyler

  18. Patrick

  19. Tyler

  20. Patrick

  21. Tyler

  22. Patrick

  23. Tyler

  24. Patrick

  25. Tyler

  26. Patrick

  27. Tyler

  28. Patrick

  29. Tyler

  Protecting His Innocence

  Free Bonus Chapters!

  Connect With Sasha Goldie!

  Healing His Heart

  1

  Tyler

  “Tyler, darling, are you sure you don’t want to just stay with us?”

  If my mother tried to convince me not to move out one more time, I was going to strangle her. “Mom. I am twenty-seven years old. I’ve been here for two weeks, and I feel like I’m in high school again.”

  “Well, when you’re here, I can take care of you.” She packed the last of my clothes and set the bag on the bed beside me.

  “I don’t need you to take care of me. Besides, I’ll have a nurse.”

  She gave a guilt-inducing humph that only a mother could do so convincingly.

  “Come on, Mom, don’t make me feel bad.” I hobbled out of my childhood bedroom while she pulled the last suitcase.

  “You’re not even out of the wheelchair full-time,” she chided. I pressed myself against the wall so she could go past me.

  “Just for long distances. I’m getting stronger every day.”

  “And the seizures?”

  “The dog.” She hurried past me again, going back into my room for the bag on the bed. I continued on my slow progression through the house.

  Once my dad loaded the last of the bags into his truck, he helped me climb into the passenger seat. My mom insisted. “I don’t need to ride in the front. You ride in the front, let everyone see you, home from the hospital.”

  “I’ve been home for two weeks, and the whole town saw me at the fundraiser.” I had to get checked out of the hospital to go to that but seeing as it was a fundraiser for my service dog, I’d felt like I should be there.

  “Everyone is meeting us at the apartment,” Mom said, drumming her fingers on the side of the door. “I hope I brought enough drinks for them all.”

  “Mom, stop worrying.” One of these days I was going to get my hands on a Valium and throw it in her mouth while it was open, flapping some concern or another. She could’ve found something to worry about in heaven.

  “It’s my job to worry. If I didn’t, who would?”

  My father rolled his eyes but didn’t comment.

  We pulled up to the back of the diner, and I looked at the stairs that led up to the apartment. The building had two sets, one inner and one outer. They met at the front door to the upstairs apartment. Either way, I had to climb them.

  “Darling, how are you going to go up and down stairs every time you want to leave? You can stay with your father and me a few months while you get stronger. We would love it dearly.”

  My father grunted. He liked having me out of the house as much as I liked being out of the house. Not that we didn’t get along. But they raised me to be strong-willed, opinionated, and bossy. Was it my fault that I did exactly what they wanted me to do? No.

  I ignored the fact that I wouldn’t be carrying a single thing up to my new apartment and focused on hefting my ass up those stairs.

  Shuffling toward them, my parents ran up and down around me, taking two loads up before I even made it to put my hand on the railing. “Hey, let me help you. Don’t try to climb those alone.” Max’s voice surprised me. I thought he had to be at some training thing.

  Chuckling, I let him give me an assist. I was independent, and my parents were driving me nuts, but I had no desire to fall down the stairs. “Hey, I’m not too proud to turn down help.” I hadn’t known him long, but with the selection of my service dog, we’d gotten a bit closer. Plus, he was Carson’s main squeeze, so I had to keep an eye on him. I’d taken the gays of Three Lakes on to raise a long time ago, and I took my job very seriously.

  Plus, Max knew what it was like to recover from a debilitating injury. I’d been lucky. I could still walk, hadn’t lost any limbs, and actually woke from my coma. He hadn’t been so lucky, losing a leg, but he didn’t let it keep him down.

  He took my arm and I leaned on him, going up the stairs one at a time and panting between. It took far too long, and by the time we got to the top, my legs burned, and I felt dizzy.

  “When does this get easier?” I asked, trying not to complain, but really, I just wanted to cry. Maybe my mom was right. Going up and down the stairs would be awful.

  “Faster than you think,” he said as he helped me hobble into the apartment. “At first, it seems like an eternity. You’ve only been out of the hospital for two weeks, and awake for what, three?”

  “Four,” I grumbled as I sank onto the couch, grateful that they’d already brought it from storage. “Physical therapy let me go when I could walk down the hall on my own, and I figured that meant I’d be up and at ‘em in no time.”

  Max sat beside me and gave me a sympathetic smile. I didn’t mind his sympathy. He’d been through worse. I minded everyone else’s. “Well, did you start moving around as soon as you got home? Start pushing yourself?”

  I gave him a level stare. “I caught up on every show I’d missed in the last three months, ate my weight in Jell-O, and updated my online dating profile.” After a snort for dramatic effect, I continued. “Not that it does anybody any good. There are no single gay men left in Three Lakes.”

  A soft voice interrupted my tirade. “I’m still here.”

  My head swung to the door, shocked and delighted to hear that voice. “Patrick? What are you doing here?”

  “I did a little finagling, and now I’m your home health nurse,” he said as he pulled a large suitcase behind him into the room.

