“I’ll talk to her. I’m miserable without her, but I don’t know that she’ll want me again.” It was his fear.

“You should understand that if this doesn’t work out, I’m taking my shot with her,” Rene vowed. “I’ll give you a couple of weeks, but when I’m walking again, if you’re not with her, I’m going to try.”

He was on a clock. He had to figure it out or he could lose it all.

“All right, then.” Rene glanced around. “Where are those sandwiches? Let’s play some poker, boys.”

Armie sat back. The game didn’t matter, but he would have to make the biggest gamble of his life.

On her. On them.

chapter seventeen

Lila watched as Noelle stared at the parallel bars. She’d stood in the background, hopeful that the last session had taught Noelle something, but it was apparent that all it had taught her was she could get away with not trying.

Awesome.

Noelle looked up at Tanya and shook her head. She’d been completely willing to do all the upper-body exercises, all the stretching that was part of her therapy. She’d chatted happily while attached to the TENS unit. Then they’d gotten to the bars and Noelle had completely shut down.

Lila was left with the distinctly crappy choice between walking away or getting into more trouble. She’d avoided Noelle’s father for three days. It had been fairly easy. He was on night shift for two of the days and she’d taken off the other, choosing to be on call. She wasn’t sure what was up with Armie but suddenly he wanted to talk, and that hadn’t worked for them before.

The truth was she’d done a hell of a lot of soul-searching and she couldn’t do this again. He wanted to talk because he missed her. She missed him, too, but she couldn’t trust him. The next time they clashed—and they would—she would get her heart ripped out again.

That clash was coming sooner than any of them suspected. It was coming right now.

If Noelle didn’t choose to try soon, there would be no reason for her to try. Armie wasn’t thinking. He was reacting to something terrible that had happened, but Noelle didn’t have time for things to normalize. Her time was running out.

If she did this, she might be risking her job.

But if she didn’t do this, she wouldn’t be doing her job.

She stepped out and nodded Tanya’s way. “I’ll take it from here.”

Noelle’s eyes widened, but she didn’t see fear or anger in there. “Lila. I’m glad to see you. I thought about calling you a hundred times. I’m so sorry about what happened.”