I'd feel bad for him if I hadn't heard him snap at Hailey-whose-name-wasn't-Hailey when they were busy. Like it was her fault so many tables ordered at once.
"What's your name?" I blurted out when she returned with my coffee and a smile. "Your real name," I specified when her fingernail tapped her name tag.
To that, she gave me a small smile, sliding her hand across her chest to tap her necklace instead.
"Holly," I said, and she gave me a nod.
"We get a lot of creepy guys in here late at night," she explained. "Not you, obviously. But after the bars let out, it can get crazy. And it feels weird to have customers calling you by your real name. If they call me Hailey, I feel a little more detached from the, well, the other stuff they say."
I didn't need clarification on the other stuff guys said to women who couldn't get away from them without risking their jobs.
"But you can call me Holly," she invited.
Chapter Two
Holly
The sun was just starting to creep through the blinds as I made my way into the house.
Everything hurt.
You'd think after several months of doing the same tasks day in and day out, your body would adjust and stop aching. Alas, I was not that lucky.
And the couple of minutes off my feet on the drive home only made it harder to get up the driveway and inside with my feet screaming and my back aching and my shoulders hurting.
Inside the door, I slipped out of my shoes, flexing my feet, trying to ease the pain.
I was the bone-deep kind of tired, but I knew it would be another couple of hours before I could catch some sleep.
Taking a deep breath, I rolled my neck as I turned a pot of coffee on before making my way across the ranch-style house, knocking gently on the bedroom door across from the one I was staying in.
"I don't know why you bother to fucking knock when you come in without waiting for a response," was the answer that was barked at me as I pushed the door open.
"I figured you might still be asleep," I said, forcing a smile even though I knew it looked as fake as it felt. I had to try. Because if I didn't at least try to seem upbeat, I was going to melt into a puddle of tears.
"Like I could sleep through that roaring of your car," he shot back, making me need to take another steadying breath.
My car was loud, yes. I just didn't have the money to fix it yet. It was probably the bearings. They always got loud on me when they needed to be changed. And as the last mechanic told me, my car model used some sort of plastic on the bearing which made them wear out every year or so. The car was well past the eating money phase, but it was all I had, so I had to keep fixing it.
"I'm working on getting it fixed, Shep," I said, making my way into the dark space to open the blinds. He grumbled every single time I did it, but I was a firm believer that if he sat in a dark room all day, he would only grow more unpleasant. Which didn't seem possible, but I wasn't taking any chances.
"The light hurts my eyes, Holl. How many times do I have to say that?" he snapped as I moved around his bed. It used to be a normal queen-sized one. Now, though, I'd sank all my savings into getting him an electric hospital bed. Because he needed it. And because I knew it would make my life easier while I was caring for him, too.
"At least another thousand before I start to listen," I told him, voice faux-cheerful. Like I hadn't just spent the last ten hours running around, burning myself, and getting my ass slapped and pinched by drunk jerks with no boundaries.
This wasn't about me and my little troubles.
This was about my brother and his life-changing ones. The ones that left him unable to care for himself, and in chronic pain, despite the medicine the doctors prescribed him.
Five months ago, I got a phone call that changed the trajectory of my entire life.
I went from being pretty stable working in a popular bakery in a medium-sized city, with my own apartment, and car, and savings, to living in my brother's spare room, working night shift at a diner, being a caretaker all day, and having all of five dollars to my name after bills were paid each month.
I didn't even want to think about the medical bills that were coming.
Shep had been driving along, minding his own business on his bike when a driver ran a red, and plowed into him. He'd been left on the side of the road with a burst fracture in his spine, a shattered leg, a broken wrist, and three busted ribs. Not to mention the cuts and the road burn.
He'd gone from a successful electrician to bed-ridden in a blink of an eye.
He was slowly but surely starting to heal, yes, but it was still a long, long road. And not one of the doctors could tell us if his back pain would ever go away.
Sure, my life had been altered. And, yes, it sucked sometimes. But it was nothing compared to what Shep was going through, so I tried to put on the brave face. I tried to be a bright spot in his dark world. Even if he didn't outwardly seem to appreciate it.
"I'm an asshole," Shep declared, sighing as I helped him sit off the side of the bed.
"No, you're not."
"I am," he insisted as his head hung. "And I'm taking it out on the person who deserves it the least," he added, looking up at me as I moved his wheelchair in as close to the bed as I could get it. We'd gotten good at the transition from the bed to the chair after many painful failed attempts at the beginning.
"You're in pain," I reminded him, draping his good—well, good-ish—arm around my shoulders, then lifting up. Shep twisted on his good leg, then we both lowered down until he was in the chair.
"Still," he said as I lifted his casted leg up onto the pedal.
From my squatted position, I looked up at him. His face had healed. Gone were the burns and scratches and black eyes. But his face had changed a lot from the accident, from the months of pain since. His face had thinned out, revealing deep cheekbone hollows under his dark blue eyes that had seemingly permanent purple smudges beneath from the pain that made it hard for him to sleep for any decent stretch of time.
After the accident, he'd made me cut most of his long blond hair off, leaving it a somewhat shaggy, falling in soft waves just about to his shoulders.
He'd always been a good-looking guy. He'd been the most popular guy in school back in the day. And he'd never seemed to have trouble finding women after. But the incident had given his usually open and welcoming face a harder edge that made my heart ache a bit when I looked at him for too long.
"You're just grumpy because you're hungry," I declared, moving behind the chair to push him into the bathroom.
I'd been willing to do all of Shep's care, comfort zone be damned, when he'd come home. But it had been Shep who'd drawn a line in the sand about the bathroom.
So I did our usual routine, pushing him in between the sink and the toilet, locking his brakes, then moving out of the bathroom and out of his bedroom, leaving him to handle all those possibly nude things alone.
Every couple of days, I would help him remove his back brace, wrap up his leg, and help him into the tub where he would let me wash his hair, then make me leave so he could do the rest himself. Because of his refusal to let me help, it was an event that took hours, leaving him physically depleted and emotionally disgusted.