To Each Her Own Read online

  She found Jay sitting on the colorful Spanish-tiled floor, in front of the cabinet under the sink. His wheelchair sat empty, within his easy reach. Erin had only once seen a wheeler do a chair-to-floor transfer, and the strength it took to do such a feat had amazed her. Judging by the broadness of Jay's shoulders and the hint of well-developed biceps that showed through the sleeves of his dark gray hoodie, he had the strength to do it. He was holding a drill, about to screw in one of the old hinges on the cabinet door. That explained the noise, but what was he doing here? He was supposed to be at work.

  He was sitting sideways in relation to the cabinet and seemed to be able to sit up okay without support, which meant he must have at least some abdominal control. She wondered what level his injury was. Probably around the T7 vertebra or lower.

  His thin legs, covered by loose jeans, were positioned together in front of him. One of them jiggled a little. To someone who didn't know, it looked like he was moving it on purpose, but Erin knew it wasn't voluntary. A lot of people with paraplegia had to deal with spasticity—the random, uncontrollable expanding and contracting or, in some cases, stiffening of paralyzed muscles—but it was the first time she'd seen any evidence Jay had it.

  And she didn't care! Why would she care? That wasn't what a normal, non-icky person would think about. A normal person wouldn't know about spasticity, and they sure as hell wouldn't know about levels of spinal cord injury and what they meant, unless maybe they knew someone with one.

  Freak.

  Angry with herself and irritable, she yelled above the noise of the drill, “What the hell are you doing?”—even though it was obvious.

  The drill stopped spinning, and he looked up at her. Sunlight streaming in through the window over the sink illuminated his eyes, making them a bottomless grayish blue. It was the first time she'd really noticed them. They were . . . nice.

  Nice! What the fuck? She didn't care what color his eyes were.

  “Morning,” he said pleasantly in his deep, whiskey-tinged voice. “How you feeling?”

  “What are you doing?” she repeated.

  One corner of his mouth curved upward, and he seemed unfazed by her surliness. “Some of the cabinet doors keep falling off because the hinges are shot, especially this one.” He waved the drill toward the door he was working on under the sink, bracing his other hand on the floor. “The hinges are really old and hard to find, but I found some that matched the originals from a specialty salvage store on the Internet. They came in yesterday, so I thought I'd do some repairs this morning.”

  She made a noncommittal grunt, trying her best not to be impressed. That cabinet door had bugged her for years, but she didn't feel like acknowledging he was doing a good thing. This was the calm before the storm. They had a lot to discuss, and she wasn't about to let his Bob Vila act disarm her.

  His lips curved a little more. It seemed like he was always on the verge of a smirk. He had little laugh lines at the corners of his eyes, around his mouth, and a few wrinkles on his brow that made her think he was older than her twenty-six, probably closer to thirty. She tried not to notice the other details of his face, like his strong chin and the ever-present blond five-o'clock shadow on his jaw.

  The sun highlighted white-blond streaks in his shoulder-length hair that most sorority girls would pay big bucks for, but Erin seriously doubted Jay paid a hairdresser to add highlights to his hair. They had to be natural, because the vision she got of him sitting at a hairdresser's workstation with highlight foils in his hair was absurd.

  She didn't know much about Jay Bontrager, but he was the type of guy that oozed masculinity. It came off him in waves. Erin figured there were probably plenty of normal, able-bodied girls who would be attracted to him, with or without the wheelchair, and she found it ironic that she wasn't one of them, since she had a thing—correction—used to have a thing for disabled men. But she wasn't into blonds, and she wasn't into guys who thought she was on a par with a child molester. Her belly tightened uncomfortably at the reminder.

  “Hope you don't mind that I took the initiative,” he said.

  “What?”

  “The hinges,” he said, bringing her back to their conversation. “I hope you don't mind that I'm replacing them. Zac told me I could repair whatever I thought needed fixing around the house.”