  Patrick had been my nurse in the hospital, more of a nursing assistant, but he’d been assigned to my floor the entire time I was there and had taken amazing care of me. I’d bonded with him more than any of the registered nurses or doctors. And I trusted his opinion over theirs. If a doctor told me something, I ran it past Patrick before taking it to heart. “I’m so glad to see you. But the home health company is separate from the hospital. I ended up going with an independent place.”

  He blushed, his small face lighting up like a Christmas bulb. “Okay, so it was a lot of finagling. I applied to the company you told me you’d selected. They’re desperate for nurses, especially with my credentials. It turns out for the level of care you need, they don't have to have an RN, a CNA works.”

  Sitting up, I nearly forgot how exhausted I was. “I’m so glad. We’re going to have a lot of fun.”

  “I think so, too.”

  Though I wanted to help, my legs were rubbery. Instead, I hobbled over to my wheelchair when Ian brought it up from the truck. “Hey, thanks,” I exclaimed. “Now I can direct traffic.”

  “No problem. The box truck is here from storage, too,” he said, looking around. “Well, it needs a little work, but it’ll do, yeah?”

  “I think so.” He went out to start with the bigger furniture, and all my friends came up a little at a
time, carrying my dresser, television, bed, and all my other belongings.

  The apartment was beyond tiny, but perfect for me, especially when walking long distances wasn’t feasible. The living room and kitchen were mostly one big room with three doors leading off of them. A small pantry, a bedroom, and a bathroom.

  I was convinced it would be perfect. And I’d be right above the diner so when I was ready to start working again, I’d be close.

  After that, I was able to whiz in and out of the bedroom or kitchen, supervising my friends as they carried all my things up. Patrick stuck close to me and helped me unpack boxes in between bigger items being brought up.

  “Well,” Carson said as he set the last kitchen chair at the table. “That’s it. The truck is empty.”

  I’d gone from a two-bedroom apartment with a huge living room to a teeny-tiny almost-studio. It was a little cramped. “I’m going to have to get creative to get all this stuff organized in here.” I looked around and felt a bit overwhelmed.

  “I’ll help,” Patrick offered.

  Ian and Nate sat on the couch with a box of pizza open between them. Carson and Max were at the kitchen table with my parents, and Corey and Brady sat on the floor, leaning against boxes. Patrick had hopped up on the kitchen counter, and I was in my chair, of course. I’d ordered a bunch of pizzas to feed the horde.

  “Yoo-hoo,” Daisy called from the stairwell. “Can we come in?”

  “Come on up,” I yelled. I’d left the door open, a crisp September breeze drifting through the outer door and into my new place.

  Daisy huffed her way in. “Shoot, I’d forgotten how much of a workout those stairs can be.” Bustling her way in, she kissed the top of my head.

  Uncle Duke stood in the door and looked around with his ever-present grumpy expression. “‘Lo.”

  “Hey, Duke,” Ian called from the couch. “Y’all come sit. We’ll scoot.” Ian and Nate slid off onto the floor to give Duke and Daisy the sofa.

  “No, no, we can't stay,” Daisy said as she hugged my mom. “We just came to bring a housewarming present.”

  She handed me an envelope. “That’s for the remodels,” she said with a wink. “I know you’ll want to do some updating.” After eyeballing the lime-green linoleum in the kitchen, she grimaced. “Maybe a lot of updating.”

  Peeking into the envelope, I gasped. “Daisy, that’s too much. I love doing stuff like that, I’ll do a lot of it myself when I’m feeling better.”

  She waved her hands at me. “Don’t tell me what’s too much, I’ll do what I damn well please with my money.”

  There was a large wad of hundreds inside. I vowed to tuck it aside and buy her a vacation sometime soon with it. No way I’d spend that much money on stuff like carpet and paint. Besides, it would be months before I felt like doing it, anyway.

  “We’re not staying, you boys get back up on the couch. I’ve got the dinner shift to run and Duke here is excited to go to his poker game, aren’t you, Duke?”

  “Yep.” He nodded. Duke always looked like he’d never known a day of excitement in his life. I shook my head and smiled at my grandmother’s sister and her husband. They’d been like grandparents to me all my life. They never had kids of their own and had taken my mom in when her parents died. She’d only been twelve when it happened.

  “Now, we’re just downstairs. If you need anything, you yell.” Turning, she jumped, apparently noticing Patrick sitting on the counter for the first time. “Well, Patrick, you scared the stuffing out of me. What are you doing here?”

  “He’s my home health nurse,” I said with a broad smile.

  “Well, that’s wonderful. When will you be here?” She patted his leg. She’d taken a shine to Patrick in the hospital.

  “I’m actually live-in for now.”

  “What?” I nearly fell out of my chair in shock. “They told me the insurance wouldn’t pay for that.”

  “I arranged it. I called and explained your situation and they approved it. I just had to get a statement from the doc at the hospital.” He shrugged. “It took a bit of legwork, but wasn’t a big deal, really.”

