“So, I have bad news and I have really bad news. Which do you want first?” Caroline asks, bringing me out of my pity party.

She continues without waiting for my answer. “I called the agency and you, my friend, are all out of nurses. They refuse to send you someone new.”

“I don’t want someone new,” I tell her firmly.

Caroline narrows her eyes at me for a second and I backpedal just a little bit so she won’t get suspicious.

“I mean, this one wasn’t fresh out of nursing school and knew what she was doing. It was my fault. I was just in a bad mood.”

She accepts my answer easily and shrugs.

“Yeah, and that would be the really bad news. She doesn’t want you. I told the guy we would pay triple her normal salary and she still turned the job down. So, unless you want me to be your nurse, you better figure something out. Might I suggest groveling? Maybe a few tears? If you want, I can call them back and sweet talk the guy into giving me the nurse’s name and home address so you—”

“No!” I shout, interrupting her. Putting a smile on my face, I lower my voice. “I mean, I don’t want to bother this woman anymore than I already have. It’s okay, I’ll figure something out.”

All I want is a chance to explain everything to Olivia, just one chance. I never told her about Dragon and King. I didn’t share with her the guilt that ate me alive every single day after I left them in the Dominican. I should have told her, but I thought I was protecting her by keeping my nightmares to myself. Olivia was my heart, my soul and my future. She gave me everything of herself, but I didn’t do the same. I never wanted her to see me as anything other than the strong, confident man she fell in love with. I’m not used to exposing my weaknesses. Letting someone see that there is a chink in your armor just gives them the power to crash through it and bring you to your knees. In my foolish attempts to guard my heart and protect my ego, I’d forgotten how little I actually minded being on my knees. Olivia brought me to them the day I met her and it was the best fucking place to be.

Caroline drops her feet from the edge of my bed and stands. “Well, if you really want the same nurse, you better come up with a good plan. You obviously suck at apologies and sweet talk, so that’s out. This chick doesn’t want money, so that’s a no-go, as well. You could always take a page out of Mother’s book and blackmail her.”

Caroline laughs and I smile right along with her, thinking about how our mother would absolutely stoop to something like that to get her way. The smile dies on my face, though, the longer I think about it.

“Actually, that’s not a bad idea,” I mutter to myself, the plan already taking root in my brain.

“I really don’t like that look on your face.” She crosses her arms in front of her and stares down at me suspiciously.

Playing it off with a laugh, I shoo her out of the room, telling her I need to get some rest. As soon as I’m alone, I start going over the idea in my head again. Blackmail isn’t really a word I want to associate with Olivia in any way. Emotional persuasion sounds so much better. Olivia could never turn down a challenge, especially when it came to her work. The harder the patient, the more determined she was to help them. Some guy wakes up from a coma and refuses to eat? She made it her life’s mission to get a few scrambled eggs down his throat. A woman gets into a car accident and won’t do physical therapy? She wouldn’t sleep until she got that woman out of bed and had her doing laps around the hospital floor.

My idea is probably a little shitty. Okay, it’s A LOT shitty, but right now I don’t give a fuck. All I need is the opportunity to be in the same room with her again, some time to let her see that the man she fell in love with is still here and willing to fight for her.

When the doctor comes through the door a few minutes later to scold me once again for pushing myself too far, I don’t curse at him or bitch about going home. I have a smile on my face and, if I could walk without crutches, I’d have a spring in my fucking step.

“I DON’T THINK I have enough wine stocked in the house for this.”

I laugh at the shocked look on Parker’s face, the two of us facing each other on her couch with our legs tucked under us.

After I left Cole, I couldn’t face going home. I was pissed and sad and so full of contradictory emotions I felt like I would explode. Parker and Garrett are my family and I didn’t give it a second thought when I turned my car around and headed in the direction of their home.

I’d spent the last fifteen minutes rehashing the morning’s events with Parker and I could finally feel a little bit of weight lifting off my shoulders.

“I mean, seriously? Of all the people in this fucking city who need home nurses, you get assigned to Cole? This isn’t a coincidence, Olivia. You know that, right?”

Shaking my head, I set my glass of wine down on the coffee table next to us. “Stop thinking like a CIA agent. Not everything is a conspiracy.”

“It’s impossible for her to stop thinking like an agent. If Annie loses one of her toys, Parker sits her in a kitchen chair and shines a light in her eyes until she breaks down and gives her intel on Barbie and Ken and where they might be hiding.”

Parker reaches between us and grabs a pillow, chucking it straight at Garrett’s head as he walks into the living room. Garrett smacks the pillow away with a laugh before flopping down in a chair across from us.

“You didn’t have anything to do with this, right?” Parker questions Garrett.