  Oh, of course Zac would say that. What was next? Signing the deed over to Jay? And how did Mr. Fixit expect to be compensated? It wasn't like they had a lot of money lying around for house repairs. If they did, they would have gotten stuff fixed a long time ago.

  More annoyed than ever, Erin headed for the coffeepot on the far counter, carefully maneuvering on her crutches. The last thing she wanted was to fall on her ass in front of him. “Whatever,” she responded tersely, swinging her legs through the crutches. “It's not like you care what I think, right?”

  “That's not true, darlin'.”

  She shot him a look. “We both know I'm not your darlin', so don't call me that.”

  “It's just something I say. It's automatic.”

  Somehow that made it worse, knowing he called every girl that. It was sexist, too, but she wasn't a bra-burning feminist. No. It was more that the endearment, delivered in his buttery voice, was a caress she didn't want.

  “How much did those special hinges cost?”

  “Don't worry about it. You didn't ask me to fix them. I don't expect you guys to pay me back.”

  She clamped her lips together to quash the urge to thank him.

  “How you feeling?” he asked again.

  Clenching her armpits to hold her crutches in place, she used her hands to pour coffee into the filter. Ignoring his question, she asked one of her own. “You're blowing off work just to fix a cabinet?”

  “Erin,” he said, his tone a bit stern, “my question first. How are you feeling? You look . . . haggard.”

  “Wow, thanks. You really know how to charm a girl.”

  He let out an exasperated breath. “I didn't mean it like that. I'm just concerned.”

  “Oh, cut the crap,” she retorted. “I mean, I'm a bottom-feeder, right? I disgust you. You don't care how I feel.”

  He shifted his shoulders and pressed his palms into the floor, as if adjusting his body for a better seat. “I'm sorry you heard that.”

  She scoffed. “You're sorry I heard you say it, but you're not sorry you said it.”

  He studied her for a moment. “Maybe I was talking about something I didn't fully understand.”

  She pressed the Brew button. “But now you do understand? Are you suddenly an expert on devotees? You ready to embrace us—them—with open arms?”

  “Uh . . . no, not exactly.” And then his mouth curved into that smirk that had threatened earlier. “But I'm willing to live with one, right?”

  She shot him a dark look. “You think that redeems you?”

  “Hey, I just meant I'm making progress.”

  “You are such an asshole.” She turned away and reached up, stretching to open a cabinet door above the coffeemaker. When she reached for a mug, she nearly lost her balance for a second. She almost lost one of her crutches, too, but caught it just in time.

  Jay set down the drill and quickly transferred from the floor to his wheelchair. He looked like a gymnast, like one of those guys that did the rings, the way he gripped the frame of his chair with one hand and had his other hand fisted on the floor, then dipped his head and lifted his hips enough to swing his butt into the seat of his chair. The whole process took less than a second.

  Once he was settled with his feet on the footplate, he wheeled closer to her. “You're going to need help with that,” he said, looking up at her and eyeing the mug in her hand.

  “Not from you,” she said, even though she knew he was right. She wouldn't be able to hobble to the table on her crutches and carry a mug of coffee, too. She didn't care. She'd just stay at the counter and drink there. It was petty, but she didn't want any help from him.

  His b
row wrinkled into an earnest expression. “Look, you have every right to hate me. I don't blame you, but I'm not moving out. I need a place to live, and you need my rent money, so let's find a way to live with each other.”

  She didn't respond. All she could think of to say was “Fuck you,” and that seemed juvenile. She needed to gather her thoughts and regroup. When the coffee was ready, she poured some into her mug, then set it on the counter so she could turn, using her crutches, to face Jay fully. Once she felt like she was balanced, she tensed the muscles under her arms again to keep the crutches in place and grabbed the mug, taking a sip of the hot, bitter brew. Its pungent aroma and the warm steam wafting up to her nose were paradise.

  Now fortified with caffeine, Erin could feel her thoughts coming together. “How did you even know we were looking for a renter? Did Luis send you?” She couldn't remember if she'd mentioned the renter thing to Luis, but maybe she had. They'd talked about everything. God, what a dumbass she'd been to trust him.