  “Wow. I can’t believe you’d do that for me.” He’d been super sweet in the hospital, but this was above and beyond.

  “It’s nothing.”

  “Have you remembered anything yet?” Daisy asked, changing the subject.

  “No, nothing. It’s a big blank from the time I left work until I woke up a few weeks ago.”

  “It’s normal,” Patrick supplied. “There’s a good chance he’ll never remember.”

  “Well, hopefully you remember enough to get the bastard that did this,” Duke said gruffly. He looked at Brady. “Any leads?”

  “Unfortunately not,” Brady said around a mouthful of pizza. He swallowed quickly. “Sorry. The only lead I had was a suspicion, and it didn’t pan out.”

  “What suspicion?” I asked, turning my chair to look at him. “This is the first I’ve heard of it.”

  “I thought possibly Corey’s ex, John, hit you. There was no reason to connect the two, except John was hanging around a lot in that time, and going through here a lot for his drug runs.”

  Corey shook his head. “Bastard,” he muttered.

  “Exactly. I took swabs off the front of the car after we got ahold of it, but by then I think he’d washed it. So, if he did do it, the evidence was gone by then.”

  “I wish I could remember.”

  Max shrugged and looked at me. “It might not be worth it. As much as you want to get this guy, the memory of something that traumatic is pretty devastating.”

  “Yeah. But damn, I want to put this bastard behind bars.”

  Dealing with the fact that I lost several months of my life was one thing, but even worse was the recovery. It had been difficult at best, excruciating at the worst. And I had months ahead of me before I was back to my normal self.

  “Do you have any lingering complications besides the seizures?” Daisy asked, smoothing down my hair. It was just like her to say she had to run but spend another hour talking.

  “Not really. The seizures are a huge pain, of course. I was having three or four a day at first, but it’s down to one every few days now. Thus, the dog. Other than that, it's mainly weakness. They say every day you spend in bed is a week of recovery time.”

  “Who says?” Patrick asked with a look of disbelief.

  “Oh, you know,” I replied with a laugh. “They.”

  “The same ones that encourage you to try their toothpaste,” Corey quipped.

  “It may be true,” Max said. “It took me a while.”

  “You’d lost a leg, it’s a little different,” I pointed out. “I only broke my leg. And it’s healed now.”

  “Yeah, and your body lay in a bed for three months,” he retorted. “Don’t downplay what you went through. It’s okay to admit you’ll have recovery time. No shame.”

  “I’m not ashamed, don’t get me wrong. But I don’t want to make it bigger than it is.”

  “Well, that’s a good attitude. It’ll keep you from letting it overwhelm you and it might be easier to face the hard days.” Daisy smoothed my hair again. I let her, glad for the comfort. As I leaned into her hand, my mother smiled at us, and I let out a huge yawn.

  “Okay,” Patrick said, hopping off the counter. Even with me seated, he was barely taller than me, and I wasn’t so tall myself. “That’s the cue. You were all wonderful for helping, but he’s tired. Time for everyone to go home. Take the extra pizza and hit the road.”

  He said it so jokingly and in such a sweet tone of voice that nobody got mad. But, they also didn't argue. Even my mother got up. “You're in good hands, darling. Call me anytime, and I’ll come running.”

  “Of course.”

  Everyone trickled out after lots of words of encouragement and congratulations. I must’ve said thank you three dozen times before Patrick closed the door behind the last person.

  2

  Patrick

&nbs
p; I closed the door behind the last of Tyler’s friends. He needed to get to bed. Moving everything in one day was a bad idea. “Okay,” I said. “Do you want to shower before bed?”

  He squinted his eyes and looked around. “Let’s just clean up a little, then yeah.”

  “Well, I don’t know if you saw, but I brought you a shower chair. Your insurance paid for it.” I hadn’t minded helping him shower, but if I did it much more he might notice how much I enjoyed it more than I should have. He’d had a chair at the hospital, so I’d just helped him in a few times, but I’d seen a few things. As a nurse, I always saw a few things and never, ever let it affect me physically.

  Tyler was a whole different story, though. I couldn’t help myself. I loved being near him. Probably, I should’ve let him go and tried to get to know him outside of my job, but when the home health company had hired me so quickly, I’d jumped on it and the next thing I knew, I was assigned his case.

  Of course, I’d been the one to suggest they give it to me in the first place.

  I sighed as I grabbed the back of his wheelchair. “I’ll clean up while you shower. I’m pretty sure your toiletries made it in there, but if you’re missing anything, just yell.” Tyler stood slowly and walked into the bathroom on unsteady feet. “Thank you, Patrick.”

  “My pleasure.” I’d have to start pushing him to do more every day or it would be three times as long before he bounced back. And even then he might not get the stamina he’d had before unless he worked for it.

  Turning away from the bathroom, I looked at the tiny apartment with wide eyes. It would be a long few days of unpacking, but I couldn’t leave it like this long. Boxes, bags, and odds and ends sat piled up everywhere. I wasn’t sure how we’d crammed all those people in there, come to think of it.