“Ryan, I’m six-foot-four.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him turn to look at me like he was assessing the information. “Hate to say it, but I got measured during my annual medical last week, and the doctor said I was six-foot-four. You’re at least an inch taller than me.”
Swallowing and wincing at how dry my still-raw throat was, I croaked, “Okay, so I’m six-foot-five, but I’ll never fit in it. My knees are going to be next to my ears.”
Patting me on the back, he moved forward, saying over his shoulder, “Told you I felt like a dick before we walked out here. Don’t worry, we put you on the insurance and maybe there’s more space on the driver’s side?”
Dropping my head back, I glared up at the cloud that was floating over me in the sky.
I was going to be in hell for roughly two thousand one hundred miles of roads and driving.
But, as Sasha’s laughter carried over to me again, I blew out a breath and realized it didn’t matter.
If she was terrified of flying, I’d never make her fly. If she wanted to drive home in her electric car, with my knees jammed under the steering wheel or providing a resting spot for my earlobes, I genuinely didn’t care.
Why?
Because any man who cares about a woman wants to see her smiling and as truly happy as mine was at that moment. So, yeah, I’d crawl over broken glass if it got that reaction from her.
This realization was something both of her dads picked up on as soon as I had it.
I didn’t see the look they exchanged or the way Ryan mouthed, “It had to happen at some point.” But I noticed a difference in them later on, with them being more relaxed and starting to make plans that included both of us.
Again, it wasn’t a click, but it was a definite cluh which was close to it.
And that’s why I finally signed her casts once she’d fallen asleep.
Down both of them in thick letters, I wrote I love JTR, and next to the tattoo of a wave on her foot, I added my name.
Everything in the tattoo meant something to her, and I wanted to be on the list, too.
Chapter Thirteen
Jackson
Three weeks and five days later…
It was hard to believe so much time had passed since I’d hit her with my truck. We’d just come out of her appointment, and Sasha’s doctor had confirmed he was happy with how the bones had healed.
I was grateful to him for that, but it’d been entirely unnecessary for him to smack his hand down on my shoulder as we were leaving, and say, “Try not to hit her with your vehicle—or any vehicle for that matter—this time, Mr. Townsend-Rossi.”
Any response I’d been about to snap back at him had been cut off by Sasha tugging my arm, in a hurry to get the ‘cumbersome beasts’ removed.
Now she was sitting excitedly on the bed, while the technician used an electric saw looking machine to cut the casts off.
The one thing ruining Sasha’s happiness was her fear of the smell and hair issues. When her dads had been here, it hadn’t been unusual to walk in with one of them holding her foot in their hand, glaring at her while she begged them to “sniff it and tell me the truth. How stilton-y is it?”
Well, we had the answer to that, and it wasn’t good. I was discreetly covering my nose while the technician repeatedly reassured her that every cast over the foot produced a cheesy smell, even when the person didn’t usually suffer from it.
She also pointed out that if Sasha were to scrape under her big toenail and sniff what came out of it, she’d smell the same thing from there, too.
I knew what Sasha was going to say before she even said it, and I ordered a nail brush off Amazon while they talked, so she could scrub under her toenails the next time she was in the shower.
While I was at it, I decided to get one for myself as well because that sounded fucking disgusting.
The only time my feet had been as evil-smelling as Sasha’s was right now was when I was in my early teens and decided Axe deodorant was better than showering. Pretty much every guy went through that stage.
After a while of making do with quick showers or avoiding them altogether, and catching a whiff of my armpits when I raised my hand or my feet when I kicked my shoes off, I’d learned the error of my ways.
When the room went silent, I raised my head to see what was going on. Sasha was sitting up on the bed, her mouth open as she stared at her leg with disgust.