Baking Me Crazy (Donner Bakery, #1)(32)

If I closed my eyes, I could remember quite clearly what it felt like. Which was precisely why I didn't close my eyes, because it was a train of thought I tried not to indulge in. It gained me nothing. It served no purpose other than to spur self-pity and discontent.

Maybe that got uncapped inside me too—the unfortunate and unforeseen by-product of these spilled hormones racing and tumbling through my body. Having Andrew lay gentle, caring, instructional hands on me earlier, right in the midst of something that made me weak and frail, pissed me off.

I didn't want to feel anger or resentment for his role in my life, that his hands moved over me like that of a practitioner helping a patient because I'd deal with the rest of my life. Andrew, Denise, my doctor—it didn't matter who the hands belonged to, at the end of the day, I’d always have people in my life whose sole purpose was to treat me for the things I lacked.

The sudden course of anger needed to get out, out, out. I wanted it gone. I didn't want to follow where it might lead me.

"Sonic?" Levi asked.

I blinked, unaware that I'd been staring through my chair for the past few seconds. Unthinking, I held my hands to him. "I think I want to do some chin-ups."

His brow wrinkled for a second because I rarely asked for help. Strong hands gripped mine, his calloused fingers wrapping completely around my palms. He pulled me up, and instead of helping me into my chair, Levi all but forced me to stand.

I managed to steady my feet with only one clumsy shuffle forward, but steady myself I did.

"I forget how tall you are sometimes," he said quietly, his eyes holding mine.

Smiling a little, I pulled my hands slowly from his sure grasp. "Now I can't punch you in the balls as easily."

His grin spread, and I couldn't help but notice how his face transformed when he smiled. The skin by his eyes wrinkled in a way that shouldn't have been attractive but was. That dimple in his cheek was deep, and just to piss him off, I poked at it with my finger.

"Put that away, Buchanan. Your unfair height advantage is no laughing matter."

He backed up, trying to smother his grin, and failing miserably.

"Come on, Sonic. Show me what you've got," he said, jerking his chin in the direction of the chin-up bar mounted up on the far wall, about ten feet away from where we stood. He braced his hands on his hips and started tapping his foot.

I stuck my tongue out at him, which made him laugh. Those ten feet felt like twenty as I stared, no walker in front of me, even though the safety of my chair was directly behind me.

"Don't help unless I start falling," I told him.

His jaw was tight, but he nodded.

Levi had seen me walk, probably more than anyone else, but I still hated doing it in front of him. In front of anyone. And, ultimately, that was my problem. Working through the pride issues that still haunted me seven years later felt like something I'd struggle with for the rest of my life. It was why The Pitiers, on the whole, bothered me more than The Blinders.

With my arms out like a little kid crossing a balance beam, I swung my right foot forward, then my left, using that upper body I'd worked so hard on to give myself the proper momentum forward.

Levi walked beside me, within arm's reach, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw him physically stop himself from reaching out to me when I almost pitched too far to the right. I favored that side, and when I was underneath the chin-up bar, that leg caused my arm to shoot out to the wall in order to stop myself from falling forward.

His voice was rough when he spoke. "See? Inspirational and shit."

"Ha." I caught my breath and looked over my shoulder at him. "I look like an airplane about to land."

"You do not."

I rolled my eyes because I knew what I looked like. "You won't win this one, Buchanan. Come on, boost me up."

Levi came up behind me when I lifted my hand toward the bar. His hands, big and capable, gripped my sides with a strength that had the air shooting out of my lungs. His fingers curled around my hip bones, and when he exhaled, it ruffled the curls that escaped down the back of my neck.

"You are fucking amazing, Jocelyn, airplane arms and all."

My eyelids fluttered shut, and I was so, so glad I wasn't facing him. I didn't want to see what was on his face as he said it, and I didn't want him to see what was on mine.

He'd helped me hundreds of times—more than I could count—and not once, not for even a fraction of a second had I thought about his fingers when they covered any surface of my body.

If this was because of Andrew, then I was officially in a fight with him, because what I didn't need in my life was something that made me catalog how the skin covering my bones changed when my best friend touched it.

With no more effort than breathing, Levi hoisted me up, and my hands grabbed the bar, fingers curled in the direction of my face. Levi stepped back. My hips felt cold and bare.

"Thank you," I whispered, staring straight at the wall. "Can you bring my chair over?"

Without a word, he did. And like normal, once my chair was locked into place, he made deft movements with his hands, wrapping a thick, Velcro band around my knees to keep them together, to hold my legs steady.

I took a deep breath and pulled myself up, relishing the way my muscles curled and bunched.

Again, and again, and again, and again, and again, I pulled myself up.