Free Wait for Me by Samantha Chase Page B

a standing position and went to take a step.
    And crumpled back down to the sofa with a growl of disgust.  Emma was at his side immediately and he heard her soft curse.  “I cannot believe that you are so stubborn that you would rather risk aggravating an injury than admitting that you have one.”
    His first instinct was to argue but she had hit the nail on the head. 
    “What do you need?  Heat or ice?”
    What he needed right now was to have his solitary life back and to be left alone in his misery.  One of the reasons he’d quit going to rehab was because he hated having anyone help him; it reminded him that he wasn’t the man he used to be. 
    “Lucas?” she said, snapping him out of his reverie.
    “Ice,” her mumbled and sat back on the sofa, lifting his leg up onto the coffee table.  In no time at all Emma was beside him and rolling up the leg of the flannel pajama pants he had thrown on earlier.  All Lucas wanted to do was push her away but he just didn’t have the strength to. 
    He flinched when she placed the ice pack on his scarred and swollen knee but refused to look at her.  Lucas didn’t want her pity and that was what he was certain he was going to see in her eyes.  There was the sound of Emma’s feet walking across the room and he heard her moving around in the kitchen and then she was back offering him water and ibuprofen.
    “Do you have anything stronger?”  He shook his head.  “Okay, then.  What do you usually do when this happens?”
    “Who said this ever happened before?”  Lucas knew he was sounding like a belligerent child but couldn’t summon the energy to care. 
    “I’m trying to help you,” she said wearily.  “This is all my fault and I’m trying to do what I can to help you.  Can you please just cooperate?”
    “Really?  Like you cooperated last night?”
    “Did you not wake me up every two hours?  And didn’t I answer all of your stupid questions each time?”
    “Stupid ques…look, I know how to handle a concussion, Em ma; you don’t know the first thing about a knee injury!”
    “So teach me!  For crying out loud, Lucas, we’ve got nothing else to do here!  You refused to let me even speak to the tow truck driver about leaving so you’re stuck with me for the weekend.  Now either let me help you or deal with the fact that I’m going to sit here and nag at you all afternoon.”  She sounded pretty smug and she knew that she had left him no choice.
    “Fine,” he sneered.  “Normally when this happens I take the OTC stuff and ice it for a while.  I do my best to stay off of it and by the next day I’m usually better.  Satisfied?”
    “Hardly.  What does your physical therapist have to say about this?  Why is this still happening?  I thought you had the surgeries to repair the injury?”
    “That’s none of your damn business.”  Lucas so did not want to have this discussion.  He’d avoided talking to anyone about this and he certainly didn’t want to talk to Emma about it.  How did he explain that he’d elected out of the last two surgeries because even though the problem would have been repaired, he still wasn’t going to play football ever again.  Rather than continue to go under the knife, Lucas had simply given up and decided to live with the limp and the pain as a reminder that he couldn’t go back.
    “It doesn’t matter what the therapist thinks or says; sometimes injuries just don’t heal.”
    Emma looked at him suspiciously.  She may not know Lucas Montgomery as well as she’d like to but she could certainly tell that he wasn’t being completely honest with her.  “I would think that you would have gone for a second or maybe third, fourth and fifth opinion to get yourself better.”
    “Who says I didn’t?”
    “Did you?” she challenged.
    “Christ, Emma, what do you want from me?”
    All of her frustration burst to the surface.  “I want to understand why you choose to live such an isolated life!  I