Lennon Reborn Read online

  I’m worried sick about you. Just fucking text me back you asshole. An X and I’ll come get you or, fuck, even an eggplant emoji. Anything.

  He shook his head and decided to take a picture of himself flicking the bird. He flicked his phone to camera, but then he realized he couldn’t hold it and make the hand gesture.

  “FUCK!” Though he was wearing only a pair of shorts, he threw open the balcony doors and embraced the cold April wind. Lennon shivered, his thoughts and the cruel wind snapping at his skin. His hair whipped the edges of his face.

  The view did nothing for him, although there was irony in the fact he was standing on what was really the thirteenth floor—though the building called it the fourteenth to avoid the association of the “bad luck” number. If he were any fucking unluckier, lightning would hit him where he stood before a tornado touched down on his balcony and threw him out into Central Park.

  He rubbed his hand across his face and along the beard he’d grown since the day of surgery. God, he was fucking tired. He hadn’t slept in thirty-six hours despite his best efforts to numb everything with painkillers and alcohol. All he had to show for it was a hangover barely kept at bay by pain meds.

  The ground was cold beneath his feet, but he stood and took a deep breath of air. The sky was gray, oppressive. Everything was too close.

  Lennon took a step closer to the edge of the balcony and looked down toward the ground. It seemed simple enough to lean forward.

  The buzzer to the condo sounded and was swiftly followed by loud knocking. Lennon stepped back from the edge and took a deep breath. His hair flew in front of his face. What the fuck was he doing?

  He wandered back to the door and opened it wide. Georgia stood in the hallway, an oversized pink sweater slipping off her shoulder as she juggled a plastic bag and a box. That thick mane of hair was up in a messy bun and tested his restraint. What would it take to slip out a couple of the pins keeping it there and let it tumble down? Her face was stripped clean of the light makeup she usually wore, her cheeks scrubbed pink as if she’d just gotten out of the shower.

  The idea of that curvaceous frame of hers under hot water in a steamy shower made his dick twitch, something that hadn’t happened since the surgery. Fuck, at least that part of him still worked. Her eyes scanned down his chest, and he was suddenly grateful he’d decided to forgo the T-shirt. The way she quickly glanced back up to his eyes and blushed did nothing to ease the movement in his shorts.

  The dark thoughts that had clouded his mind the last forty-eight hours seemed to disappear, like she was a living breathing ray of fucking sunshine.

  “Hey, I’m here to change your dressing if now is a good time,” she said as she breezed past him and dumped the box on the counter.

  “Come on in, why don’t you?” Lennon said. He closed the door as her scent hit his nose. Something like tangerine, which made him want to lean in and press his lips against the soft skin of her neck and savor her.

  Georgia looked around the kitchen, where dirty dishes were stacked on the counter. He’d regressed to those first couple of years out of the home, when he’d rebelled. When Nik would kick his ass for being such a dirtbag. He only prayed she wouldn’t look inside the—

  “You didn’t bother to order groceries,” she said, poking around in his fridge. When she closed the door and looked back at him, he couldn’t read her expression. He’d thought she’d be disgusted, or feel sorry for him, but her words were more of a statement than a question.

  “Obviously, not.” He drummed his fingers on the counter top. He felt . . . fuck, he felt nervous around her. He wanted to believe it was the thought of having the dressing changed, but deep down inside, in the quiet spaces, he knew it was something else . . . something more.

  “I’m sorry. None of my business,” she said as she grabbed a packet and ripped it open. She pulled a pair of sterile gloves from it and pulled them on.

  Shit, now he was getting turned on by her pulling on latex. Goddamn. His chest tightened in direct correlation with his dick hardening. He didn’t want his dressing changed. Was totally fed up of being poked at. But he wanted her hands on him, and if this was the only way he could make that happen, he’d get over it.

  She stepped up close to him and began to unravel the elastic compression bandage. “Okay, there is no polite way to say this, so I’m going to step our friendship up by telling you that you smell.”