  Jay sat back in his chair, hands on his wheels. “I came because of Luis, but he didn't know you were looking for a renter. That was a fluke. I swear. I came to apologize to you, and the next thing I knew, Zac was giving me the tour. One thing led to another, and I was moving in.

  “I feel bad that I ruined things between you and Luis. He really likes you. Just because I was a bastard, don't take it out on him. He's got nothing against devs.”

  “I didn't hear him taking up for me.”

  “Okay. Maybe that's true, but nobody's perfect. He was mostly just letting me rant—blow smoke—but that doesn't mean he agreed with me.”

  “Yes, he did,” said Erin. “He practically admitted he was only going out with me for a fuck.” Which, slut that she was, she'd given him.

  Jay's brow wrinkled again. It made him appear so soulful, so apologetic, so genuinely concerned for his friend. “Give Luis a second chance, Erin. He's a good guy, and he felt shitty about what happened. He tried to get in touch with you, to say he was sorry. He didn't know about the car accident and didn't know you were out of commission, so he kept trying and trying to call and text you.”

  She knew that. She'd seen the messages on her cell phone. At first she'd been too out of it to respond to any of them, and when she emerged from the hazy fog of painkillers, she hadn't wanted to respond.

  “When you didn't answer any of his messages,” Jay went on, “I felt bad for him. I knew all that was my fault, so I came to apologize. I swear I only came to ask you to give him another chance. I didn't know you and your brother were looking for a roommate.”

  “We weren't. We needed someone to rent the house while we were on tour.”

  Jay frowned a bit, looking bemused.

  “We weren't looking for a roommate,” Erin clarified. “I was supposed to go on the road, too.”

  She hadn't even begun to deal with that yet. It was a big deal, the tour for the band. It was maybe their big break, their chance to gain national status, and now, because of one colossal moment of insanity, she was stuck in San Antonio with a broken ankle and her worst nightmare for a roommate. She had her reasons for not being as excited about the tour as she should have been, but she would have taken traveling in a cramped RV with three other people for months over her current situation any day.

  “I'm sorry,” Jay said.

  She took a sip of her coffee and shrugged. “Whatever. You were explaining how you ended up as my roommate. I mean, first of all, why would you even want to share a place with me, knowing . . . ” She'd started to say “what I am,” but she didn't want to cop to the dev thing anymore. Deny, deny, deny. If she told herself she wasn't a dev long enough, maybe it would be true.

  “Like I said, it just happened.”

  Erin raised her brows. She had a better guess. “Or, you liked the house and its location, and you were sick of staying with Luis.”

  Jay nodded. “That, too. There's not too many choice houses in old, historic neighborhoods already equipped for someone with a disability.”

  “What did you tell my brother? He hasn't said anything about Luis. I'm assuming you didn't tell him about”—she paused, feeling her ears grow warm, and glanced down at her coffee mug to hide her embarrassment—“how we met?”

  Jay shook his head. “Your brother did all the work for me. When he opened the front door, he automatically assumed I was a random guy here to inquire about his ad.”

  She couldn't believe Jay's gall, and when she spoke, she could hear the accusation in her tone. “And you didn't bother to correct him. Instead, you took advantage of the situation.”

  The corners of Jay's mouth dipped downward nonchalantly, but he glanced away for a second before meeting her eyes and rephrasing her words: “I seized an opportunity.”

  “And you thought I'd just roll out the welcome mat?” She huffed mirthlessly. “You're the freak, not me. Or else you're delusional.”

  His features hardened. “In case you haven't noticed”—he made a show of looking down at his legs—“my number of options for just about everything has dwindled now that I get to spend my life in this chair, so I take what I can get when it's offered.”

  She thunked her mug down on the counter. Some of the coffee sloshed out and burned her thumb, but she was too mad to care about the pain. “Oh, spare me the sob story! That chair doesn't give you the right to be an asshole. It doesn't give you a license to screw people over, to—to blackmail them!”

