Just One Night Together (Flatiron Five Fitness #3) - Deborah Cooke Page 0,1

fighting spirit had abandoned her. He wondered why she’d given up.

He wished he knew how to make her care enough to fight.

He stood watching her for long moments, aching for his pending loss. His father had died when he was young, and Damon had no siblings. Everything he’d done had been for his mom, to make her proud of him, to not let her down. There was so much he’d never told her.

He wasn’t sure how he was going to continue without her.

Damon didn’t even want to think about that.

He had his friends and partners at F5F, of course, but they knew very little about his private life. He’d always been solitary. He’d always kept his secrets. He’d always felt like the outsider on the team, that they’d wake up one day and realize he didn’t have enough in common with them. He’d thought that privacy was a good thing, or at least a matter of survival, until he realized he was soon going to be completely alone.

It was true what they said: love did make you weak, because there was something you could lose.

Damon put his messenger bag down on the chair and shed his jacket. He bent over his mom and kissed her cheek. Her eyelids fluttered, looking as thin as paper, and for a second, his worst fear came true as she looked at him without recognition.

Then she smiled and his heart started to beat again. “Damon,” she whispered, her voice faint.

“Hi,” he replied, easing his weight down onto the side of the bed. “How are all those aches and pains today?”

“Everything hurts, but complaining won’t change it.”

“Hungry? I brought you some...”

“No, thank you.” She smiled and turned away from him, letting him untie the back of her gown. “I know you can help with the pain, though. You can do anything.”

“That’s what you always said,” he reminded her. “We can do anything.”

Her smile turned sad. “Not quite anything.”

Damon saw that she understood more of her situation than he’d realized. His throat was tight with the truth of it, but he couldn’t talk to her about it. He wasn’t good with confidences and intimacy. Instead, he forced a smile. “Let’s get started then and work out some of those kinks.”

It was dark outside the hospital windows and the sounds were muted by the heavy glass. He could see the skyline of Manhattan but the city could have been a thousand miles away—or just a backdrop painted on a curtain. Even the business of the hospital was background noise, very few footsteps or voices, and no alarms. He felt as if they were in a little private space of their own.

He turned his mom to her stomach with care, ensuring that no tubes or wires were pinched and that there was no weight on any joints. They said her wrist was healing slowly, the bone knitting together due to her rest, but the cancer wasn’t helping.

He’d learned everything he could about massage, just to give her some relief from her old dancing injuries. He remembered his dad giving his mom massages. Damon had never imagined she’d need so much more. He moved slowly, listening to her breathing, making sure that nothing hurt.

Once on her stomach with the pillow set properly, she sighed. “This is the best part of my week,” she whispered and Damon smiled as he poured massage oil into his palm.

“Mine, too, Mom.” He smoothed the lotion over her back, ignoring the way the bones protruded. “Mine, too.”

He felt satisfaction as the tension eased from her body beneath his touch.

At least he wasn’t completely powerless, although it was closer than he liked.

Haley had heard about him, of course. The mysterious man who showed up every Friday night to give Mrs. Natasha Perez a massage. The hunky and mysterious son, if she listened to the other nurses. There was a lot of speculation about him and whatever he did—and what kind of relationships he had.

Haley didn’t care much about his social life. What intrigued her was the difference in his mother’s charts. As a nurse interested in alternative therapies, Haley always wanted to know more about easing discomfort, no matter how it was done. There was no denying that Natasha slept better and more deeply every Friday night.

He came on other days and times, too, and the story was that he phoned her daily, but Friday night, after the wards quieted down, he showed up like clockwork.

Was it his presence, as Mrs. Perez’s only son, or his