  Suddenly, he felt the heat of embarrassment creep up his face. Personal hygiene hadn’t been a priority when he’d been laid out on the sofa watching crap daytime TV.

  “Sorry.” He looked down at the floor. What else was there to add? That he’d been relying on a robe to dry himself off and that it was a pain in the ass? That washing his hair was a royal pain in the ass, too?

  Georgia stepped back. “Lennon. Look at me.”

  He didn’t want to. Didn’t want her to see who he really was, what he was becoming. But he did, because it was Georgia doing the asking.

  “I’m a surgeon. What you have gone through is a life-changing event. Just the surgical aspect of it, even if you ignore the emotional elements. Standing here with me, right now, two weeks after it happened is Herculean. You don’t have to pretend it’s easy with me. Because I know it’s not.”

  Lennon took a deep breath. His head was a mess. A shower would do him good. Otherwise he was going to do something incredibly stupid, like lean forward and kiss those perfectly pouty lips of hers. He reached for her hip and pulled her closer.

  “Showering sucks. My hair is too fucking long and needs cutting. I need to shave but the phantom pain makes me shake sometimes, and I’m worried I’m going to cut my own throat.” The only time he’d attempted shaving, it had occurred to him that throat-cutting might not be such a bad idea. Except he couldn’t guarantee success with it, and then everyone would be on to him. “My clothes are hard to put on, and when I get them on, they feel weird. And I sound like a fucking whiny seven-year-old.”

  “No, you don’t. I’m going to help you. I can cut your hair. I’ll even shave your face if you trust me. For the showering, though, you’re on your own.”

  The words were definitive, but he couldn’t help it if his mind wondered what it would be like to shower with her. To feel her skin naked and wet against his.

  As she worked on removing his dressing, he never took his eyes off her. Even when it burned as she removed the part of the dressing that was stuck to his skin.

  When she was done, he took her hand. “Thank you,” he said quietly. It didn’t feel like anywhere near enough.

  “You’re welcome,” she replied, her eyes on him, just how he was coming to like them.

  As he walked to the bathroom, he heard her phone buzz and her muttered curse. One day he was going to throw that damn thing over his balcony. He closed the door and studied himself in the mirror, forced himself to look at what the surgeon had referred to as his surgical site. For days, he’d struggled with his own image, glancing away as quickly as he could when he caught sight of his own reflection. He needed to get used to it. It was going to define him . . . unless you stop it.

  He didn’t even know what that meant. How could he stop being defined by what had happened to him? He’d done that his whole life.

  His skin looked sallow. Pain, lack of sunlight, zero sleep. He ran his palm across his face.

  His hair was a ratty mess, hard to comb. As much as he liked it long, it really needed to be short. For now. Maybe it would be easier if she cut half of it off before he showered.

  Lennon opened the door and wandered back into the living room but paused when he saw Georgia curled up asleep on the sofa, her phone still in her palm. On the balls of his feet, he tip-toed over to her, removed the phone from her grip and turned it to silent.

  Georgia muttered words of complaint but never opened her eyes.

  He gently brushed her hair off her face, but she didn’t move again. Her skin was warm, soft beneath his fingers. He reached behind her
and pulled the blanket down over her. It was a little messy because it was hard to straighten it with only one hand without waking her.

  And he didn’t want to do that.

  I’m going to help you. That’s what she’d said to him.

  “Yeah, well, Doctor Starr, I’m going to help you too,” he whispered before pressing his lips to her forehead.

  CHAPTER SIX

  “Are you sure you want me to do this?” Georgia asked, rethinking her spontaneous offer to cut Lennon’s hair as she considered bolting from his apartment, slightly mortified at having fallen asleep on his sofa only for him to wake her one breath away from drooling on the new silk pillows.

