Page 57 of Last Chance Love

“No one, that’s who. Don’t waste time thinking about it. You already told me Ray disappeared after Ian died, and unless you had some new friend or boyfriend at the time that I didn’t know about, then you had no one.”

“Okay, you’re right. It wasn’t like?—”

“And then you made the executive decision for me?”

“Huh?”

“C’mon, Leon, you had to know what you were doing. You made the decision for me, which was not yours to make. I’m not trying to rub salt in the wound here, Leon, but you had no right to do that.”

Leon scowled at me. “And what? Just have you make a choice that would take all your progress and do what with it? Throw it all away?”

“Are you kidding me? There are all sorts of things I could have done,” I told him with a huff. “Hell, they have entire policies that help people in bad situations. I could have told a simple lie and said a close family member had died. I would have been there for at least a week. Or two.”

“And then what? You would have fallen behind.”

“Progress can be caught up, especially when you’ve got a good reason for falling behind. And even if I had to drop, that’s still a valid reason, and starting back where I left off wouldn’t have been that hard.”

“You didn’t need to do?—”

“That was not your choice!” I finally snapped, reaching to set my coffee cup down roughly on the desk. “I should have been the one to make that choice, for me! You had the entire world on your plate and decided to take on my decision with it?”

Leon looked away with a snort. “See? Told you to drop it.”

“Oh God,” I groaned, rubbing at my face. “Is this what you’re going to do? Suddenly, play the pity card because I’m calling you out? Well, go right ahead. I’ve seen it before. I know how to ignore it.”

“That’s the problem. You ignore anything inconvenient,” he snapped at me. “You always did. No matter what I said or did or how I tried to explain things, you always went right along with whateveryouthought was the best way to go about things.”

“Right, and you were always the pinnacle of facing things,” I shot back at him. “You’veneverbeen infamous for letting things go by, refusing even to acknowledge they exist, let alone dealing with them. You just pass it off onto something else and dismiss it. Kind of like how you decided my choices were yours to make and passed it off while you sat in the worst misery of your life.”

“Just let it go!” Leon growled, turning toward me quickly and freezing, his expression stony. I knew immediately he had probably twisted a muscle that did not want to be used.

“Don’t,” I said sharply, gripping his arm. “Just take a few slow breaths andcarefullystraighten your body, alright? No hard movements. Otherwise, you’ll be in for it all over again.”

I watched sweat break out on his forehead and realized how hard it had to be for him. As far as I knew, the worst he’d ever done to himself was break his wrist when we were fourteen.

“That…well, I certainly felt that,” he said as I slowly took the coffee cup from his death grip and set it on the desk.

I slid off the bed, taking his uninjured arm in my hand and pressing my fingers to his wrist. It wasn’t to measure his heartbeat precisely, but I could feel it was fine, just racing, with no weakness. “Well, I don’t think we have anything to worry about. Any dizziness or lightheadedness?”

“No, but that coffee is disagreeing with me right now.”

“Uh, do I need a bucket or something?”

“No, just uncomfortable.”

“Okay, I’m going to get you some water. And I have some pain pills?—”

“I don’t want pills.”

“That are even weaker than I dosed you with but stronger than the over-the-counter stuff. You promised you’d behave.”

“I don’t want to get dosed. I hate that feeling, like everything is far away and like I don’t care. I don’t want to feel that again.”

“You won’t,” I promised him as I went to the sink for water. He was still sitting upright when I came back, and despite the sweat, the paleness had dissipated, almost returning to that beautiful tan he’d gained on the ranch. “Take the water. And here’s the pills.”

I extracted them from the bottles I’d taken from the clinic, under Alice's direct eye, of course. I doubted even another Tier One would have been allowed to take prescription drugs back to a cabin, but my position afforded me a little more leeway than others. I would be thrown out on my ass in a heartbeat if I violated that trust, but I never would. This was the better option than someone having to make a ‘home’ visit to drop off the meds or for Leon to slowly make his way down to the clinic every morning and night.

“I’m going to give you half the dose,” I told him, reminding myself to note that when I returned with the notebook I’d been given to track his meds. Trust or not, they weren’t stupid, and they needed a complete inventory if I gave him less than ordered. “We’ll see how you handle that, and then we’ll talk about what to give you at bedtime.”

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