Rising Storm (Westin Force #2) - Julie Trettel Page 0,43
I really don’t want to be on your team. I’m not even sure yet if I want to stay here.”
He looked alarmed and glanced over to Painter.
“He’s aware,” I said before he could ask.
He nodded silently. “Well, in the meantime if you have a sec, I would like to officially get your processing over with. Despite how it may appear, I don’t enjoy pissing off Archie.”
This time I looked down at Painter. “He really needs to rest.”
“Of course, if you’re okay with it, I can have Patrick meet us there and we’ll run through the formalities of it all in your apartment.”
I nodded. “If that’s okay with you, then that’s fine.”
“Give me a few minutes. We won’t be long behind you.”
Painter
Chapter 13
I wanted to murder Micah for shoving that pill in my mouth. I tried to concentrate during the meeting, but everything was so disconnected and foggy. I couldn’t concentrate hard enough to pay attention and only caught blips of it all, always with Elvis Presley singing in the background.
I remember Silas coming up to the apartment with Patrick. I thought they were checking on me, but instead they sat Emma down and interrogated her. I couldn’t physically move to intercede and protect her. It made me feel weak and worthless just lying there.
I kept drifting in and out of sleep. Emma was always there nearby. She made me food, forced me to drink, and like clockwork she gave me that stupid pill and swapped bags of frozen veggies on my leg.
The thing was, I wasn’t weak, but those damn pills were killing me. I was going to track Micah down and feed one to him the second this was over.
“I called and cancelled ladies’ night with Clara and Shelby. Well, I got Ben’s number from your phone and actually called him instead. It’s all good. Clara’s heading back to her home soon and said she’d stop by and check on the both of us first. Shelby said there’s another ladies’ night next week if you’re feeling well enough for me to take off a few hours. I told her we’d have to wait and see.”
Just as I had done while she was in gorilla form, she prattled on about anything and everything to fill the silence. She was amazing and so strong. I wanted to be strong enough for the both of us, but it was times like this when I couldn’t that it made me happy to know she was strong enough to hold down the fort and pick up my slack. She’d even been touching base with Silas every day and then filling me in on everything happening with Bravo team.
She also checked in with Grant daily for a status report, and forty-eight hours post-surgery she finally got the okay to lay off those damn pills. I noticed the difference almost immediately.
“How are you feeling now?”
I stretched and tested my leg. “Feels all healed,” I told her groggily.
“Grant’s stopping by to check on you in the morning. You don’t have to ice it tonight, so then we can see if you’re swelling any.”
If it had been anyone else keeping me down like this, I’d have been pissed. But while I wasn’t happy about the situation, I was more amused by my mate than upset. She had followed every rule to the letter and taken exceptional care of everything, even shifting to her gorilla form to move me when needed after Grant told her it wasn’t good for me to stay in bed the entire time.
At first, I was worried I was going to lose her again, but she easily bounced between her fur and skin and didn’t seem quite as drawn to her gorilla, at least for now. That helped me relax and enjoy her full attention.
If she had any say in it, I knew I was going to be stuck under Emma’s rehab for another three to four days. Whatever they’d told her, it was all a blur to me thanks to Micah’s stupid meds, but she seemed adamant that I was on six days of rest.
To the workaholic in me, though, that sounded like ages. The more the meds wore off, the more my brain went to work on everything I was missing. I knew I was going to have to up my workouts in order to get my strength back. Laying around doing a whole lot of nothing for a week was only going to weaken me and I didn’t work in a field