  It wasn’t just the fact that she was holding her sterilized medical scissors close to his long wet locks that gave her pause. Nor was it the fact that with his wet hair pulled back off his face, he looked more like a mischievous Botticelli cherub than a heavy-metal rock star. It wasn’t even the fact she’d never cut anyone’s hair before. After all, if she botched it, his hair would grow back—unlike his jugular vein if she slipped with the damn scissors.

  No. It was the combination of the facts that she’d been drooling when he’d woken her, and that he’d been wearing nothing but a towel, which he’d confessed sheepishly that he’d had to lie on the ground to wrap around his waist. She’d tried her damnedest not to stare, just as she had when she’d arrived earlier to find him shirtless. Rectus abdominis had never looked so . . . impressive. And that was before she’d noticed the definition in his transversus abdominis, and goddamn, if his iliac furrow didn’t create the most impressive V she’d ever seen. If they used his body in grade-nine biology text books, she was certain there wouldn’t be a problem with the number of young girls showing an interest in science. She’d been able to hide her surprise and embarrassment—she hoped—behind the unpacking of medical supplies and conversation about dressings.

  But then he’d gotten so close, placing his hand on her hip and guiding her toward him, the move making her shiver. He’d looked at her like he was about to kiss her. And, God, she’d been a moment away from letting him. The fine hairs on the back of her neck had stood on end, and a faint shiver had made its way down her spine.

  At least the time spent sleeping had calmed her revving nerves and racing pulse. But all the deep breathing had been undone the moment he’d crouched near the sofa, fresh out of the shower, with drips of water running down that heavily tattooed chest of his. Now she could see clearly that it said Untipping the Balance, which, though it seemed strange, didn’t deter her from wanting to reach out her fingertips and trace the gothic-style script.

  He had never strictly been her patient, yet she felt the shadow of the Hippocratic Oath, heard whispers of unethical conduct.

  Which was ridiculous.

  Her friend Donna, a surgeon in Boston, had told her that one of the Boston bombing victims they’d treated that day had ended up marrying the firefighter who’d rescued her. Though this wasn’t exactly the same thing, since she was a pediatric neurosurgeon, there was definitely no conflict of interest.

  Lennon took hold of her wrist, which roused her from her thoughts. He looked down at the scissors. “Yes. I want you to cut it. Like really cut it all off.”

  Georgia smiled. “I know you want it cut. I just wondered if I’m really the right person to do it. I mean, I bet I could call my hair stylist and persuade him to make a house call if you don’t want to go into the salon. I’ve never styled a man’s hair in my life.”

  The side of Lennon’s mouth threatened to pull up into a smile. “Then let me be your first,” he said, looking up at her. “Just cut it, Gia. Think of it as a step toward moving on. I can’t deal with this much hair right now, no matter how much I want to. It’s in my way.”

  “Okay,” she sighed, and now he really did smile. God, did he really have to have such perfect white teeth? She took the comb from his hand. “Do you normally have a part? Like side or center?”

  Lennon sat on the stool from the breakfast bar in the kitchen. The newspaper she placed on the floor crinkled beneath her feet as she moved to stand in front of him. She studied his hairline to see if it had a particular leaning. Carefully, Lennon opened his legs and thankfully made sure the towel continued to cover what was underneath. Even as her pulse increased a little, she forced herself to pretend she did things like this every day. Just cut his hair off without slicing anything vital like his ears and get out.

  “It tends to fall wherever it feels like,” Lennon said with a shrug. “Never really overthought it.”

  She bit her lip and reached forward to touch the damp hair, which had started to curl into waves. “I’d love to have hair like this,” she said.

  “You seem more upset about this than I am,” Lennon said as he placed an arm around her waist and tugged her into the space between his legs. Not close enough that they were doing anything inappropriate, but close enough that she could smell his shampoo and could feel the heat coming from his chest.

  Biting back a smile, she looked at him. “It’s beautiful hair, but you’re right. It’s not mine.” She grabbed a handful from around his ear and cut about eight inches off so that it fell to just below his jaw line. The cut hair lay on the floor in blond wisps. “Guess there’s no going back now,” she said quietly.

