“Ah.”
Will walked back in. “You’re welcome for feeding your dog. She’s acting like she hasn’t been fed in days.”
“Go easy on him,” Price said. Then he looked at me. “What happened?”
I shook my head and flopped back onto the cushions, closing my eyes. “We broke up. She’s leaving. Or she’s left. I don’t know.”
“Shit, I’m sorry,” Price said.
Will grunted, which in Will-speak was the equivalent of saying he was sorry, too.
“Yeah, well, another one I couldn’t make stay.”
“Better than Will here,” Price said. “This loser can’t even get a woman to look his way.”
Will punched Price. “Shut up. And at least I try, which is better than we can say for your emotionally stunted ass.”
“Ooh, burn,” Price said, waggling his eyes.
I was too tired for this shit. “Could you two leave?” I asked. “I’ll go to the station. Just…leave.”
Will studied me, and damned if he didn’t look like he actually cared. “Really?”
I sighed. “Yes, really.”
“And you’ll clean up this disaster of a house?” he prompted.
“Eh.”
“Will you at least shower before you come in?” Price asked.
I shrugged. “Sure.”
“Call it a win,” Price said to Will. “Let’s go. I want ice cream.”
“Seriously?” Will followed Price out the door. “You haven’t even had lunch yet.”
“So?”
They kept it up as they left, and I sagged in relief at the silence that followed. Daisy looked at me, her brown eyes assessing whether I was going to actually move.
Broken heart or not, I had a job to do. One that sometimes dealt with literal hearts. I hauled myself up and got in the shower.
29
DEVON 3 MONTHS, 4 DAYS TO GO
IT’D BEEN A week.
The longest week of my fucking life.
Seven days. Seven nights.
I’d wallowed. Done nothing else. Just…wallowed.
I had managed to get myself to the appointment I’d forgotten about in my haste to skip town, so here I was, mouth slightly open as Dr. Osmond cut the last of the wires out of my mouth.
“All done.” Dr. Osmond smiled triumphantly. He held up the final piece of wire and it glinted in the fluorescent light, shining like a combination torture device and second-place medal at the same time.
Eleven weeks. Eleven tortuous, life-altering weeks, and I was unwired.
I opened my mouth and moved my jaw around gingerly. Freedom. “Oh my god. I can open my mouth.” A smile ghosted across my face. “And I sound completely normal again.”
The nurse raised me up, and I looked at the doctor. “I’m done, right?”
He looked over his shoulder at the new person who’d walked in. “Well, you’re done with me.” He gestured at the woman. “This is Emily, your physical therapist. She’ll take it from here. And don’t forget: your stomach hasn’t dealt with solid food in a long time, so you’ll need to ease back into it.”
He left and I looked at the therapist. “Hi.” I tried to offer a smile.
She gave me a sympathetic one in return. “I’m Emily. And these,” she said, brandishing a stack of popsicle sticks, “are about to be your best friends—or worst enemies. It’ll probably depend on the day.”
The nurse took that as her cue to leave, and Emily schooled me in the finer points of popsicle stick physical therapy. “Your goal is to be able to stack three of them, sideways, on top of each other. That’s a little more than two inches wide.”
We tried for one, and that wasn’t so bad. But trying to open my jaw much more than that was a joke. After getting all the instructions from Emily and signing a million pieces of paper, I finally met up with Ceci in the waiting room.
Ceci stood when I finally walked into the waiting room. “Let me see that wire-free smile!”
I flashed her the pearly whites.