  His jaw turned to cement, and his eyes burned like blue coals. “You don't know what it's like to be in this chair, so don't fucking tell me how to live in it!”

  She scoffed. “Is that supposed to make me feel sorry for you? Now you're playing the cripple card?”

  “No.” He scrubbed both hands over his face and then pressed them together, index fingers touching his lips, as if trying to rein in his anger. “Look, I know what I did was shitty.”

  “Which time?” she asked caustically.

  He dropped his hands down to his tires, gripping them, and drew his broad shoulders back. “Both times,” he answered. “I'm sorry for all of it—for what I said about . . . devotees . . . and for being less than completely honest about the situation so your brother would rent the room to me.”

  Erin hadn't missed the distaste he tried to hide when he'd said “devotees,” even though the word was framed in an apology. “I want you gone,” she said. “I'll tell my brother who you really are, what you said, that you totally scammed him. He might seem like a flake, but when it comes to me, he doesn't put up with any shit. He'll make you leave.”

  Jay's mouth curved cynically. “Now, do you really wanna go there, darlin'? Because I'm thinking you don't. I'm thinking your threat is a bunch of hot air. Your brother has no clue about your little fetish, and I don't think you want him to know, or you would have already told him everything.”

  She hated him for guessing the truth. “I'm not a dev,” she said through clenched teeth.

  “Right,” Jay said. “That's why your house is all tricked out for wheelers. I'm curious. How did you explain it all to Zac? Was it for an old boyfriend or something? It must have been expensive to have all that work done.”

  That made Erin stop short. “What are you talking about?”

  He made a sweeping motion with his hand. “The ramps, the way everything in your house is accessible. It's like fucking Field of Dreams, the devotee version.” He leaned forward and imitated the whispering voice in the movie, his expression sardonic and mocking. “If you build it, wheelers will come.”

  At first, Erin couldn't believe what she was hearing. The magnitude of the insult punched her in the gut. Then overwhelming fury began to rage through her veins, and she started to tremble. If she'd had a gun, she would have gladly blown his head off. “You dumb shit,” she said. “My grandmother used a wheelchair the last few years of her life. The house was modified for her.”

  Red stained Jay's face as he stared at her, clearly stunned. After a moment of heavy silence, he w
iped his fingers over his mouth and shook his head, his manner contrite. “You're right. I am a dumb shit. I was distracted by a phone call from one of my customers when Zac was giving me the tour, and I must have missed the part about it all being for your grandmother.” His gaze homed in on her, intense and filled with regret. “Because I knew you were a dev, I jumped to conclusions.”

  Erin didn't trust herself to speak. She closed her eyes for a moment and took a deep breath, trying to regain her composure. When she did, she felt dead inside, numb. “Like I said, I'm not a dev. I'll never date another wheeler.”

  He glanced down, clearing his throat. “Is it . . . ” He looked up at her. “Is it that easy to turn off?”

  No, it wasn't, but she wasn't about to admit that. “It was just something I experimented with. It's in the past.”

  His look said he didn't believe her, but he didn't argue. After completely humiliating her, at least he had that much tact.

  “You implied you'd tell my brother,” said Erin. “Would you really stoop that low?"

  His forehead creased and he looked remorseful, but he didn't deny it. Instead, he said quietly, “This isn't at all how I wanted this conversation to play out.”

  “But you won't go?” Her hands squeezed the padded grips of her crutches. “You'd force me to tell my brother about the dev thing?”

  Jay looked her in the eye for a long moment, jaw squared. “Yes.” To his credit, it sounded like it pained him to admit it.

  “Nice.” Erin gave a short, bleak laugh, but she suddenly felt like crying.

  “Look,” he said with a sigh, “I know I haven't given you any reason to believe it, but I'm not as bad as you think. Give me a second chance to prove it to you. Things will go a lot smoother if we're not at each other's throats.”

  She was appalled. “A second chance? Are you serious? You're blackmailing me!”