  Lennon looked her in the eye, and she felt the jolt she always did when they connected that way. It was more powerful, made her heart race faster than the hand that was still around her waist.

  “Guess not,” he said huskily.

  God, how had his voice dropped an octave while it felt like the room had gotten a hundred degrees hotter? For a moment, she stood her ground, barely breathing. Years of training meant her hands rarely shook, but the rest of her was wobblier than a plate of Jell-O.

  Georgia stepped from between his legs. “Well then,” she said in a bright voice that was, to her ears, notably forced. “Might as well do this properly if I am going to do it at all. And while I am brilliant with a scalpel, I happen to be pretty handy with a pair of scissors, if I do say so myself.”

  Lennon laughed, the intense moment between them over. “Modest, are we? Maybe I should be the judge of your talents when you’re done, seeing as my hair is going to have to live with the results.”

  She combed through the portion from which she’d just cropped the ends. It was soft as silk. “Who knows? This might become my backup career if the whole neurosurgeon thing doesn’t pay off.” Carefully, she separated the hair out into sections, like she’d seen her own stylist do.

  “Doubt there is much risk of that, seeing your face was plastered over the local news last night. Separating those craniopa . . . cranipopi . . . whatever. Those twins joined at the head.”

  As she straightened out the ends with the comb and began to snip the length even shorter, Georgia thought back to the press conference. “It’s craniopagus. And you might have noticed, I was with about eight other doctors. It’s not like I go in by myself and operate all day. There are many specialties involved.”

  “I don’t know. By the way your boss spoke about you and the way your colleagues deferred to you to answer, I think it’s fair to say they think you’re pretty impressive.”

  Compliments weren’t new, and usually she banked them just to be able to reel them off later to impress her father, but Lennon’s softly muttered words made her defenses crumble. His words were everything, but she didn’t know how to properly take the compliment. “What made you become a drummer?” she asked, trying to change the subject.

  Lennon massaged the bicep of his injured arm, squeezing it gently as he worked his way down. “It was the only position available in the band when I joined.”

  There was something in his tone that was difficult to pin down. A hint of sadness, a pinch of regret. It was so hard to place. She grabbed the next section of hair and began to comb it straight. “Preload?” she asked as more curls fell to the floor.

  He continued to stare straight ahead. “
Yeah. We grew up in care together, in a group home in Toronto.”

  There was no point in pretending she hadn’t read that or acting surprised. “So how did the band start? Was it a music program you joined or something?” Her fingertips brushed the top of his shoulders. His skin was soft and smooth, and his left shoulder blade was covered with black and gray ink that made it look as if what lay beneath the skin was robotic. Ironic, given that the latest in robotic prosthetics required sensors to be placed beneath the skin.

  “No, our social worker, Maisey, thought it would be an interesting project. Nik and Dred were the first two in the home, and had both shown a real interest and aptitude for music. Jordan was a freaking musical savant. The guy can play anything by ear, even if he’s only heard it once. And I guess Elliott and Adam were just tough to keep out of trouble. So, Maisey bought the instruments with her own money to give them something else to work on. We owe her everything. And Ellen, her wife, who ran the home.”

  Adam wasn’t a name she knew. “What happened to Adam? Did he leave the band?”

  Lennon ran a hand across his chin, then reached behind him and grabbed her hip, tugging her in front of him again, back between his legs. It felt every bit as intimate as it had the first time he’d done it. “Adam committed suicide. I got his bed. Literally. Like a week after it had happened, I was moved into the home. The drum kit was in the corner of the bedroom I was given, and the band needed a drummer. They all looked at me, and then the drums, as if to say, ‘Can you?’”

  “And could you?” she asked, using her scissor-free hand to brush the hair that was still long over his shoulder. She’d started on his injured side. It was like the two sides of him split down in the middle. The long-haired drummer from before, and the short-haired . . . man after.