Against the Ropes by Carly Fall Read Free Book Online

have the energy. Not to mention the pain in his shoulder, which Regan was making worse at the present moment.
    Max seemed tired today as well and had even taken a nap. Dylan made a mental note to make sure he wasn’t catching a cold or something.
    “Damn it, Regan!”
    She sighed and let go of his arm, and he gingerly held it to his stomach. Putting her hands on her hips she stared down at him, exasperated. “Dylan, I have one month to get this shoulder rehabbed. You aren’t making this easy on me.”
    He didn’t say anything, and she rolled her eyes at him. He couldn’t help but smile.
    “Sit up,” she said, the corner of her mouth turning up slightly, as if she were fighting a grin. He did what he was told and swung his legs over the side of the table.
    “Okay, let’s go through some rotation exercises. Do you remember them?”
    “Sort of.”
    She guided his arm and moved it directly in front of him, above his head and then out to the side. They did this for a few moments, and Dylan’s arm was screaming. He actually felt a little sweat on his forehead the pain was so great.
    “Okay, stay here,” she said and went into the house. He took a peek over his shoulder so he could watch her hips sway as she walked.
    A moment later she came back out, carrying a frozen sack of peas, a notebook, and a large, yellow cup.
    “I’d like to do some stim on you, but we obviously don’t have the machine,” she said. “And you don’t have any ice packs either, so you’re stuck with a bag of peas.”
    He chuckled as she handed it to him, and he brought it up to his shoulder.
    “Why don’t you have any icepacks?” she asked.
    “I’ve been doing my therapy at a clinic, like where I met you. I haven’t really had a need to keep any at home.”
    “What about pulled muscles?”
    “The peas work just fine.”
    “Drink some water too, Dylan,” she said with a smile, handing him the large, yellow cup.
    “Yes, ma’am,” he murmured as he took it from her and then downed most of the contents in one long pull.
    Regan sat down on the table next to him and began writing in the notebook.
    “Keeping notes on my progress?”
    “Or lack thereof,” she murmured, not looking at him. She focused on the page.
    They sat in silence for a few minutes, and Dylan finished his water as his thoughts took him back to why he had ended up in prison. At that moment, he decided he wanted Regan to know the reason.
    Setting the cup down between them, he said, “It was at a bar.”
    Regan stopped writing, her head turning toward him slowly.
    “What was at a bar?”
    “The reason I went to prison.”
    She stayed silent.
    “I was drunk.”
    “And that gives you an excuse to beat someone half to death?”
    He shook his head and looked out over the small yard. The grass was a thick, green rug and the large orange trees against the back brick wall provided some shade, but more importantly, privacy from the neighbors, not to mention fresh fruit.
    “No, not at all.”
    “So?”
    Dylan shrugged, his shoulder numb from the frozen peas. “So, my buddy and I were on our way home for the night. There were these two guys in the parking lot of the bar hassling this blonde woman that looked a lot like you from the back,” he said, not meeting her intense gaze. “Somewhere in my mind I knew it wasn’t you, but in my drunken haze, I thought it was.”
    He looked over to the orange tree and noted that the fruit would be ripe soon, which meant fresh-squeezed orange juice. “They had her bent over the hood of a car and were pretending to screw her, but they weren’t. She was crying, they were sure laughing, and it pissed me off thinking about someone doing that to you, or to anyone for that matter. So I went over there, pulled them off her and beat the shit out of them.”
    Dylan turned to look at Regan. She stared at him intently, but said nothing.
    “The cops came, I fought them off, and they finally wrestled me into the car. The rest is