Page 35 of Falling With You

And as he walked away without a word, I wanted to tell him to come back.

I wanted to tell him that I loved him before this and that I was afraid I would love him more after.

But I didn’t.

Because there were no words.

I had broken the one oath that friends make with one another.

And Allison wasn’t here for me to do anything about it.

Chapter Eight

Aiden

Now

The feeling of deep release was a satisfaction like no other. The fact that I was looking at my bare hand, able to slowly move my fingers, was an orgasm in itself.

Not that I was going to tell the nurses or doctors that were staring at me exactly what was going on in my mind.

But considering the fact that I now had my cast off after almost six weeks, it made me feel as if everything was as exactly as it should be.

“Okay, tell me what you’re feeling,” the doctor said. I looked up at her.

“Uh, great. Thanks. Can I go now?”

She just raised that very penciled-in brow at me, and I winced. “I guess I can’t?”

“No, Mr. Connolly. You can’t yet. Let’s talk about exactly what you’re not going to do. And what you are going to do.”

“Okay,” I said and then sighed. I settled back into my chair, looked down at my now free hand, and knew it was going to take a while. I wouldn’t be able to just go back to the kitchen and start chopping and dicing and sautéing and doing everything that I was actually good at.

Instead, it seemed, I was going to have a lesson.

I had hated school before, and I really wasn’t a fan of it now.

“You were very lucky with the breaks in your hand. If they had been any worse, we would’ve been talking about surgery, loss of sensation, hindered dexterity, and worse. You hit that man’s face at the exact wrong angle when you already had some carpal tunnel issues because you use your hands too much.”

I blinked. “Carpal tunnel?”

“You’re going to have to do better. And I’m not just talking about with your job. It’s disturbing the number of people who are coming into different offices at this point because they have carpal tunnel thanks to their phones and just using their computers to scroll. The way you hold your phone will have to change. You’ll also need to move it from hand to hand. I noticed that you already had it in your left hand while we were waiting to take off your cast, and that’s good. But, the less you hold it, the better. Because you’ll be holding it at the bottom corner, right at one of your fracture points, and that will have to change.”

“Really? My phone is what caused me to break my hand?”

“Not exactly. But it didn’t help. We see these types of injuries all the time. Not necessarily the breaking, but the stress to your ligaments and other parts of your hand. We see them in smaller boys and teenage boys, as well.”

My mind went straight to the gutter, and from the way she narrowed her eyes at me, I had a feeling she knew exactly what I was thinking.

“No, Mr. Connolly. Although that probably doesn’t help the situation. I was talking about video games. With the rise in video games and cell phone usage, our hands are becoming weaker. Now, I’m not saying that you broke your hand because of the way you hold your cell phone or your knife at work. And you have so much muscle memory in how you hold your knife at work doing what you do that you’re not going to be able to change that overnight. If ever.”

“I don’t know if I’m ever going to be able to do that. I hold it exactly the way I should after years of training.”

“And that’s great. But it’s the same motion over and over again, even the way you hold a frying pan. And I know you’re an amazing chef, but you’re going to have to take care of your body.”

My brows rose this time.

“An amazing chef?”